That’s probably what you thought when an alert from my blog showed up in your email, right? Well, I can’t blame you. I’ve been delinquent in my blogging.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve been just sitting around doing nothing.
So, what have I been up to? Let me bring you up to speed. But first, some pretty photos.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll answer the question. First, I’ve still been plugging away at my writing, doing a tiny bit of fiction while mainly focusing on screenwriting. Since we last met, I’ve finished two features, a dozen shorts, and two super shorts; I’ve rewritten a few shorts from my collection that I published a few years ago with the hopes of publishing a second edition soon. Soon… Finding the time to sit down and rewrite eight or so short stories has been difficult.
Especially since I’ve gotten involved in filmmaking. And photography. Two cheap hobbies that don’t take up any time at all.
Since graduating from my MFA program in January, I’ve been trying to find jobs related to screenwriting and filmmaking, casting a wide net and hoping for the best. I’d had little luck in finding anything that led anywhere. I mostly used the dreaded Backstage.com—fun fact, that’s the magazine led to the casting of The Blair Witch Project’s stars—and holy hell, are there a lot of flakes on that website. I had someone interested in doing a rewrite of a feature reach out, only to miss every Zoom call and ask for a rain check; one ghosted my for two weeks before emailing, explaining that work had been busy and they…ghosted me after I told them it was okay; plus a ton of generic autoresponses.
All that is to say, I wasn’t having much luck.
So, I took some advice that a friend of a friend named Mike gave me: go out and find local filmmaking groups. And that’s how I ended up finding the DC Filmmakers. They host happy hour socials every month, and I put on a brave face and went. I met some people, got some contact info, added a few people on Instagram, and things were good. The following month, they held a production meeting to discuss shooting one-minute short films, where hopefuls could pitch ideas and gather a team to produce and shoot them. So, once again, brave face on, I stood in front of a few dozen people and pitched what would become my first short: Fake ID.
I met some great people, learned a ton about the process of producing and getting a project off the ground, and shot the short one Saturday morning. I’m working on a “What I learned”-style post that I’ll share later, outlining what I learned and how it influenced my next project, plus what I learned from that project—an endless cycle of learning. It was fun, it was oddly stressful, but it was exhilarating in a way I wasn’t expecting. Watching two talented actors ignore the five people standing around them to deliver absurd lines about an older man using a fake ID to buy beer was illuminating for me. It made me appreciate all the work people put into filmmaking in a way that only holding an oddly heavy boom mic can—oh yeah, that was my other role on this short.
Sweaty armpits and all.
While all that was happening, I was still plugging away with writing and rewriting scripts. I did a major rewrite of my MFA project’s feature—Things That Remain—and left a lot on the cutting room floor for that script. Fewer characters, locations, and, most importantly, pages, by the time I was done, and I was much happier with the result. So, I sent that off into the world of screenwriting contests, and now I’m playing the waiting game, hoping for the best, but not expecting to win the lottery anytime soon.
Which led me to deciding to work on my own project yet again. This time, I wanted to direct my own five-minute short. So, I got to adapting one of my short stories, An Unexpected Visitor, into a screenplay. I headed back to Backstage.com and Facebook to recruit, and I found a small cast and crew, including my director of photography from Fake ID. I held kickoff calls, cast rehearsals, crew meetings, made spreadsheets, created shot lists, watched every video on YouTube about filmmaking, and read through most of The Filmmaker’s Handbook by Steven Ascher.
Big recommend on that book, by the way. If you have any interest in filmmaking or just want a great paperweight, you could do a lot worse. It details literally everything about filmmaking, from the “Huh, maybe I’ll write a screenplay” phase to “What camera settings should I use?” to “It’s done. Now what?” It’s like a college textbook but with pictures from movies. What’s not to love?
Fast forward to early June, and we’re shooting An Unexpected Visitor over the course of two days (which is what all the photos above are from, btw). Once again, I learned a ton—even more than I did with Fake ID—and I appreciated all the work people put into making this form of art even more. From Cat’s scriptnotes that let me help Sofia and Miguel, our editor and sound editor, organize footage, to Joseph’s BTS filming and lighting assistance, to Ryan’s amazing cinematography, to Sean’s hard work capturing sound (and capturing unwanted sound when people forgot their mics were on…), to Rebecca and Diana acting their hearts out and bringing my script to life before my eyes, it was all an exhaustingly amazing experience. I’m not ashamed to admit I got a little misty-eyed watching it all unfold before me and when I sat down to review the footage. Something about take number six of our oner really got the filmmaker in me emotional.
Good lord, I’m almost to page four in this Word document, and I haven’t even written about my return trip to photography with Jonni. I’ll let my Instagram do the talking for that, I suppose. But I’ll sum it up by saying that I’m forever grateful to have as patient and wonderful a wife as Jonni, who is willing to let me buy a camera (and get one of her own), travel before sunrise to take photos, drive 45 minutes into town when I got poison ivy on our 10th wedding anniversary in Tenessee, and encourage me to pursue my creative dreams when the current state of our world seems to actively dissuade anyone and everyone from thinking beyond hardships, real or otherwise, that feel neverending.
What does that run-on sentence (two in one blog post?! I know, right?) have to do with photography? I guess it’s my way of saying that I’m glad I’ve been able to rekindle an old hobby and do so with my best friend. And sometimes, that’s all there is to it.
That and the pretty pictures.
And that’s a wrap.
Suleyman Films 
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