Michael's Sick/Some Thoughts

So first, if you're reading this, send Michael lots of healthy thoughts, he needs it. I'm not sure if it's swine flu or something less angry, but that's been going around our group with a vengeance, and it's better to be safe than sorry.

Second of all, I should introduce myself. Again. My name is Scott Marden, and my last post on this blog was in March of 2008. Crazy right? Anyways, if you missed that first post, I played Andrew Stills in The Reunion, and also Sam Sorrow in the Shatter Heart movie. I've known Mr. Tucker since I was a junior in high school, and have been fortunate enough to work on Floridian Farr, 421, The Visitants, The Prologue, and The Reunion. I studied Theatre Arts at Southern Oregon University and have worked as an actor, director, stage manager and production manager in California's Bay Area. I run an after-school technical theater program in Oakland, which has occupied most of my time lately.

I find it interesting that I needed to tell you my history, both with Michael and with Film/Theater. It seemed as good a place as any to start, and I've been spending a lot of time dwelling on my past.

I think it's incredibly easy to get caught up in all the things that have already happened. The good times and the bad, our greatest moments and our biggest failures, moments of incredible glory and moments of terrible shame. These can overwhelm us, they can mount up to the point where it's a struggle to focus on today, let alone tomorrow. On top of that, we fall into a trap of wondering where all our potential went. As 20-something adults, we are at a place where things are becoming locked-in, we've spent time on the career path, and that's a scary thought, especially when the path looks nothing like we expected.

I want to end this with some kind of solid conclusion, but I really can't. This is just something that I'm dealing with these days, and thought I'd throw some thoughts out there, see if they come down in a coherent way. Maybe tomorrow. Hopefully my next post will be more relevant to the project. Until then, thanks for reading, stay well, and keep checking back for more Farstorm updates.

--Scott

"The Reunion" is Online; New Film in Works

Within a week of the last post! Not too bad.

The original purpose of this blog was to chronicle the process of writing, producing, and polishing the short film The Reunion of Amilia Marbleberry and Marcy Stills. After the endless nights of filming, and the arduous post production process, we sent the film off to a number of film festivals. We were accepted into two of them, and were honored to win the Jury Award for Best Feature at NFFTY '09. Now, the film is up on YouTube and ready for viewing.

It has been a long, difficult, and very rewarding process. I'm very proud of all the work that everyone did on this project, and I hope that you enjoy it.

Since then I've worked on a couple other projects, like The Royal We Music Video, and now I'm writing what should become the next film project that we all take on. Besides the screenwriting school I attended in Seattle, I've also been digging in to the major books on screenwriting, Story by Robert McKee, and Screenplay by Syd Field. In Seattle I was taught by some really talented people that I have a lot of respect for, and I've now conceded that I can't expect to become as good as them or better without reading all that they've read, seeing all that they've seen.

It takes a concerted effort and dedicated work to get better.

And so I've also been reading a number of screenplays (The Royal Tenenbaums, A Serious Man, American Beauty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and An Education, to name a few), as well as a few plays that Scott Marden (Andrew Stills in The Reunion) recommended to me. Those who know me know that reading is not traditionally a thing I'm a fan of--in fact I hadn't read a book recreationally since the beginning of high school.

But now all that is changed, and I'm more motivated than ever to learn all I can about the storytelling process. This is all to say that I am expecting this next project to be one of our best projects yet.

Thanks for reading; next week maybe I'll talk about some details, as well as introduce you to a few new friends that I met down in LA that are sure to be new cast members on this TV show called life. Until then!

~Michael

12,000 Views? Really?

So after about six months of kind of forgetting that we had a blog, I came back to check on it to find that the page counter said that we have almost 12,000 hits.

I personally feel like this is some kind of internet glitch, or some computer somewhere is stuck on this page while perpetually refreshing.

Nonetheless, I've decided to make a concerted effort to start actually updating the blog frequently.

To begin.

This summer was a bit crazy, both in personal life and movie-making wise. I spent three weeks in July at a screenwriting school in Seattle, which I had won a scholarship to at NFFTY. It was a really good course, the teachers were great, and I learned a lot. Most importantly I gained new inspiration and motivation to keep pursuing filmmaking and to always be learning as much as I can.

I returned from Seattle just in time for Jourdan Lance's wedding! She is now in fact Jourdan Strain, but for movie-related things we'll continue to refer to her as Jourdan Lance. I got to be the "man of honor" and the wedding was fantastic and beautiful and I am indescribably happy for Jourdan and Wyatt.

Somewhere in there, I became obsessed with the band Silversun Pickups and we made two music videos to their songs. One was a test for-fun video, and the second we actually put some time into. And so I end this first of hopefully many new blog posts with our latest video production: The Royal We by Silversun Pickups.

~Michael