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The Weirdest Thing I’ve Ever Written + Script Swag!

Sep 10

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Of all the many things I’ve written (novel and graphic novel manuscripts, short stories, feature screenplays, TV pilots, corporate sustainability and investor reports, newspaper and magazine features, etc.), I’ve never written a short film script. So I decided to remedy that during a down week this summer, and it came out … weird.

Possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever written. So weird I honestly considered banishing it to the backwaters of my ‘Old Writing’ folder, never to be seen again. Just read this madness:

A serial killer seeks a cure for loneliness when he develops a special relationship with the severed hand of one of his victims, only to discover it points him in the direction of true love.

Yes, that’s a logline for TAKE MY HAND, the rare horror comedy romance musical short film. Alas, the discomfort of weird is often hiding the fact that weird is our creative self at its most original. So…I submitted the script to a couple of film festivals. The first results back?

  • Semifinalist — Creative Screenwriting Shoot Your Short Screenplay Competition 2024
  • Semifinalist — Filmmatic Short Screenplay Awards Season 9

Hey, nothing like the good feels of others embracing your weird. Given the nice early reception, I submitted TAKE MY HAND to a few other competitions, and we’ll see where it goes from there. It features a small cast in one location, and I could honestly see teaming up with filmmaker to produce this one myself and send it on to film festivals.

Contest season never stops, and here are a few other accolades that have come my way this year:

  • Semifinalist — DAN OVERLAND (comedy feature), Richmond International Film Festival Screenplay Competition 2024
  • Quarterfinalist — DAN OVERLAND, Portland Screenplay Awards
  • Quarterfinalist — AEVUM (sci-fi drama TV pilot), Emerging Screenwriters Drama Screenplay Competition 2024
  • Quarterfinalist — AEVUM, Filmmatic – Inroads Fellowship Season 7
  • Quarterfinalist — AEVUM, Filmmatic Drama Screenplay Awards Season 9

Swag and Pitch Season

I’m a writer, so I spend a lot of time writing. And I edit. And I submit to contests. And I spend time worrying how to get my projects published or made. On that last point, I decided I’m going to get off my couch and do something about it this fall, and I’ll be pitching my paranormal horror feature screenplay THE TUNNELS at the Richmond International Film Festival in September and Austin Film Festival in October.

To get up on a stage and pitch producers, filmmakers and other industry folks, you gotta look good. So I’m going to look good in Jay Hodgkins screenplay swag. Behold: New threads for film festival season!

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An Infinity Canvas pitch video + deep thoughts on AI

Jun 28

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I made a pitch video for my science fiction action-adventure INFINITY CANVAS (which I’ve adapted as a graphic novel manuscript and feature-length screenplay. It’s pretty cool. Watch it.

And now on to a lengthy philosophical debate about artificial intelligence and creatives. Fitting, since the antagonist in INFINITY CANVAS is quite literally about people trying to survive an AI-powered techno-dystopia.

I made my pitch video with three AI tools:

  • Video: Luma AI. I uploaded images from my artist partner’s sample pages for the INFINITY CANVAS graphic novel and added simple text prompts to guide the generative video.
  • Music: Soundraw. I chose a few filters to get a track with the right vibe, then did some push-button editing to customize.
  • Video editing: Canva. This is a more conventional digital editing platform, but I used some of its embedded AI tools to edit the video and sound.

So, in a world of OpenAI’s SORA and Luma, we’ve all seen better AI-created content than my pitch video. If you look closely, you’ll see weird glitchy stuff in my video where the AI went sideways.

But it’s wild that I — a guy who is 100% a writer and not at all a visual artist — could create this for FREE (Luma, Soundraw and Canva have paid tiers, but I didn’t need them) in like three hours of actual work.

And therein lies the inseparable promise and catastrophe of AI for creatives. I am a “startup” creator, trying to make my name as a writer. Everything I do is on my own time and/or budget, and the opportunity cost is not doing paid freelance work.

So of course AI tools that could help my work stand out to producers, studios, literary manager and literary agent types, etc., are attractive to me.

But for the same reasons (time and money), AI is attractive to studios and producers. Which means fewer jobs for creatives like me. People argue about this. But it’s just true. If AI can generate the video and the music and also do an OK job writing and editing, the creatives are fucked. Even though it’s our historical work the AI is using.

So, to sum it up, I’m sure a lot of creatives (even very successful ones) are feeling like motes of dust being blown around by forces much greater than them. Do you fight the wind or just let it take you? Or, to use a different metaphor, choose the Daniel Day-Lewis route in THERE WILL BE BLOOD: I put my straw in your AI milkshake and drink it up before the opportunity is gone.

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