On the morning of my first ever consultation to discuss my script, I felt there was still so much I needed to get done to prepare. Although I had been taking notes and outlining my responses to the pages of feedback I’d gotten, I was still organizing my thoughts so that they would be as cohesive and thoughtful (or at least sound that way) as they could.
While I still wanted to fine tune my thoughts, the biggest thing left on my to do list was to watch a link that the judge had provided with the expectation that I do so prior to the meeting. With a phone call that was expected to go hours, it wasn’t likely that I could skip it and that we just wouldn’t have gotten to it during our call. I also wanted to make sure I was getting the most out of this consultation, and not watching this would only sabotage my efforts.
As usual with things I try to do, there were complications. This was a 90 minute video, essentially a movie in and of itself, so I needed to set aside the time to watch it. Also, I felt it would be beneficial to organize my thoughts on the video afterward so that I could actually offer something to the conversation when we discussed it, so another half hour to an hour needed to be set aside just for this video.
The time for this wasn’t main problem – I had the whole morning, and this call wasn’t until 2 in the afternoon. The main obstacle was that my internet at the time was spotty at best. It’s still very unreliable, even in the stretches where its working great, there’s this thought in the back of my mind that’s just wanting for the issues to come up again…and they tend to. I’m still experiencing them even as I’m trying to upload this post.
Trusting my internet to hold for a 90 minute video was asking a lot. So not only did I need to set aside the time to watch and analyze the video, I also needed to set aside time, in case I needed it, to troubleshoot any connection issues that arose, to handle them in what I hoped would be short order.
I followed the link to the video, and was surprised that it started up immediately. But, as expected, within the first two minutes, it paused and started to buffer. I closed out of it quickly, and began brainstorming plan Bs to be able to watch the video. I made up my mind that I would give it one more chance, and if it experienced the same issue, I would head to the library and watch it there. Their internet wasn’t great, but anything was better than mine.
The link opened again…and this time, actually played through the entire video without any problems. There was a sense of dread even while it was playing that it would pause again, but the further I went into the video, the more at ease I felt that I was getting what I needed from it, and that I’d be able to share my thoughts during the phone consultation.
The video was excellent: it discussed how the best movies have climaxes where the main character is forced to face their external, internal and philosophical conflicts all at the same time, and that doing so creates the powerful endings movies are remembered for. The video gave examples of this in classics, such as Star Wars and The Graduate. It really gave me a lot to contemplate about improving the ending to Dig Down, and was in line with the character analysis that they had given me as part of the feedback on the notes. What was interesting was how the video said that most scripts don’t have this, which is why so many movies feel lacking at the end of the movie. The message was received – while I felt my script was good, this could be what elevated it to the next level.
Miraculously dodging the internet connectivity issues, I spent the rest of the morning taking notes on the video, reviewing my responses for the questions posed about my script, and finally, taking some time to just relax and get myself in the right frame of mind for this phone call.
There was still some nervousness as time crawled toward 2. This I just chalked up to nervous excitement. There’s always things you think you still could have done, but I felt I’d gotten myself prepared for this consultation.
I was as ready as I was ever going to be.