If I could sigh in text, I would sigh right now.
Well, this has been a massively discouraging day so far. I've hit a major wall on Marlon, and today has yielded quite literally no forward progress at all. They say you shouldn't do social media while you're in the middle of a project, because all the posts will be totally bipolar, but I just can't help myself. I need to talk to someone, and I figure that's what this journal is for.
You know, aside from updating everyone on how swimmingly Marlon is coming along.
I woke up feeling like I was going to obliterate everything (hell, finish the movie myself, with one hand tied behind my back, in an hour, while working out complex math equations in my head).
False. There's not much I can work on alone anymore, not until the rough edit with Stephen is done. Most of what needs to be done now is audio, and I am so mind-bogglingly not qualified to do that it's ridiculous. I thought I could do the score myself, but this fucking score is kicking my ass. I've put in at least four days of absolutely nothing but scoring, and I have one song done so far.
And I don't even like it.
I know I shouldn't post this. This blog should be the last bastion of highly-polished positivity, in an internet aswarm with hate-mongering trolls and mean-spirited jack-offs who haunt the "comments" section of most webpages from the sad recesses of their cold, dark, empty apartments. But I have to. This is filmmaking, I guess, and I want it on the record: making a movie, even a hilariously fucked-up movie you make with your friends, is a balance of good and bad days.
Trust me, the good outweigh the bad at least a dozen to one. But the bad days can really sit you down and beat a few tears out of you. They can crush you down into the smallest, most depressed facet of yourself and leave you sitting in your wife's office chair typing a journal entry to no one in particular, wanting to kick your dog across the room, and feeling like a bag of grumpy shit.
But tomorrow? Tomorrow I'm going to kick Marlon's ass. I think that's how you know your movie's going to be good. If you're working on a piece of shit, and the score just isn't coming together, who fucking cares? An original Hans Zimmer score over a piece of shit is still just as brown. If you're working on garbage and the color correct is a little off, or there are a few continuity errors here and there, well, chalk it up to lesson learned.
But Marlon is good. If I just keep at it, and if the people who've stuck with me for so long keep being as incredible as they are, doing work as good as they're doing, Marlon could be really fucking good. Everyone is kicking so much ass, bringing so much of their A-game...I guess it's frustrating to me that I can't seem to ace it, too.
So. Tonight I'm going to do the thing that cheers me up, inspires me, lights a fire under my ass to get at the motherfucker again. Score? Ha! No problem. I'll write you a fuckin score with a metal garbage can and a microphone. Just not today. Today, I'll go to the gym, be grumpy, and hate myself. Hello, self-loathing. Haven't seen you in a while. Maybe I'll listen to Joy Division or the Smiths.
But that's only today.
Tonight I'm going to crawl into bed and watch Clerks. And tomorrow, everything will be okay.
It's like magic.
This movie is going to be so good.