Saturday, January 14, 2017

New Year

So it's 2017. Just wanted to give a few thoughts on what's happened so far and what I hope/plan to do for the year.

I've been submitting Hand Fart to festivals. It got rejected from Sundance/Slamdance, but I submitted to about 10 more so I'm hopeful to be able to travel if it gets accepted to those festivals. Stay tuned for that. I really think it should be able to do well on the festival circuit.

I recently wrote a TV pilot with my frequent collaborator Travis Ashkenasy and Desmond Chiam (who I've cast in a handful of my projects) and have been submitting it to certain grants and fellowships. It's a little different from what I usually write because it's so high concept and a little bit more of a traditional comedy, but it's looking really good and I'm excited to get my hand in writing. I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do with a pilot script, but I really think it will lead to more in the future.

Speaking of Travis Ashkenasy, he recently moved from Los Angeles back to the bay area. It came as quite a bit of a shock since I felt like I had finally found a collaborator I really enjoyed working with and we were just starting to create some really great stuff, but real life things forced him to move and I'm now in a position where I need to figure out how to keep things going. Granted, the bay area isn't far so we still very much plan to meet in Los Angeles and continue writing and shooting when necessary, but currently he is out of the country for the next three months so I need to figure out what to do with my time until then as well.

So, on that end, one of my goals is to complete another short. I'm thinking in the 10-15 minute range so that I can make something with a bit more of a story and impact. Loose details so far, but I want to make something on the topic of online dating and how it has changed the game of relationships so far. Tone wise, I feel like my wheelhouse has been playing with genre and presenting really serious material and pushing it to where it just ends up being funny. I'd like to experiment with the opposite and present typically comedic material, but take it so far that you actually see some of the tragedy behind it. Hard to think of examples, but I think my friend's short (which recently won the grand jury prize at Sundance) is a bit of an indicator of what I want to go for.

Thunder Road from Jim Cummings on Vimeo.

Other than that, I want to keep up the acting stuff as well. I have high hopes this year. I feel like I have a lot of momentum going into it. I actually booked my first audition of the year on a new show already. It's a one day role, but I felt like it was a good one. I'll write about that in a very near future post.