11/15/2004 06:12:35 PM|||Verdi|||Things have changed for me recently. It's like I have the opportunity to begin again. I've got a new understanding of what it is that I'm trying to do and it just feels like it's time to start over. So, that's why you're looking at a new version of my website. Everything that was here before is gone. In it's place will be everything that I do during the next 13 and a half months while playing a game I've created for myself (keep reading, I'll explain).

Last month I was putting together my application for INdTV and I was in the middle of Landmark Education's Commitment Seminar - a 13 week conversation about what you're really committed to. What I saw in there was something that's been with me almost my entire life - a feeling that I'm not really lucky. The big story that I say about myself is that I'm not lucky enough to, in this case, succeed as a filmmaker. I then use that made up story about myself to justify not really trying because I can't succeed anyway! This feeling manifests itself in things like, making a film and not submitting it to festivals or in spending three years trying to write a screenplay and only getting 15 pages down before giving up.

Anyway, the point is that I'm now present to an opportunity. An opportunity to get committed to being a filmmaker like I've never been before. So it's time to shake things up. I'm playing a game for the next 13 1/2 months (from now until Dec. 31, 2005). The game is called, FILMMAKER and these are the rules:

1. Write every day like my life depends on it.
2. Write 3 screenplays by the end of 2005.
3. Make a short and post it here every week until the end of 2005.
4. Make a feature film by the end of 2005.
5. Win a film festival by the end of 2005.

Now I know that may sound pretty far out there - it does to me. In fact there is no evidence that I can actually do any of those things. In the past, I have taken on each of those commitments and failed at them separately. Now I'm taking them all on simultaneously. Maybe it's crazy. It probably is. I'll use this forum to document what happens. So check back here and see how I'm doing. I also invite you to play along at home (please email me if you are doing this - I'd love to know).

Oh, and for the record, I wrote yesterday and today - that's two days in a row baby!|||110047813567784209|||The Game