Me being me and all, I might have missed it entirely, but for a couple of notifications from my LinkedIn app that friends were congratulating me on my work anniversary.
That was the reminder that this week marks seven years that I’ve been working with Nikki and Chadd at PrimaDonna Productions, Inc.
Seven years… Continue reading
Tonight I’ll be at Monarch Academy, along with Nikki, our colleagues there, and their students and families, to celebrate the end of another school year.
Being part of the Monarch family – and it really is a family, by choice and emotion if not by genetics – has been an experience I’m still trying to put into words. As a writer and as a human being, you always live with a certain hope that what you do, what you say, can make a positive difference. But you don’t always get to see it happen right in front of you.
It’s a gift, a blessing, that in the last year, I have.
As I write this, I’ve just e-mailed Chadd and Nikki with the first draft of our play. Continue reading
Friday, 8:43pm…
I’m at my desk, notes in hand, going over my shot list, making sure I have everything I need – or at least a way to find it – for tomorrow.
Continue reading
I know it’s been a bit of a while since I last wrote. I hadn’t meant to be away from the blog for so long.
But the silver lining of that long delay is that I have a lot more to write about… Continue reading
#goodjobtexasjr began this summer with one show. But it’s since grown into something much more.
Week by week, as we moved forward with the show, we’d see new segments added, and new team members would join us to help expand the show beyond its original studio space, and beyond its original mission statement. By the last show of #rocktober, #youngandfresh wasn’t simply a music show, but a showcase for the community.
It wasn’t long before it would become a showcase for the network…
When Nikki signed on to host a show on #goodjobtexas, I had a feeling there would be much more to #youngandfresh once we really got into it. One of Nikki’s gifts is the ability to look past the present moment of a project and see its future potential.
And there’s a LOT of potential in this one. Continue reading
Since the end of PDP‘s last regular acting classes, we’ve had a lot of people asking when Nikki would be teaching again. And while it may be a cliché to say their interest was overwhelming, we really were overwhelmed to find out how much those classes really meant to people. So we looked for the kind of “limited-engagement events” I’d mentioned in that post.
The first of those events came in the summer, as Nikki led a summer acting camp at The Rose Theatre Company. And parents and kids alike responded really well to Movie Magic. So when the opportunity for another workshop… well, arose, it made great sense to return to the theater. Continue reading
Were I to put a lesson to the production of Magnolia, it would have to be that patience, persistence, and preparation ultimately pay off. (Were I to put a lesson to my blogging, it might be that I rely a little too heavily on alliteration – but that’s a post for another day…)
Over six weeks, we’d had to make occasional adjustments for locations, actor availability, and especially the weather. We’d faced drought one week, deluge the next. But Nikki and Chadd had brought a great team together, so we were able to keep moving forward, knowing that as long as we kept doing our work, it would still come together.
And in our last weekend of principal photography, it really did come together. Continue reading
It pretty effectively goes without saying that filmmaking, especially independent filmmaking, is a process of adjustments. The unexpected will happen; there’s no way around that. And while I’m not entirely convinced it’s possible to expect the unexpected – if you could, it wouldn’t really be unexpected, would it? – it’s still possible to prepare for it, to be ready to make the necessary adjustments to get the shot.
Over the last few days of production, Magnolia has been an object lesson in how to be ready. Continue reading
Lee Hurtado, Writer 