Go Get Some Reading Material First of all, I strongly recommend that you read “Making a Good Script Great” by Linda Seger. This book should be required reading for anyone who is interested in screenwriting. If I was teaching a screenwriting class, and I was only allowed to have one textbook, it would be this book. That’s how strongly I feel [...]
Everyone Has Two Careers. Their Career, and the Film Industry Ok seriously, who here hasn’t considered making a movie before? Unless you come from a country that doesn’t have the luxury of watching motion pictures, I defy anyone to honestly tell me that they’ve never once felt the urge to make their own movie. If you tell me that you [...]
Welcome to a brand new month. February marks month two for Swollen Thumb Entertainment, and I couldn’t be more excited. In this month, we will continue to explore the concepts behind starting a career in the entertainment or artistic field. However, we will start to branch off, and start discussing various aspects of the Entertainment Industry. The idea here is that [...]
This post is my contribution to a group writing project, Creating Value. The object of this project is to write about how we intend to create a more value driven society as opposed to a profit driven society. This happens to be a topic that I feel very strongly about, and is one the bedrock principles of Swollen Thumb Entertainment. [...]
Get It In Gear, Already! You call yourself an artist, but you don’t actually create anything. So, what are you waiting for? Does your nine-to-five job make you feel like less of an artist? Do you feel like you need permission to do what you want to with your life? Fine, you have my permission to do what you want [...]
Intolerance Is Everywhere! Why can’t we be more open-minded as a society? Everyone walks a different path through life, goes through different trials and tribulations, and we all have different likes, dislikes, needs and wants. So with this in mind, why is it that we let our forms of entertainment become such touchy subjects? “It Seems Like They’ll Let Just [...]
I’d be willing to guess that you probably want more out of your career. After all, it’s human nature to want more than what we have. It’s what has made us the dominant species on this planet. We’re never satisfied. However, for the majority of the readers out there, this feeling is probably justified. You probably have a ton of [...]
A warning to science geeks: I have taken a few liberties with the proper definition of muscle memory, which are induced physiological changes in the brain that attain increased levels of accuracy through repetition. In normal-person-talk, this means when you perform an action enough times, the brain picks up on it, and allows you to perform the action without thinking [...]
Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? Nike was really onto something with their popular slogan “Just Do It”. Very rarely can an entire philosophy, a metaphor for life if you will, be summed up in a marketing slogan for a brand name. “Just Do It” is just that, a philosophy and a metaphor for life. [...]
“For me, the greatest drug of all is creation because… you get the same kick… your brain gives you feedback… When you create, all of a sudden you get a little endorphin buzz” – Robin Williams on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” It’s important for you to ask yourself why you want to create. Everyone who creates has a motivation behind [...]
So you’ve decided to stop letting time pass you by, and to embrace your calling in this world? Since you’ve established your goal, the next step is getting started. But how does one get started? There’s a term that I will use often in my future blog postings, and that term is “The Entry Level”. What I mean when I [...]
