On May 24th, 2009…my best friend Mike Cooper passed away. It was a shot to be sure, and only days before I was supposed to move to California for a job I was offered. He died one day before his birthday, the 25th. He was such an awesome man of God, and had no shame in showing it. There are few I would consider a really great friend, and Cooper was all aces. See you in Glory Coop, I miss you man… 
Today was an OK day, nothing I would call ground breaking. It was HOT…high 70s, maybe 80 or so. With the computer on, and the monitors I have, it can get up to like 80-90 in my bedroom. I woke up a few hours earlier than I wanted to this morning because of the heat, I was just too sweaty and sticky. I figured I would feel like crap later because this was supposed to be my day to sleep in after a long weekend…but that didn’t work out. So I just got to work on some things but it wasn’t long before I started feeling ill. The last week has been very odd. Since last Tuesday everything I eat isn’t settling well, I’m tired and fatigued, etc. Today was worse though because it combined all that with dizziness and such. I’ve been trying to drink a lot of water, as I’m sure the heat isn’t helping. I had to take a nap, because my eyes were hurting pretty bad. Thankfully I was able to fall asleep for 2 hours. I NEVER take naps because my body normally doesn’t let me. After I got up I worked on some things for a little while longer and a friend invited me to a bonfire so I spent the night over there. It was good times, but I did occasionally feel like I was gonna either fall over or vomit, which is always a good time.
On a good note, I seemed to get a lot of emails today. They were spammy they were important. People I’ve been speaking to about foreign distribution for Standing Firm and such. We’ll see where we land there, it’s a lot to think about and deal with. I have a few different offers per country that I”m looking at, and it’s difficult to figure out which one offers the best options, and which one is likely to sell more because of their status. I’ll get it figured out sooner or later…it just takes time. Lord willing Standing Firm will release (at a minimum) in Australia/New Zealand, and in South Africa around or on the same day as the US/Canada release.
May is coming to a close soon, my 22nd birthday is on the 2nd of June, and I have a lot of work to do. June is going to be an insane month. Lots of things to mail off and work will finally (hopefully) be picking up in regards to the movie, and normal paying jobs. It’s really difficult to know where I”m going to be in the next few years. The biggest challenge for someone like myself is how to make enough money to provide for a family when your not apart of some sort of organization, or protected under some sort of special law, or your in a system that makes sure you get paid, etc. It’s all about you being your own boss, dealing with your own crap, finding your own clients…just a lot more involved. I really hope the proceeds from the film for this year can help me into next and the majority can be kept in the bank. It’ll give me a very good foothold on the future I think, by letting me get ahead by a good amount (compared to my monthly intake/expenses). That’ll be good because next year is a total ? mark.
I look forward to taking more work once this movie is in the can and things get moving in the sales arena. I can take work that’s out of state or on a set for instance (which I had to turn down for Ace Wonder unfortunately). I’ll have more freedom. I’ve had many ask me when I’ll make another film and honestly, I don’t know. The soonest I will is probably 2012. I doubt I’ll always be pumping out another film one after another, because I’m not entirely sure how to go about making another where I currently live. I’ll need to spend some time writing it as well, and really concentrate on what’s important. The goal here with these blogs, twitter accounts, the marketing and web work, and all that jazz is to make a career that can survive outside of making films. What I do is still very much in the filmmaking arena, but I can’t make films for a living right now. I need to finish this one first, and show that I can actually make something that can make a profit, because no investor will touch me if that isn’t the case. I can’t make another film without being able to pay myself for it, because next time around it’ll be a much faster and efficient process, but I’ll also need to give it my full attention, and that can’t be done unless I can be paid to do it. A chunk of the budget has to go to myself. That’s fair I think, lol…given how many jobs I’ll likely do in the future even if I remove some of the on-set jobs…the post ones will probably stay in my court. It saves me THOUSANDS in the long run, because I don’t have to pay myself what I would probably have to pay a hired individual to say…edit my film.
I’m looking forward to the future…
