I’m not a ‘glass half-empty’ kind of girl

Written on June 16, 2010 by Bianca in Inspiration
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I’m a regular subscriber to Hugh MacLeod‘s newsletter, where I receive one of his drawings in my inbox everyday. And each day, I look forward to reading what piece of inspiration Hugh would send this time. The picture above is one of my favourites (it was hard to choose, but I think this one speaks to me a lot) and maybe that’s because if you had to illustrate what goes on inside my brain, this might as well be it.

Possibilities run around in my mind every second I’m awake. I’m a daydreamer. I’m an optimist. I always carry my glass half-full even when I find myself in a large room with people holding their glasses half-empty. Storytelling is my thing but I also always been into entrepreneurship and technology. These three things get me thinking – a lot. I’ve even gotten myself back on the reading bandwagon (I’m currently in this crazy non-fiction phase) and this just further fuels my intoxication.

When I meet other people and start talking about all the crazy stuff they could possibly do, sometimes I get weird looks or the typical lets-be-realistic-here talk. Sometimes it’s hard for me to understand how some people can’t think about the possibilities that are out there for them, but this is probably the same reason why it’s hard for people to understand why my head is ‘up in the clouds’. I still consider myself realistic to some degree, but I don’t want that to stop me from thinking outside the box and trying something new, something different, or even something that scares me.

Go ahead and intoxicate yourself with possibility.

Heck, get high off the ideas that are running in your head. I always feel an adrenaline rush when I do. This type of intoxication is  a good feeling. It’s a feeling that can help you get things done, add some accomplishments on your list, meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise met, possibly earn you more money, possibly lead you to a job you’d actually enjoy doing…the list goes on.

Love, Life, Enterprise, Discovery? Its one of those powerful moments which don’t come that often, but can profoundly affect us.

(from the gapingvoid newsletter: cartoon #42 – ‘Intoxicated’ March 17, 2010)

I’ve had a few of these powerful moments and I’m craving for more. It’s what led me to start a web series with my friends, it’s what led me to start my own business, But I’m not gonna push for it. Instead, I’ll keep dreaming and thinking away, doing what I need and want to do so I can get these projects of mine lined up and launched.

I’m going to end this post with a few more of my favourites from gapingvoid – it’s a rainy day here in Toronto and looking back at these lifted my spirits up, so I’m posting them.

Here are the others I didn’t have time to put in this post: ‘Dent‘, ‘I Create‘, and ‘Poisoned‘. Hope you enjoy them! (And to check out Hugh’s other artwork, click here)

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21 Days of Yoga & Writing

Written on June 7, 2010 by Bianca in Life, Projects
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Starting tomorrow, June 8th, I’m participating in this project Bindu Wiles created called 21.5.800:

For 21 days, we’ll be doing 5 days of yoga a week and 800 words of writing per day. WAIT!

Don’t stop reading! Hear me out.

Here’s the deal;

THE WRITING: The writing can be ANYTHING. Memoir, blogs, business plans, essays, fiction, free-writing, letters,……..ANYTHING. The point is to get writing again daily and to have the boundaries and challenge of a daily word count to reach.

THE YOGA: There are several options for you to do the yoga portion of 21.5.800 5 times in 7 days.  Here are the options: 1. Go to a yoga class in your ‘hood. 2. Do a yoga dvd at home. 3. Take a 20-40 minute savasana* at home on the floor.

This could not have come at a better time for me! Since “starting fresh” last week, I’m really excited to participate in this project and challenge myself (I’ve never committed to yoga for more than 3 days straight so this should be interesting…). Also, I need redeem myself after having my not-so-successful (25) Days of Scriptwriting challenge/project. Since 21.5.800 has almost 200 people signed up, maybe having this community would help reach the daily goals. Here’s what I’m hoping to get out of this:

  • More focus and clarity with my creative projects (whether it’s for my small business or web series)
  • Get into the habit or routine of ideas flowing, creative energy running through my veins, and getting words on that piece of paper or computer screen.
  • Meet/connect with others who are also doing this project

So, are you in?

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Start the Fire

Written on June 3, 2010 by Bianca in Life
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I recently got Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions (disclaimer: that’s an affiliate link. Yes, I love this e-book that much that I became a proud affiliate) and I think it’s exactly what I needed to get myself back on track of the goals and projects I gave myself this past year. I’ve been in a slump lately when it came to updating this site. Most of this was due to my indecisive nature back in the driver’s seat. So instead of writing away like I planned, I allowed resistance and doubt to get the best of me (there were a lot of Should I write about that?, It won’t make sense if I write that on my blog, Would this be too personal?, etc.).

You’re freer than you think you are.

But over this past week, this all changed. For some reason, this week – out of all the other weeks – was the week where it just ‘clicked’. Danielle’s FireStarter-isms finally got to my head. Everything I’ve been nagging to myself about finally got to me. I’ve reached a point where I couldn’t take any more of the indecisiveness & wishy-washy-back-and forth actions. I have an idea of what I want now (or at least I know what I don’t want). I’ve finally reached a point in my life where thing have never been this clear about my goals and the future (there’s still some fuzziness here and there, but man is it clearer than before!). So why am I still letting all this resistance get to me?

Define yourself on your own terms

My brain is currently experiencing an overload of ideas. I can’t stop thinking about things I want to do, write, read, create, share, etc. My mind is on fire and I love it. I’m now working on the things I’ve been putting off. Things are starting to get done! Creative collaborations up ahead! So I’m holding on tight (but not too tight) – this is gonna be an interesting ride.

* quotes from The Fire Starter Sessions, pg. 12

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{Quote} Paul Haggis

Written on April 21, 2010 by Bianca in Quotes, Writing
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“Guilt drives me. I know I have to write every day. During the story period, it’s so much harder, it’s much more fluid… When I start to write, I give myself a goal of five pages a day. I don’t stop until I get that done, whether it’s taken me two hours or twelve. Sometimes if I get rolling I can write more, I can write ten pages… It makes you push. Because otherwise, you’d come to the tough part two pages in and you’d go, I’m gonna give up. You have to push through. Because with every scene you come to, you know that the last scene was easy to write, but this scene is impossible. And you get through that, and you see the next scene, and you say, that last one was easy to write, but this one’s impossible. Every single scene is usually like that. Always, impossible. And then the characters start talking to you.”

(via Go Into The Story)

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Writing comedy for television

Written on April 11, 2010 by Bianca in Quotes, Writing
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Television is all about character. Films are typically more about story. For a TV show to work, you have to have a reason to come back every week.

The quote above is from Canadian writer/director, Martin Gero, who was interviewed in this article on the Globe and Mail (along with two other Canadian writers). I thought it was a great read for those interested in tv comedy writing. Here are some quotes from the article that I’ll be taking with me as I write for my upcoming projects:

“My rule for running the writers’ room on How I Met Your Mother is simple. It’s all about character. And the thematic discussions that come from the essence of that character. Is it time for Barney to have a real relationship? Is Ted due for a career change? After three or four days of spinning ideas, a writer goes away with a fairly detailed outline. Each episode takes roughly three weeks.” — Chuck Tatham

“The trick to coming up with stories is to steal from your life and other people’s lives. One episode of The Simpsons was about a school closing due to a blizzard. The kids were so excited, but woke up the next morning to no snow. Off they went to school, only to get trapped there when the blizzard finally hit. That happened to me in Exeter. Only we didn’t put the principal in a volleyball sack.” — Tim Long

“My advice to those getting into TV comedy is, first, order two lunches. Because when 4 o’clock arrives, and you’re famished, you’re a staggering, 230-pound mess. Second, always make sure your characters need each other. If you do that, you can have the craziest, most disparate characters together, and it works.” — Chuck Tatham

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Creating a Web Series

Written on April 11, 2010 by Bianca in Web Series
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So in my last post, I mentioned that my friends and I are creating a web series and that we were going to film the “first few episodes”. Talk about ambitious! We were able to film the one episode and, wow, we learned a lot by doing this all on our own. I’ve read my fair share of blog posts and articles online about creating your own web series and when they tell you that there’s a lot of hustling and hard work involved, they weren’t kidding! I’m here to share our experience so far with our very first web series. If any of you have some insight/advice/feedback, don’t hesitate to comment – all is welcome and appreciated :)

Our web series is called How To Be A Friend and it’s sort of a mockumentary about a group of 4 friends who create their own web series of how-to advice on friendships. In each episode, the girls tackle on a different situation and give their advice on how a “good friend” would handle it. The only thing is, their viewpoint of what a “good friend” is might be slightly different from ours or mine.

The plan

  • We wrote brief summaries for each of the 8 episodes we have lined up and we decided that we’d improvise each episode and follow the outline we wrote for each.
  • Filming with a DSLR (Nikon D90) and recording the sound using an external audio recorder (Zoom H4n).
  • Edit using Final Cut then upload to YouTube/Vimeo.
  • Aim for 2-3 mins. per episode (max 4 mins.)
  • Create a website for the series
  • Use social media to promote it (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo)

On Set

We all arrived on set at Kelsey’s apartment and began planning our shots. We got a friend of ours from acting class (Andrew) to help us with the camera. Overall, filming was smooth. We didn’t really experience any problems with the camera and the mic (well, there was this one time where I pressed “playback” instead of “record” haha but that was quickly fixed). We mostly shot everything in one take, except for the last 2 very short scenes where we had to switch locations.

Notes after Day 1

Now that we all got the idea of how filming one episode for this web series would be, we decided to talk about what we’ve learned and what changes would we make for the future episodes. Here’s what we’ve learned:

  • We need a script: Improvising the episode was fun, but we ended up adding more time than we originally planned. (We initially thought of improvising because we thought it would be a faster turnaround and that we’d be able to film more episodes in one day.)
  • Character development: we’ve started off with great characters in this series, but we all felt that we can go even further for some of them.
  • Plan out the shots: after uploading the video and audio files on my mac, I started to try and do some editing on Final Cut. Most of our takes were all in one shot and each shot was around 5mins. Wowza. For the next few episodes, I proposed to do a variety of shots (wide, close-up, etc.) to see if that would be easier to edit.

We had an amazing time on Thursday doing the DIY method for this web series and now we’re even more excited to go on and film the upcoming episodes. Hopefully, we’ll have something to upload (even if it’s a teaser) very soon. We want these episodes up as soon as we can, but we want them to be great, so we’re going to make sure we take our time on the edits before we launch it to the world wide web :P

I guess that’s all I have to write about for now. If any of you have suggestions, tips, or resources you’d like to offer, don’t forget to leave a comment! Or send me an email. Thanks again for reading this post. Now I’m off to go learn more about editing with Final Cut!

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It’s a small start, but it’s a start.

Written on April 8, 2010 by Bianca in Projects, Web Series
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Today: filming the first few episodes of a web series with my lady geniuses (Meghan, Kelsey and Bronwyn)

I’ll post updates soon!

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{Quote} Psych yourself up for the writing process

Written on March 14, 2010 by Bianca in Quotes
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“We live in this society where you must constantly be reinventing yourself. The big question is what are you doing next. The only thing they want is composed of these three elements: They want you to do it the exact same way because they want more of it; but they want it to be totally different; and they want it to be better. (Laughs) And that’s it. That’s all you have to do. You just have to do something that’s exactly the same, totally different, and better. So how hard is that?

If that becomes what’s expected of you, at some point you have to decide to excuse yourself from that expectation and say, “Well, I’m not sure I can do all that.” But what I can continue to do is to continue to follow my curiosity and my path and create work that I think is reflective of what I’m really interested in and just share it with you, and you can take it as you like it.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert

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Day (25)

Written on February 2, 2010 by Bianca in 25 Days of Scriptwriting, Writing
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Ok, I’m not gonna lie…

I didn’t end up with a feature film script. BUT… I do have something that can be a short film. Or a number of episdoes for a web series.

So what’s a girl to do? Keep writing. And writing. And writing. The lesson I’ve learned is that I will have those days where I can’t for the life of me write pages and pages of stories. But I know that there will be days where my hand will try its best to keep up with my head on writing everything down. I’ve decided not to force it. I’ll see where this takes me …

So what now? I’ll still give myself a deadline for this one story I really really really want to start filming asap! I’ve got my actors and all I need now is this script (then I can go worry about production afterwards haha). I’m giving myself a month to finish this. I’ll reward myself something nice if I can finish it before Feb 28th!

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{Quote} No, everything is not going to be okay

Written on January 22, 2010 by Bianca in Quotes
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“It’s natural to seek reassurance. Most of us want to believe that the choices we make will work out, that everything will be okay.

Artists and those that launch the untested, the new and the emotional…wrestle with this need all the time. How can we proceed knowing that there’s a good chance that our actions will fail, that things might get worse, that everything won’t end up okay? In search of solace, we seek reassurance.

So people lie to us. So we lie to ourselves.

No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn’t okay now. Change, by definition, changes things. It makes some things better and some things worse. But everything is never okay.

Finding the bravery to shun faux reassurance is a critical step in producing important change. Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it’s a lot easier to launch work that matters”

- Seth Godin

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