30 Minutes. 30 Days. Day 14, 15, 16

This is Buckingham Fountain. It was built to honour Charles Buckingham who was a well-to-do businessman and tremendous art collector in Chicago.

I've just written a scene around this fountain.
Joyce tells the history in improvisational glory. Her son Brady mimes good old Charles Buckingham. The tour group listens but is more distracted by wedding photography going on. On cue the fountain erupts into a dance. Lyric of the lake as they use to say.

Meanwhile our parking lot guy is below the fountain checking out the knobs and valves that control the show. This will play later in the film of course.  Where there is a great fire...a great fountain can be useful.

p.s. photo credit to myself on my one trip to Chicago and in which my fleeting memory of this park is the sole inspiration for this film

30 Minutes. 30 Days

30 Minutes. 30 Days.

This is my new project. I began 3 days ago. It's called 30 Minutes. 30 Days.
The idea for this came about when I was feeling down. Feeling like nothing was worth it. A malaise.
What I know about myself is that if I have a creative project then I am just fine. I'm a creative problem solver and doing that makes me feel alive. Throw any challenge at me and I will have 10 ideas within minutes (not all great of course...but sometimes they are!)
So I thought, the only way I can get myself out of this funk is to have a creative challenge. So I made one up.

What if I spent 30 minutes every day for 30 days and tried to create something. Maybe in a skill I had never done before or one that I had some skills in . Why not?
So I thought I would start with my biggest love which is film.
I committed to writing a film script spending 30 minutes every day for 30 days.

So I have begun. Here are some notes on the first 3 days:

Day 1
I downloaded the trial version of Final Draft (the industry standard scriptwriting software - so they say).
I titled my script Castro Castro - thinking I would finally pen that Cuban Political Thriller that has rattled around my head for years. But then something else popped into my head. I wrote the setting for the first scene. Millennium Park Chicago. I have no idea why. I've only been there once before. But I've decided to stick with it. The rest of my 30 minutes was spent reading Wikipedia pages on Millennium Park (that can be a slippery endless slope that can take you off your scriptwriting task. Note taken)

Day 2
I didn't do it! Can you believe it! Only day 2 and I didn't live up to my commitment. I was just too damn tired to sit down at the end of the night and write for 30 minutes. So I went to bed. Luckily characters for the film emerged. I'm not sure if thinking for 30 minutes on this task is within the rules. But I'm making this up so I guess I can make up the rules too.

Day 3
I'm thinking I should do my 30 minutes in the day or morning. First thing. Get it out of the way first so if I'm tired at night I don't feel guilty. I spent 30 minutes at lunch writing out my characters. The damn Final Draft Application then didn't even save my 30 minutes of writing! Can't recover it. So spent another 30 minutes re-writing it in a good old fashion word document.  I already like where my imagination is going. It's like having puzzle pieces in front of you but without the cover of the box to guide you.

Stay tuned for daily updates. I may set up a separate blog for this. But until then....

Jill