A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.
- John A. Shedd

2011 was the year I decided that a camera in a bag was a dead camera. Our photographic tools (DSLRs, point-and-shoots, iPhones) are designed to be used. That’s where they’re built for.

I’m also fortunate/cursed to live in interesting times, as protests descend upon Washington. I know the city well and can get just about anywhere quickly by walking or biking.

So, I decided that I would use my Canon T2i and iPhone 4 to document political protests, art events, food and just interesting things I saw in the city.

Protests

One of my favorite photos of the year was from an OccupyDC protest:

While I took a lot of other pictures of this Key Bridge march, the Amaro filter in Instagram gave this picture a very warm 1970s-style. Ironically, it was freezing that day and the sun had just emerged for a couple minutes late in the day.

This “hippie protester” was part of the OccupyDC movement. Most groups come to Washington, march around, and leave. These people stayed. They turned McPherson Square into a squalid encampment and have disrupted the lives of the 99% (the people they claim to represent) by continually blocking traffic during rush hour.

The turning point for me came a month later, during their barn raising in McPherson Square. It was a small, silly event:

If you added up all the protesters, police, media and tourists, there couldn’t be more than a couple hundred people involved. But CNN covered it as if it was some sort of mass insurrection. A stand-off with police is always good TV.

Another way the media got things wrong was a laughable article on the McPherson Square camp as a model of new urbanism. The piece is filled with so many factual mistakes and academic-speak that I thought it was a parody. The thesis that the Occupy movement has “activated” the park can be demolished by actually visiting the camp, which is nothing but muddy tents and masked anarchists.

OccupyDC, can’t you come up with something more modern than marching in the streets like 1930s strikers? As an example of effective and innovative political action, check out DC Flag Day, where residents demonstrated their love of the city.

This woman is rocking the red heels as she advocates for DC statehood.

Art

Protesters could learn a lot from arts advocates in this city. I’m fortunate to be friends with the amazing Philippa Hughes, arts promoter extraordinaire. She’s reinvented the local arts scene with the Pink Line Project (who I write for occasionally). Philippa doesn’t do staid art gallery openings. She always has a different take on these events, designed to attract people who aren’t normally interested in the arts

She’s seen here at Audio Warhol, which is a perfect example of her work, making art fun and accessible to ordinary people. Watching strings perform an avant-garde piece in the National Gallery of Art was one of the most beautiful things I experienced all year.

Dancers and actors are an alien species to me, which is perhaps why I find them so fascinating. Getting up on stage and performing? That would be my nightmare.

But some can do it, even in the hundred-degree heat of Dance Day DC. In addition to capturing Redskins cheerleaders and the very loud Mary Murphy, I got this photo which I love:

Black and white works really well in dance. And how did the girl on the left get up so high?

Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They’re human beings!
Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

I love that quote from The Producers. My favorite part of the year is the DC Shorts Film Festival. And one of the coolest things about DC Shorts is the short screenplay competition, where the winner receives $2000 to turn their script into a short film.

Out of more than a hundred submissions, we chose five finalists who performed their scripts with actors in a a live screenplay reading. One of the writers couldn’t make it, so I filled in, casting and directing his script.

Here’s the annotated script of Desdemona, the script that we performed. I read the descriptions while actors played the different characters in the story.

While I admire actors, dancers and other creative types, I draw the line at performance artists. I always thought that they were crazy and my suspicions were confirmed by my encounter with Agnes Bolt. You can read the story of an art experiment gone wrong. Or just look at her eyes in this picture:

Weirdly, the bubble that Bolt lived in is now part of OccupyDC, which is appropriate because they’re both acts of meaningless theater.

Bikes

I must mention my obsession with bikes. One of the things that I love about DC is you don’t need a car. I bike everywhere so of course I took pictures of Bike to Work Day, as well as bikes in the snow, pretty girls on bikes, electric bikes and even a bike trail video. But it was this picture that generated the most controversy:

I thought it was funny – a park ranger in a big hat riding a bike. Turns out it’s Bill Line, spokesperson for the National Park Service and opponent of bike sharing on the National Mall. A minor kerfuffle resulted, as local cycling advocates noted the irony as well as Line’s unsafe biking practices. Lesson learned – even your most trivial photos may turn out to be important.

Food

Why is taking pictures of food so much fun? It’s because you’re capturing the memory of a good experience, like the Pink Blast cocktail:

It’s a custom drink for Philippa Hughes – how cool is that?

Peruvian chicken, an afternoon cupcake, a Shake Shack burger, amazing tacos and this delicious chicken curry all fell to my iPhone.

My only regret is not taking pictures of everything I ate in 2011.

Coffee was a recurring theme, however, which why I was glad to go to a coffee tasting at Yola, featuring Jon from DistrictBean.

He can answer anything you’ve ever wanted to know about the black brew.

iPhoneography

My photographic year was also influenced tremendously by the iwishyouwerehere show by Keith Lane at the Hillyer Gallery. Seeing iPhone photos hanging on the wall of an art gallery got me thinking about the photographic possibilities of this ubiquitous electronic device. His show and the earlier InstantDC show demonstrated that you could be an artist with an iPhone – that’s a very liberating thought.

This led to me taking a lot more photos with my iPhone and, just a few months later, winning first place in the Fotoweek Mobile Phone Image Contest.

That’s what’s great about art – it expands your vision in new and creative directions.

Moving Forward

Finally, I present this picture:

It had been rainy, cold and dark for three straight days. It was the worst time of year, when the days are short and night arrives at 5 PM.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I went out for drinks and then wandered the streets. The rain became a light drizzle and I captured this scene.

This represents a lot of what I’m interested in photographically – black and white, an iPhone pic, a city scene, a little lonely and mysterious.

It also demonstrates what a comfort art can be. On a dark, miserable night I was able to create an image that I really enjoyed. I forgot all about the three days of rain as I got this picture. That’s why it means so much to me.

In 2012, where will my camera take me? More food shots, certainly. I’d also like to do some portraits, as well as continuing the document the arts scene that I find so fascinating. I’m also interested in biking culture in DC.

At the start of 2011, I didn’t know I’d be taking so many pictures of protests. It’s hard to predict what the new year will bring. But my camera will be out of the bag and ready to go.

Can you write a simple ten-page film script? Enter the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition and you could win $2000 and see your vision on the big screen.

And I’ll help – here are my tips on how to win the competition. I’ve been a judge for the competition for several years now.

You’ve got all winter to put your story on the page. The early deadline for the competition is March 31.

Actors face off in a reading of Mirror Image.

A live screenplay reading offers the writer a chance to hear how their work sounds read aloud. It’s a great way to get feedback on your story. You can learn a lot from an audience – did they laugh at that joke? – as well as discovering whether your cleverly crafted dialogue sounds witty or clunky.

Every year, the DC Shorts Screenwriting Competition performs a live reading of short scripts. We read five short screenplays – the finalists from our competition –  before an audience who votes for the winner. It’s a theater-in-the-round setting, with actors sitting around a table and the audience surrounding them. You’re encouraged to just listen to the words, like a radio play, and imagine the story.

I’ve been a judge for the competition (selecting the finalists) and have directed a couple of the scripts in the past. Here’s how it works:

Casting – Finding the right performers for a screenplay reading is different than casting for a movie or a play. You don’t need a bombastic Shakespearian nor a twinkly-eyed movie star. What an actor looks like isn’t important for a screenplay reading. Instead, you want an actor who can communicate emotion solely with their voice. Casting is the most important decision you will make when directing a reading.

In the DC Shorts Screenwriting Competition, we held an open casting call for actors. Our finalist writers listened to 90-second monologues by the assembled performers, trying to figure out if they would make good fits for the parts in their scripts.

I was filling in for Matthew Ogosi, the writer of the Desdemona, a romantic comedy set in high school. I cast Carrie Daniels, Patricia Mizen, Alexis Graves, Bill Blumenauer and Jonathan Lee Taylor. Why them? I was guided by Matthew’s thumbnail descriptions of the characters in his script. Casting is subjective but the actors I selected all had the light touch necessary for comedy. And, as it turns out, they had excellent chemistry together.

Marked-up copy of Desdemona

Directing - As Kelley Baker once told me, if the director is shouting then he’s failed. That’s certainly not me. I viewed my role as to get out of the way of the actors. It’s up to them to make the words on the page seem like real human emotion. We had two hours of rehearsals. We read the script (it was only a dozen pages), discussed it, and I answered any questions the actors had about how lines should be said, pronunciations, references made in the script. We then put our chairs together in a circle like we would in the reading, and read the script aloud over and over again as the actors grew comfortable with the material.

In a screenplay, there’s a lot of description as you paint the scene for the reader. That can be hard to follow when read aloud, so I cut out as much of that description as possible, to keep the focus on the story. I wanted to hear the actors, not me (I was the narrator for the piece).

Staging – Honestly, I didn’t think much about where we would sit around the table until Carrie brought it up. We decided that she, as Desdemona, would sit at the corner of the table with her love interest, Jonathan, and her best friend in the script, Alexis. Her hot rival Patricia faced her across the table. I was between them, as narrator, while Bill the villain sat across from me.

In an interesting bit of staging, the winner of the competition, Mirror Image, had the two actors sitting across from each other, representing a man and his reflection (see photo above).

Performance – Don’t look up! Maybe actors are different but it’s hard not to be nervous when you’re surrounded by a hundred people listening to your every word. In between my bits of narration, I glanced up from the page – wow, that’s a lot of people - and nearly lost my place in the script.

Our reading of Desdemona turned out really well. Everyone laughed and applauded at the end, which was gratifying. We didn’t win but the actors and the audience all had a good time. It’s a cute script that would make an excellent short film.

I wrote a short article on the opening of ScriptDC, a weekend conference devoted to screenwriting in Washington. Allison Abner, a writer/producer with The West Wing, will give a talk tomorrow night to aspiring television writers. Should be interesting – I had the chance to visit the set of this iconic TV show during its final season and even sit in on the writers’ room a few years ago.

Allison’s talk is just the start of ScriptDC, which features some great speakers, including Gordy Hoffman, Marilyn Horowitz, Laurie Scheer and, of course, Jon Gann from DC Shorts. The conference is an inexpensive way to learn about television and movie writing without having to go to LA.

I’ll be there most of the weekend, most notably at the Saturday night screenwriting competition, where I will be filling in for one of the writers. Five short screenplays will square off in a live reading, with the winner getting $2000 to turn their script into a film.

The DC Shorts Film Festival wraps up this Sunday. Now in its eight year, this celebration of cinema brought 145 films from 23 countries to Washington. As the Blogger-in-Chief for DC Shorts, I’ve seen a lot of short films. Not all, but enough to have my favorites. Here they are:

Little Horses
At the Q&A after the screening, director Levi Abrino said that he was looking to make a movie with the emotional resonance and complexity of a Chekhov short story. He succeeded – this tale of a divorced dad’s struggle to hold on to his son is moving, sad, funny and yet affirming as well. It demonstrates what independent film does so well, by portraying the drama of people who could be your neighbors. Little Horses won a DC Shorts Audience Favorite Award and a Filmmakers’ Favorite Award.

The Man in 813
This is one of several local films in the festival. We also did an interview with director Arlin Godwin on the DC Shorts blog. The Man in 813 is scarcely longer than its trailer, but still manages to tell a funny, creepy story that anyone who has ever lived in an apartment building can relate to – what are my neighbors up to? What’s significant is that the film was shot by one person in his apartment using a Canon T2i, a digital still camera that also shoots video. This short basically cost nothing and yet was screened with films that costs thousands of dollars, a potent demonstration of the advances in technology allow anyone to be a filmmaker.

Interview Date
The script for Interview Date won the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition last year. I read this script as a judge for the contest, then watched it being performed before a live audience. As the winner of the festival, Interview Date received $2000 from DC Shorts to turn their script into a movie. I was delighted when director Mike Lemcke and comedian Grant Lyon returned this year with a finished film. It’s been a fascinating journey to watch, this transition of words on a page to moving images on a screen. This connection between a screenplay competition and a film festival makes DC Shorts unique, turning writers into filmmakers.

The Scarecrow Girl
For me, this was the most beautiful film of the festival. While shooting in rural Brazil, director Cássio Pereira dos Santos took hours of sky shots, because they were so amazingly blue. These shots frame a film about a young girl in rural Brazil who wants to go to school but can’t. It’s a true story, taken from stories told by Cássio’s grandmother.

These four films are a great demonstration of the power of independent film to tell stories that you’re not going to get out of Hollywood. Rather than relying on formulas and catch-phrases, indie film at its best communicates visions that are both original and unique.

Staged reading of Interview Date, with writer/producer Grant Lyon on right.

Last year, I was a judge for the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition. I had the chance to see a staged reading of the screenplay Interview Date, one of six finalists that we selected. The audience voted Interview Date as the overall winner of the competition so the writers of this clever comedy received $2000 to turn their story into a short film

And now, one year later, Interview Date will be playing on the big screen at DC Shorts. Can’t wait to see it – stories like this are what make DC Shorts such a special experience.

The DC Shorts Film Festival has returned! It’s my favorite time of year, when filmmakers from around the world come to Washington to share their cinematic visions.

This year, the festival features 145 films from 23 nations. The short films are organized into different screenings and shown at E Street Cinema, the Artisphere, the Atlas Performing Arts Center and the US Navy Memorial. The festival runs from September 8-18.

I’ve been a part of the festival for more than five years, as a judge, screenplay competition manager, photographer, volunteer wrangler and, this year, as a blogger-in-chief. What I like most about DC Shorts is that it’s a festival for filmmakers. They’re front and center, with the opportunity to receive recognition for their work. Lots of small touches make them feel welcome, like vouchers for food and a special filmmakers-only party.

This is not Hollywood. The films in the festival come from people doing it themselves. They’re not trying to win the attention of some fickle producer; instead, they go out and film the story they want to tell. This year’s DC Shorts features a slew of local films, including a film that cost only $500 to make. This is not atypical – you can do a lot with a camera and volunteer labor.

As someone who has written screenplays and self-published a novel, I identify with this DIY philosophy. It’s what makes our age so wonderful, that advances in technology allow anyone to communicate their vision with the world.

Everyone writes. In this digital age, we’re creating more words than ever. Whether it’s an email to a client, a persuasive blog post or the Great American E-Book, the ability to explain yourself in writing is the critical skill of the Internet era.

Despite this profusion of words, people often encounter writer’s block when attempting large or significant projects. They can fire off tweets and snarky Facebook comments all day long but their fingers stall when it comes to crafting something that really matters.

After I wrote my novel Murder in Ocean Hall, the question I got most was, “How?”

How did I muster up the patience to devote so much time to a single idea? How did I keep at it? How did I overcome the inertia of writer’s block to get started?

Writer’s block happens to everyone. But it can be overcome.

Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

I’ve met a lot of creative folks with ideas for books or blogs or screenplays. Yet, many of them fail to ever put pen to paper. Why? Because the idea is perfect in their head; the reality of the thing is never going to match their vision. They do nothing, preferring to keep their fantasies pristine rather than sullying them with reality. But isn’t it better to have something that actually exists, no matter how flawed, to an ephemeral vision? To write means to express your ideas, imperfectly.

Steven Pressfield calls this reluctance to get started, “Resistance” in his book on creativity and courage, Do the Work.

outline for this blog post

Outline

Would you go out into the wilderness without a map? Yet, many people will just dive into a project without a clue where they’re going. Once the rush of enthusiasm ends, they get stuck. It’s better to take some time and create an outline. An outline can be really simple – a list of chapter titles, points you want to make, things you want to mention. It’s something that you can turn to when you run out of steam.

No Editing

Don’t edit as you go. That can be done later. The purpose of the first draft is merely to get your ideas down on paper. It’s about collecting all the disparate thoughts you have and recording them, without judgement. You can clean them up and make them coherent when you edit. The first draft is more about collection than craft.

Reward Yourself

You can’t boss your mind around. It’s really adept at avoiding commands. In fact, telling yourself that you “must” do this or that virtually guarantees procrastination.

A better strategy is to reward yourself when accomplishing important milestones. When writing Murder in Ocean Hall, I gave myself a small present (a bottle of gin, a Wii game) for every 10,000 words I wrote. We all respond better to carrots instead of sticks.

Find a Quiet Place

One of the worst developments of the 20th century is the open office. Noisy and filled with distractions, these low-walled spaces are terrible for any type of work that requires concentration. Find some place quiet to write, like your favorite coffee shop, the neighborhood library or an empty conference room. And turn off the Internet.

Simple Tools Work Best

I like Pages by Apple. It’s a simple word processor that gets out of the way. If you must use Microsoft Word, turn off all of its autosaving, autocorrecting gimmickry – “features” that are designed to interrupt your concentration.

First Things First

I am not a morning person. Despite this, I do most of my writing first thing in the AM. Why? Zenhabits had the excellent advice to do your most important work at the beginning of the day, lest it get lost in the press of other demands.

writer’s block vs Writer’s Block

I was on a panel on with Claudia Myers, a professor who teaches screenwriting at American University. She made a distinction between writer’s block and Writer’s Block. The lower-case variety can be cured by the methods listed above; it’s largely a matter of getting started and keeping the momentum going.

However, Writer’s Block (upper-case variety) indicates a structural problem – perhaps there’s something wrong with the way that your communicating your idea. For her screenwriting students, she recommends explaining their script out loud to a friend. Sometimes by talking things out, you can identify what’s wrong with your story. If your audience seems puzzled or confused, then you’ve gone astray.

So, what do you do with an idea that’s not working out? You have three choices:

1. Press on, because it’s your idea, dammit.
2. Figure out what’s not working and fix it.
3. Quit and start something new.

Not sure which option to take? See the excellent The Dip by Seth Godin, a book about knowing when to quit.

When writing, nothing is ever really wasted. At the very least, working on a failed project is good practice. And that effort may come in handy later on. For example, I tried writing a novel about gentrification in DC. I got about fifty pages into it and got hopelessly stuck. A few years later, the characters and the story I worked on were the basis for my award-winning screenplay, Mount Pleasant.

Summary

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Writing is making a dream come true. It’s about taking your idea and communicating it successfully. Writer’s block is an inevitable part of the process, a difficulty you encounter along the way. But it can be overcome.

I had a chance to speak at a DC Film Salon panel on screenwriting. It was a really interesting session, with lots of great questions from the audience. This is the advice I provided.

I won the Film DC Screenwriting Competition in 2006 for my feature-length screenplay, Mount Pleasant. Since then, people have asked me about screenwriting, what software I use, if I took classes, etc… How’d I do it?

It’s simple, really. Just two steps:

1. Read
   
2. Write

1. Read

My screenwriting journey began when I friend of mine gave me a couple of scripts to read. We had been in a writers’ workshop together, discussing short stories in a basement conference room. She shared with me the classic of the genre which, believe it or not, is the script for Rocky. Yo! It is the archetypal hero’s journey.

Luckily these days, plenty of scripts are online at sites such as Simply Scripts. Find the scripts from your favorite films and read them. I read a bunch of them – On the Waterfront, Taxi Driver, Swingers, Raising Arizona, Fisher King.

Don’t read too many books about screenwriting. There are scores of books about how to market your script, how to beat the Hollywood reader, how to “save the cat”, to make your script as perfectly structured as a the Empire State Building. Avoid these prescriptive tomes, for they will lead to paralysis, as you try to follow someone else’s vision rather than your own.

There are couple of basic books to read on screenwriting that I can recommend: Elements of Screenwriting Style and Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting.

2. Write

Your job is to write. It’s a lonely calling, requiring you to spend hours in front of a computer. Find the method that works for you, whether it’s waking up early to craft that screenplay or escaping to some coffeeshop to do some work.

It’s astonishing to me the number of people who have ideas for screenplays but don’t actually write them. We could examine the reasons for that (see the excellent but oddly out of print On Writer’s Block for an examination of the psychological perils of creativity). Yes, your script will never be as good as the perfect vision in your head but isn’t it better to get it done?

Mount Pleasant began for me as a novel. I knew the story from my time in DC (racial conflict in a gentrifying neighborhood). I did further research, created descriptions of my characters and wrote a detailed outline. After fifty pages of writing, however, I ran out of steam.

A couple of years later, I met a couple of filmmakers who were looking for someone to edit their script. It was a romantic comedy set in DC. Prior to this, I had always been a bit puzzled by the screenplay format. However, after reading their script, which featured people and situations so familiar to me, it was like a lightbulb went on. I can do this, I thought.

I got to work in turning my novel into a script. I got to around page 30 and then got stuck again.

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference was coming up. There was a workshop on screenwriting and you only had to supply the first ten pages of your script for review. Perfect! That was about all I had.

During the workshop, the instructor brought up my screenplay first. She said, “Joe obviously knows a lot about screenwriting.” Which made me laugh but also convinced me that I better finish this script.

It was an on and off process that took about a year but I did eventually complete Mount Pleasant.

Random Bits of Advice

Software – Final Draft is a bloated beast created by a company that could give Microsoft a run for their money in terms of pure evil. Instead, check out Celtx or, if you’re a Mac user, the elegant Montage.

Classes – Is it worth taking a class on screenwriting? Yes. I like the Writers Center in Bethesda. Also, check out WIFV, which has a screenwriters’ group. Is it worth taking dozens of classes, year after year, and hardly writing anything? No. Your job is to write.

Community – The DC area is packed with filmmakers. You can learn a lot from watching how the sausage gets made. Take part in the madness that is the 48 Hour Film Project. Volunteer with DC Shorts to judge film or screenplay submissions. Come to the DC Film Salon and meet other creative artists.

Contests – Winning a contest confers credibility. But it doesn’t guarantee anything. I won the Film DC Competition and had an eye-opening visit to the set of the West Wing. It lead to my greater involvement with the local film community. But my script was never turned into a movie. My advice is to enter contests selectively. Enter the really big ones that will make a difference (Austin, Nicholls) and target smaller competitions that are well-suited for your script (like the Kairos Prize for religious stories or DC Shorts if you’re a local writer).

Conferences – Like with classes, you could spend your life going to writing conferences without ever actually writing anything. ScriptDC is a great local conference that is inexpensive and well-worth attending. I also enjoyed the Austin Film Festival, but I love everything in that city.

In conclusion, if you can tell a story with a beginning, middle and end, then you can write a screenplay. It’s a matter of learning the form and then actually doing it. Which is the hardest part of all.

Recently, I had the opportunity to be a judge for the American University VISIONS Short Screenplay Competition.

As an AU grad myself, I was glad to help out. VISIONS is an annual competition that seeks the best in documentary, fiction, digital/new media production, screenwriting and photography from AU students and recent alumni. The theme for this year was, “Media That Matters.”

Joining me in the judging the short screenplay portion of VISIONS were Jon Gann (DC Shorts) and Sheri Ratick Stroud (Women in Film and Video). We read more than 30 scripts, ranging in length from ten to 40 pages. Every script was reviewed by all three of us. We judged the scripts on the following criteria:

• Originality of Premise
• Visual Originality
• Story
• Dramatic Structure
• Characterization
• Dialogue
• Style/Format
• The screenplay fits within the theme “Making Media Matter”

We selected Liberty Road by Jason Fraley as the winner. Set at a crab shack on the Eastern Shore, it’s a timely story about people on the margins of life. With its depiction of the economic struggles of ordinary folks, it fit in well with the “media that matters” theme. I liked the strong characterization in the script – these were real people – as well as the dialogue, which was punchy and original.

I was glad to give back to my alma mater, as well as help out the “AU mafia” of filmmakers, several of whom have been finalists in DC Shorts. It makes this International Relations major happy to see AU students doing something fun and creative.