The Year of Archetype: Day 16

Last July I was working on three scripts: Decade, Meridien K - both of which I still plan on finishing and, thus, won't discuss their plots - and Meds, a semi-comedy about health-care reform.

One film, clearly, is missing from that list.

I guess it might've been a number of things that created Archetype. Maybe splitting my workload across three vastly-different scripts burned me out and Arc was my rebound. Maybe I was more upset than I care to admit about the total festival failure of Transmissions and as a crude twist decided to write its sequel. The reason I'm thinking about this is because, last week during auditions, one of my prospects asked how I came up with the idea of the film, and I drew a total blank.

And, now, thinking of the same questions, it's still something I can't, for the life of me, remember. I must've just plucked it from midair.

I think I might've already Gone Upriver with Arc. But that's expected. That's normal. While some hate it and try to avoid it, I always embrace the sort of tunnel vision associated with filmmaking. You eventually absorb the story until you can effortlessly improvise as one character or, miraculously, quote from the prose of the script certain things. Like how, just meeting with an actor, I had to recall the line that Drake "wears a suit despite the cold" for his first appearance in order to justify something.

And it's with this tunnel vision that I have to look back and realize that I've already been working on Arc for five months. That's probably why, now that the gears are in motion, it seems so surreal to be shifting into production. Furthermore, it's not some epic short (see also: my ridiculously-ambitious student films) or even Transmissions (which was arguably hardest to finish the pre-pro for), but a months-long commitment, a stepping stone toward my ambitions of, god forbid, doing this for a living.

So maybe I should stick with this tunnel vision, and tell this story a day at a time, and not pull back and look at the big behemoth of ambitions and expectations I've made this to be.