At a recent birthday party for my friend Sarah, I met a playwright who also writes TV screenplays. I mentioned to him that I was working on a second draft of my film screenplay, and that I had just that very day received an email from Final Draft to become a beta tester in order to work with them to make their software accessible with screenreaders.
The point of my bringing myself into the conversation was how awesome it was that the industry standard would soon be usable by blind and visually impaired people, but his next question was, “So…How do you appreciate movies?” Or maybe he asked, “What is your experience of films as a person without sight?” I’m sorry that I can’t remember his exact words, but it was something like that, and it made me launch into how I used to be able to see, and how there are so many movies from my years as a visually impaired person immediately accessible to my mind’s eye.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is always the first to come to mind because I watched it so many times, and because people’s reaction to the title (happy recognition/no clue) tends to be a good indicator of the tastes of my interlocutor, and this time was no exception. “That is a weird one,” said my playwright, and I felt the need to mention other films less “weird,” like Apocalypse Now. I also felt the need to mention that I write for the New York film Academy, as if it legitimized my film appreciation abilities! And perhaps it does…
I’ve been ghostwriting for NYFA since the beginning of the year, and I seem to be the go-to gal for cinematography… Just kidding. But I did land the job with a holiday “trending item”: 6 Cinematic Tips for Capturing your New Year’s Kiss! I also wrote The Best Cinematography The 59th Annual Grammys has to Offer, which was a real learning experience since I haven’t paid attention to mainstream music in decades!
Another fun learning experience for a person who hasn’t had a television in years was my recent Pilot Season 2017. Although I probably won’t watch–sorry, check out–any of these shows, Netflix’s Disjointed, wherein Kathy Bates heads up a ragtag and mostly stoned bunch in the legal cannabis biz, will be tempting, it was gratifying to learn that more than one book inspired this crop, including By the Book and Passage–inspired by A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically and Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy respectively.
When I first started writing for NYFA, my editor sent me some acting topics since I have acting experience, for example 5 Tips for Creating Character Relationships and I wrote her to say that I’m happy to do the acting pieces, but that I’ve worked on many a crazy short film–done some of the writing and concept, and most of the sound–and can geek out on pretty much anything filmmaking.
One of my most successful articles from a student resources point of view was How to Get Big Production Value Out of a Little Budget. Another helpful one was To Film Fest or Not to Film Fest: Creative Approaches to Distribution in the Digital Age. And a popular piece that mixes fluff with real-world advice is 10 Great Pieces of Advice for Beginner Producers from Filmmaking Veterans, which includes one of the best pieces of advice ever for filmmakers and humans (from Werner Herzog): “Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.”
Recently I wrote a pair of Star Wars articles–one trending topic What Every Die-Hard Star Wars Fan Needs to Know About Episode VIII, which provided great fodder for a recent dinner with Alabaster‘s parents, and the other more geeky: Technical Innovations in Star Wars Through the Ages, for which I was able to plagiarize myself from last December’s Audio Description and Sound Design in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
I really enjoyed researching and writing Celebrating Female Film Producers for Women’s History Month and 7 Amazing Filmmakers from Mexico for Cinco de Mayo.
These two inspired me to pitch a Disability Pride piece celebrating real people with disabilities in film and television, which was approved, so look out for that in early July–just in time for NYC’s Third Annual Disability Pride Parade!
*This is Essay 16 of #52essays2017. For more, check out essay 15, Marzipan Memories*