Just a quick update on the show. We’ve been focusing on last minute tweaks, and the all important sound work and color correction. It’s amazing what adding some warmth to a shot does, let alone balancing the sound levels. For me, color always seems to be the most neglected step of the process, kind of an after thought. After spending months on story, acting, and putting the jumble of pieces together, it doesn’t seem like it makes a world of difference, in comparison.

However, once it’s in there, it looks like it always belonged. It’s only when you take the color back out do you notice what a change it did to the shot. It’s the difference between night and day. And, for a comedy especially, the warm bright colors help to establish the tone and style.

We’ve also been adding colorful graphics to the show. Which is pretty much leading us to the last step of actually releasing the episodes…

Stay tuned!

I realize that while I’ve been blogging away on other topics, I’ve been neglecting talking about Mayfarers. Part of that is simply because it’s not done yet. But we’re getting close. Really, really close.

In the meantime, please Friend us. Subscribe to us. Link.  The more we have before we launch the better.

I’ll have more launch info soon.

Thanks so much!

I’m not procrastinating, I’m simply looking for inspiration. How many times have we writers told ourselves that? We say we need to “get in the groove.” And most of the times we’re kidding ourselves. Most of the time we just need to sit and write, even if we are not inspired. True, the right circumstance, the right location. That all helps for inspiration. For calming the brain to write and work.

While we can’t always be like Hemingway and write in a Parisian cafe, looking at to the rain soaked streets of the Latin Quarter, it is important to find the space that we find inspiration from. And if you can’t do that, then do something different. How many times have simply moving to a different spot helped your writing?

“I’ve found over the years that any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental energy. So if I’m in this room and then I go into the other room, it helps me. If I go outside to the street, it’s a huge help. If I go up to take a shower it’s a big help. So I sometimes take extras showers. I’ll go down here (in the living room) and at an impasse and what will help me is to go upstairs and take a shower. It breaks up everything and relaxes me.” - Woody Allen

What tricks or strategies or superstitions do you do to help with your creative endeavors?

I’ve never been interested in documentary film-making. I enjoy watching them, certainly. And there are many docs out there that are better than narrative features. But it never interested me as a creative endeavor.

I would listen to doc filmmaker friends tell their experiences and I thought I would never want to do anything like that. I couldn’t imagine walking to the set, with no clue if you’re going to get any good material that day. Let alone the editing process where there is no clear direction.

A few weeks ago I saw something that made me “get it.” We were shooting a corporate gig, interviewing “testimonials” and in the interview process found so many random, fun quotes. Each person we interviewed was in essence, a “character.” It was fun seeing these magic moments come to life. I turned to my friend, who is a doc filmmaker and said, “I get it.”

In that moment I get the allure. I get the thrill of going out and discovering new people, new stories, new worlds, of using reality to paint a a picture on film, rather than trying to create reality out of nothing. He even said it was easier, because it’s “already real.”

It doesn’t change my love for narrative, for the “ah-ha” moment of getting story ideas, having actors become characters, or the thrill of turning fiction into film. I don’t want to make a documentary anytime soon.

But now, finally, I get the appeal.

King Ludwig II. I visited his castle in Bavaria recently. Picture this: He had a wild idea - to build a number of castles, surrounding his kingdom, fairytale castles at that, in a time (1800’s) when castles we going out of fashion. In addition, he did this all in tribute to Wagner’s operas. Each castle would be designed in one way or another with Wagner in mind. One of them even went so far as to put a Grotto where the operas could be performed for the King.

Everyone believed he was mad.

In many ways it is no different from a producer. Spending an insane amount of money trying to create fiction out of reality, and in some cases succeeding. The only difference here is that Ludwig was killed under mysterious circumstances, while your average producer is usually just killed at the box office.

So was he really mad, this “Mad King Ludwig?” Well, he was creative. And ambitious. And that in itself is its own form of madness.

But hey, look what he created!