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Jeremy LaLonde's Blog Entry - March 13th/2007

Every time I start to write this I think that there’s nothing to write about and then I make a list if what’s happened/happening and I realize that I’m a much busier person than I realize sometimes…

Hoff

“Hoff’s New Direction” is almost finished. We have an April 5th delivery due date to Bravo and we’re just finishing it up now. I wrote some music for it last night and we’re buying a Young Galaxy song “Lazy Religion”, courtesy of our friends at Arts & Crafts, for another part of the film. Ms. Meaghan Lynch has designed some fantastic titles for our end credits (they make me smile each time I look at them), and I’m hopefully going to be handing the film over to my sound mixer by the end of the week. I can’t wait to get this in front of an audience. I’ve been showing it to people and it’s getting a pretty good response. I showed it to my Dad and Step-mom the other day and they didn’t quite get it. It’s not their world and so I wasn’t surprised. They were very sweet about it though. It’s definitely not a film that’s for everyone, but I think it’ll play well to the short film crowd. We shall see. I made a list of festivals I want to hit with it. I’d love for it to premiere at TIFF, but it’s not necessary. Fingers crossed.

Ode to the Treatment

So my writing has changed a lot in the last few years. Not so much in theme and substance, but just how I go about it. I used to be very anti-books-on-writing. I just thought that those who could write were born with the natural talent to write, there was nothing that a book could tell you that you shouldn’t instinctually know. That shows how much of an ignorant, arrogant kid I was. Anyone in any craft needs to learn and be educated about it regardless of natural talent and ability. There’s always something to learn, a new way to go about things. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years really studying the craft of writing and not only has it made me a better writer, but it makes me a more efficient writer. Less time is spent noodling, because I know where I’m going, or at least I know what point I have to get to. We were challenged to read a screenwriting book this month in my writer’s group and so I picked up a copy of a book I had heard about on a screenwriting podcast called “20 Master Plots”. It’s a really interesting
book, and it’s smart. It doesn’t try and tell you that there are only 20 plots in the world, it tells you there are many, however these are the most common and here’s kind of how they work. It tells you the things that are involved in those plots. I find those kind of things helpful to look at when you’re beating your head against the wall wondering what’s wrong with your story, what’s missing. I disregard some of the things that don’t work for me, but I use what does. Either way, studying my craft and the work of others has helped my writing immensely. If you’re a young hopeful writer I recommend finding a writer’s group. If you’re not sure how to go about it please e-mail me and I’ll help get you set up: jeremy_lalonde@hotmail.com

There’s loads of websites with helpful information, my favorite is wordplayer.com Another site that’s great if you’re looking to find an online community of writer’s is www.triggerstreet.com There are others out there but I haven’t tried them so I can’t vouch for them. This one, I can. Next week at my writer’s group one of the things we’re going to talk about is a treatment that I wrote for a script that I’m writing for a producer friend. This is probably the most fleshed out treatment I’ve written so I’m really interested to see if it works for people.

Hired-Hand

I mentioned in a previous blog about how I was offered a short to direct by a friend who had written something. So I read the script and it was quite good. In fact, damn fine. Some tweaking is needed but just a little to round out the character’s intentions and what not. It’ll be a nice exercise for me in directing someone else’s material. Nothing’s written in stone or anything just yet, but I’m excited by the idea of it. Will have to see if my schedule meets up with it.

All right. I have a dinner party to get to, and then… relax… watch a movie… read some scripts…. Not sure ;)

Until next time…

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