Inneresting 33
issue 33
January 1, 2021
“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown. The mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here.”
— The Amazing Criswell
With the arrival of a new year, and bidding good riddance to 2020, January 1st is as good a time as any for taking stock.
What do you want to write next? Who do you want to be? Whether your plans are aiming high or cautiously keeping it simple, here are a few links to help shake the last of 2020 out of your headspace and focus in on what’s next.
Storytelling in the COVID age doesn’t just mean writing in masks and Zoom calls
With film, television, and digital media production coming back into the picture, writers, producers, and artists need to adapt to not just the health and safety needs of the moment, but the story needs, as well.
While not everyone may want to go the semi-guerilla filmmaker route of Songbird, the film released earlier this month on demand, there are lessons from the story of how they crafted a script around the demands of shooting during a pandemic.
Aiming to shoot something in 2021? It’s worth it to take some time, even at the outlining stage, to familiarize yourself with current safety protocols for film shoots.
Do you really need those six big crowd scenes? These restrictions might even become useful creative constraints.
If any filmmakers out there translate the safety guidelines for COVID into a story-focused set of rules like the Dogme 95 “Vow of Chastity”, let us know!
Making Resolutions Without Setting Goals
It’s tempting to set big, audacious goals for the new year, but there are millions of 2020 planners that were discarded in March that may want to have a word with you.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear suggests trying to focus less on the end result and more on changing your day-to-day behavior:
If you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results? I think you would.
For an example of how he suggests grafting new, desirable habits onto your existing habits, check out this primer on Habit Stacking.
Or maybe the relentless pursuit of a better you seems… so tiring right now.
Why not try doing nothing? Jenny Odell turned this keynote talk into her book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell makes a case for a principled focus on the here and now of your immediate, local environment, and avoiding getting too caught up in the “Everything, All The Time” world of social media and news cycle.
For a middle path, consider the words of Brother Pháp Dung and his talk about “Ingagement”: be informed and involved in social and political change, but not in a way that sacrifices your ability to be present to take care of yourself and those closest to you.
Highland How-To: Adding Quotes & Dedications
Say you want to add a quote or other statement after the title page of your script, but don’t want it to alter the rest of the page numbers. How can you make that work in Highland 2?
Here’s how:
Create your title page.
On the next page, format your quote, note, etc. as you want it to appear.
Force a Page Break with
===
At the top of the first page of your script, enter these two tags, each on their own line:
{{PAGENUMBER: 1}}
{{HEADER: %none}}
At the top of page 2 of your script, put the tag
{{HEADER: %p.}}
to start numbering the script pages from there.
For more tips on how to get the most out of Highland 2, check out our Knowledge Base!
Other Cool Things
The first line of this essay from Carrie Courogen about Nora Ephron and New York may be enough to get you to click that link: “Nora Ephron invented fall.”
The short film Powers of Ten starts on an image of a picnic, but every ten seconds, the camera moves ten times further away. A good way to feel small and start the year with a healthy sense of perspective.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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Come across something you think other readers will find inneresting? Reach out to Chris on Twitter @ccsont or email us at ask@johnaugust.com.
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