ReelReview - A new Web-Thingy...

Defining your career goals is the first step toward achieving your career goals.

I realized a few months back that I wasn't going to be happy as just a writer, if I wasn't acting too.

View from a Brooklyn film studio! I <3 NY!

When I first moved to NYC, I was afraid to say it out loud, because I thought it would sound a little too ridiculous.  After all, I'd just spent the previous two years completing a BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment so that I could sit happily behind the scenes pounding out pages for other actors to bring to life.

But the closer I got to that reality, the more I realized that everything I ever endeavored to do in the film industry stemmed from my desire to be an actress.  And when I turned my back on that part of myself, I lost all passion and drive for all the other parts of filmmaking that I thought I loved.  So I started to streamline my vision for me.  Here in the city, I'm an actress who also writes.  Sure - I get roped into other things from time to time, but I'm now much clearer on how I define myself and what I do.  Ironically, it's gotten me much further much faster than the tail chasing I did down in Florida, where I tried to be everything for everyone except myself.

As much as I've wanted to be part of a web-series since I got here (and even before,) I drew a hard line in the sand for myself saying that I didn't want to go it alone.  I didn't want to be a one-stop shop - a Robert Rodriguez - a WalMart Super Store of film production.  I would do things as part of a team or I just wouldn't do them. 

I'm certainly not throwing shade at anyone ambitious enough to be a one-man-band with a camera.  I respect those people immensely.  I just know it's more fun for me to be with the band than a solo artist.

So my heart disintegrated when one of my creative partners bailed on me half-way through developing a new project.  I didn't want to give up, but I wasn't going to turn myself into a martyr over it either.  Although I believed my partner would return, or I'd find a new partner who shares my passion for that project, I wasn't sure where to go next. 

In the meantime, I took a look at another friend's sketches.  They were good.  We started talking about how easy it would be to film one.  And then we weren't just talking anymore - we were actually work-shopping the script.  Then we shot a few test runs.  Then we just freakin' did it!

Why all this prelude for a silly little YouTube comedy sketch that's less than three minutes long?  Because it's more than just a silly comedy sketch.  It's a step on the road to fulfillment that started months ago when I started to get real with myself and define what I wanted.  This was another person's (Kathrine Scott's) vision.  And she trusted me as an actress to be a part of it. And I'm honored.  And she let me workshop the script with her.  And it was fun! And everything is sooooo much easier when it's fun...

That said - Enjoy!

Graduation!!!

Over the last two years, I've been on this crazed, hectic journey to keep up with my regular life all while earning a BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment at Full Sail University.  It's a very new program and one of only three BFA degrees in the country that focuses on writing for entertainment.

Yesterday at 8:30am, I graduated with four classmates who comprise the first ever on-campus section of the class. (Two online classes graduated before us - whatever...)  As the recipient of the Advanced Achiever Award, I was selected to give the graduation speech for my class.

The opening kind of terrified a few of the faculty members - but over all, it went pretty well...

Wow!  I’d like to thank the Academy, my manager and all my home-girls still shaking what their mammas gave them at the Skyway lounge…  Oops!

*Diablo Cody’s Oscar speech from Juno?  What am I doing with that?

 

Oscar on the horizon? You never know! And I've never been above a little 'foreshadowing!'
*Not REALLY the opening to Diablo Cody's Oscar speech!

  

 

…But in case any of you are concerned – don’t worry.  I could never be the ‘next Diablo Cody’ because I could never make a living in adult Entertainment for one very important reason – as my mother, classmates and ALL my teachers can now attest, I have absolutely no idea how to behave like an adult…

Case in point - Right now someone off stage is checking her notes and saying – uh oh… this is NOT the speech Hillary J. Walker submitted Sunday afternoon.

And she is right.

This isn’t the speech.  I wrote a speech - a solid speech. It was kind of cute in the beginning, gave some shout outs to my classmates, and took an inspirational turn into the home stretch where I thanked everyone responsible for my success.  Ta –Da!

But I realized after I turned it in, that I didn’t want to ‘deliver a speech,’ because I’ve spent the last two years of my life at this school learning to be a storyteller.  So the only fair thing for me to do is to tell you a story.

It’s about a deeply flawed protagonist who came here 10 years ago and really really wanted to make movies on the big screen. But after going on the tour, and even reserving a seat in the film production AS program, she just couldn’t figure out how to make it work. And she knew being a set PA wasn’t REALLY her dream.

So she enlisted in the Army National Guard and became a broadcast journalist. Also – not really her dream.

Then one Christmas, just two weeks after her stupid ex-husband drove away in a glistening yellow pick up truck, her ‘not quite dream’ turned into an actual nightmare when she found out she had cancer in her left big toe.

It’s amazing what a big pain in the butt toe-cancer can be.  In fact it almost killed our hero, but she decided she wanted to stick around – not to stick it to her idiot ex (who totally deserved it), or to even find new love and live happily ever after. She fought to live because there were so many stories living inside her head that she still wanted to tell.  There were so many words she’d never write and worlds she’d never create if she just gave up over one freakishly tenacious toe tumor…

In case any of you are wondering, this isn’t some script I’ve been working on for class.  This is my story.

And eventually, as John Cleese so elegantly said in Monty Python’s Holy Grail – "I got bettah…"

But I didn’t know how to get great – Until two years ago when I came back to tour Full Sail with an old friend who was chasing a new dream of her own. And I found out about the shiny new Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA.

That Sunday afternoon, I saw Garry Jones standing right here on this stage daring me to follow my dream – The very dream that kept me alive during the darkest point in my life.

And that moment I knew that someday I wanted to stand on this stage and dare others to follow their dreams too.

I’m not great yet.  But I made it to this stage.  And thanks to family members who’ve shown me more support than I deserve – thanks to teachers who boldly went where no curriculum has ever gone before – thanks to Program Director Noelani Cornell who has discovered that teaching writers entails more ‘cat-herding’ than a Siegfried and Roy show – and of course, thanks to Garry Jones, who dares each one of us to become the stars he believes we all can be – thanks to each of those people – I know how to get ‘great.’

Allison, Brittney, Micah and yes – even especially Garrett, you know how to get there too.  And I promise to help you each remember that, if you promise to remind me from time to time.

Thank you all for being here today to celebrate with me and the rest of Full Sail’s first ever Campus class to graduate from the Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA program.

Congratulations to all my fellow December 2013 grads! Guys - we totally got this!

Dirty Words...

Revision and Editing.

They used to be vulgar words that violated all I held holy.

In high school I considered myself a One-Draft-Wonder.  And compared to most of my classmates, I was.

Yeah – this sounds cocky, but honestly, it all comes down to process.  Some of us just use different methods of getting from A to B.  If I know a cross-town route that has fewer traffic lights, I’ll take it – even if it’s not quite as direct as your route.  I’ll probably get to my destination in the same amount of time as you.  I had to drive a little further, but I didn’t have to stop as many times along the way.

Can you say, "YUCK?" For me - the fewer of these, the better!

In writing, it’s the same.  I’m a ‘revise as I go’ kind of girl.  I’m also an ‘over-writer.’  When it’s time for me to clean up a first draft, it doesn’t typically require a massive overhaul.  It’s about punching up an image, cleaning up superfluous language and making sure I have the right its, theirs and twos. 

My road from ‘envisioning’ to complete ‘first draft’ is one in which I’m constantly smoothing transitions, rereading what I’ve written and solving problems as I go instead of glossing over them.

I realize not everyone has the patience to write this way.  However, it was the process I developed at a very early age, and it’s served me well. (Except for my 9^th grade English class, which I almost failed because our teacher graded us on ‘process’.)

So the other night, when my BFA Revisions and Editing teacher innocently asked if any of us had experienced writing an initial draft that lived up to our original intent, I raised my hand.  And today, after a couple of hours combing through work trying to find a scene that could use ‘considerable revision,’ I’m writing a blog instead of doing my homework.  Are there things that I could improve upon?  Of course!  But are they fully dysfunctional dead-end scenes with no purpose or clear outcome in dire need of painstaking revision?  Not really.

They are bits and pieces that could be decluttered, trimmed or polished. Atoms within cells. Branches within forests. Planet within galaxies – you get the picture.

I understand the value of the exercise.  I just hope she understands the amount of work it took to get it so close to right the first time…