Closing the Distance

Random Notes

Franz Kline, Untitled

It’s not official yet, but we’ve identified the two leads, and talent agreements will go out to them this week. It feels like a sigh of relief to be able to focus on other creative concerns, because locking in casting has been something hanging over my head for a while.

Throughout casting, I kept thinking how cool and strange it is that this is happening right now. And then I kept thinking, wait, I should have done this years ago, because I have so many other projects in my head. How am I going to catch up? That’s all I could think about. That the rate I’m working at, which is a decently rhythmic pace, that I won’t be able to catch up with the other scripts I’ve written in the past, or the new projects I want to produce.

I’ve also been meditating on the distance I’ve had from this project, and what it means to carry something over a long period of time. I wrote Invisible Moves across so many different phases of my life. It’s an interesting emotional state to be in, still working on something you started years ago, and still feeling so strongly about it. I don’t think it’s my most perfect script, but it’s the one I feel the most confident moving forward with, given the time and resources I have. And I think that’s what matters most.

I’ve also been revisiting other projects I wrote in the past, just to see if I feel as strongly about them as I do about this one. And strangely, I do. I have this newfound desire to get even older scripts produced, which feels strange, because I had written a lot of them off. Mainly because one of them requires extensive international travel from a production standpoint, and felt way too unrealistic to make. But I’m trying to tell myself, one thing at a time.

It’s been really cool seeing everyone’s progress in real time. There’s so much forward momentum collectively, and I honestly don’t think I would have gotten this far with this project if I hadn’t been inspired by everyone on Filmstack who are actively working on their films.

Working in tandem with other filmmakers (shout out to Josh and Emily!) has been one of the biggest motivational pushes for me. It’s been expansive in terms of realizing what you can actually pull off, regardless of time or resources. I think it’s psychologically beneficial to have other creatives around you who are all working toward the same goal. It makes everything feel more possible. There’s no pretense, just a shared love of cinema and a genuine desire to see each other finish what we start.

I was speaking with a former colleague earlier, and we were laughing about all of the politics, drama, and friction we used to navigate just to get corporate content produced. It’s something I became immune to over time, because that was the environment. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. What’s being built at Filmstack, and the support everyone is giving each other, feels different. It feels rare. For the first time, the distance between the ideas and the execution doesn’t feel so far.