I've been a fiction writer for as long as I can remember. I think it started when my babysitter/aunt would take me on day trips to the park and then have me write about the experience when I returned. Those short descriptions morphed into full on 25 page manuscripts by the time I was 11, and then 100+ pages when I was 17. There was only one consistent problem; I could never finish anything I started. I had all these great ideas that would include starting and end points, but it was the middle that befuddled me. It was the middle that would haunt me.
That's probably why writing "LINKED" made me hyperventilate.
In its first stages LINKED was just a short film thought up by my friend Pablo and I. Once we filmed it though, it took on a life of its own. People thought it was a webseries and wanted to see more. So, I did what I've always done; started writing with no clear path as to where I was headed. I think I had a short moment where I lived the parallel life of a "Lost" writer. Further turbulence came with the loss of Pablo who had to move away from the project in order to focus on his new engagement and other pieces of his life. Without a director or camera, the project seemed finished without having really started. I was about to forget the whole thing when Jona (Jaime's long time friend and talented horror director) showed interest.
It wasn't until late summer, maybe even September, that I was able to meet with him and chat in person. I told him my beginning, my end, and the flurries of middledom that had no clear landing spots. And he helped. He helped me rule out the things that didn't make sense, that didn't fit the plot, and pull together the things that did. By the end of the meeting I had a storyboard going and all I needed to do was write the dialogue.
I transferred all my bootleg Word doc/scripts to a real script writing program and prepared my own crash course on how to write scripts properly. Over the course of 2 days I pumped out the remaining 8 episodes equalling about 80-85 pages, with little corrections and "What if Gabe said this" moments from Jaime which were very helpful. My friend Henry jumped in to edit tweaks in the first few episodes and entirely edit the last few. It was all coming together to look like an actual series. So finally, we're ready to complete filming. The only problem? It was November and we'd started this project last May. Weather was entirely different and against us in every way. But we filmed.
We cranked out back to back filming days in the first weekend, and another full weekend which just passed. We have one more day to go until I can say the filming portion is finally over. Maybe if I weren't involved as a writer, director, producer and actress it wouldn't be so draining. But, as I look over my amazing crew, I see that it's not just me that is ready to gladly crawl under a rock and sleep for at least a week. We've been busting our asses and from the footage I've seen thus far, it's been well worth it. My production team has been amazing and my actors have fully grown into their characters (to the point where we all keep confusing our real names for character names when talking to and about each other.) It's been quite the experience.
Now that it's almost reached it's point of conclusion, I've also realized it's made me aware of what I'm capable of. Will I pursue a career in any of the several hats I wore during this production? Not so sure, I do like my steady paycheck. But what I do know, is that I can if I wanted to. And maybe that's all I needed to learn....
Mucho thanks to Jona, Henry and Jerry (my clutch AD!) for all the time and effort you've dedicated.
Special thanks to Pablo, for his early involvement and pushing me to get this idea out of my head.
Mike, Jose, Cortes, Paul, Ariobin, Bryan, Amanda, my mom, Claudette, Danny and Frankie for helping bring my characters to life and sticking around on set to support when you could have gone home.
To everyone who keeps watching, commenting and supporting the series.
And a very incredible amount of thanks to Jaime. Besides the fact that you are the star of this show, you have stood by me and believed in me since day one and have fully committed yourself no matter how tired you got. Like Lynn says... "I owe you." ;)
Below are some videos. To my email subscribers, you'll have to go to my actual blog to see the vids (http://www.laurenjrivera.com/). The first was taken after I crashed on day 3 of filming and apparently woke everyone up from my snoring. Very funny, Jona. Very funny.
And if you haven't caught up with LINKED yet, here are Episodes 1 & 2... Enjoy!
2 comments:
Glad I was involved in it and can't wait to see the whole thing eventually screened somewhere with everyone who made it possible. Especially the creative force behind the project: Miss Lauren Rivera. Love ya and am proud of ya!
Glad to help and glad to be a part of this project. Here's to making future projects together!
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