January is a good time to review the past year as well as lay out what the plans are for the coming year, so let’s start with last year first, shall we?

The year started out really promising.  We had barely finished the “Name the Movie Characters Contest” when I found out about the Dockers contest.  I hadn’t planned on entering a contest, especially since I just got done running one, but the prize of $100,000 was definitely tempting and would have provided some much needed seed money for the project.  Competing in that contest was a lot of fun and a lot of work.  All of you were awesome.  You voted your hearts out.  I could have never made it into the semi-finals without you.  And while I didn’t make it into the finals, I got some valuable experience producing my first video.  It wasn’t a cheap education (I’m still paying off the loan and will be for quite a while.), but it was a great learning experience.

Getting all the footage from the shoot has been quite a challenge this past year.    Those tapes have spent many long months going from one place to another without any results.  I finally found out that I had to have the original camera in order to get the footage digitized.  Without the camera nobody was able to transfer the footage from tape to digital.  The last of the footage (the audition tapes) is almost done, so soon I’ll finally be able to show you the fun behind-the-scenes footage and pictures and discuss the whole experience.

The rest of the year was supposed to be spent focusing on getting the story treatment finished.  Unfortunately, it just sort of fizzled.  Health problems got in the way.  You see, a while back I was diagnosed with a severe sleeping disorder.  At first I didn’t want to face the fact that I had a problem, but it became progressively worse and has really affected my ability to function during the day.  I get very little sleep at night and end up feeling like a walking zombie during the day.  I promise I don’t eat people, but I have been known to walk around in a daze and moan and groan sometimes.  But, seriously, if any of you have ever suffered from sleeplessness, you’ve got an inkling of what I’m dealing with.  Needless to say, it’s been a challenge being able to handle one job, let alone two, so, unfortunately, the film project has suffered and progress has been less than a snails pace.  I can’t tell you how frustrating this has been for me.  But the good news is that recently I started treatment for my condition.  It’s going slow, but I’m hopeful and looking forward to being able to function like a normal human being in the near future.

So now we get to this year.  I’ve started treatment for my sleep issues; I’m looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep and my energy back; and I’m impatient with the progress of this film project.  With that frame of mind, I happened to come across a class taught by a prominent screenwriting teacher that promises to “get your treatment done in ten weeks.”  So I signed up for it.  I thought this would be a good way to kick start this project and finally get the treatment done.  Am I being overly optimistic that I’ll be able to keep up with the class schedule?  Well, we’ll see.  I’m assuming that with time my sleep problems will improve; and it’s not like I’m having to do the homework all by myself.  I’ll be giving notes to my writer and the two of us will be working on the treatment together each week.

Class starts next week.  If everything goes according to plan, we’ll have a completed treatment by the beginning of April.  After that I will probably run the treatment by one or two other script analysts in order to get other opinions.  Once we have it finalized, I’ll be running it by one last person:  my lawyer.  When he clears it I will then be able to finally show it to the cast.  If they like it, I will instruct my screenwriter to begin writing the screenplay.  That will be a six-month project, according to our contract, which means we’ll have a completed screenplay by the end of the year!

During those six months when my writer is busy writing the screenplay, I’ll be starting the business plan, putting together a production team, and preparing to raise funding for the project.  Since this is a transmedia project, I’ll, also, be looking into ways to start marketing the project and grow the audience by means of other related media projects.

If everything goes as planned, this year should be an exciting year with a lot of progress being made toward the goal of getting the Invisible Man cast together.  I hope you’ll be here with me to watch the progress!

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