2012 Reminders To Myself

A New Year. An opportunity for a new start? I don’t really need a new start, just a plan to keep the awesomeness going and keep myself centered on what matters.

Film projects for 2012

• Ingénue – feature sci-fi
• Directions – short, comedy
• Here’s Moses! – webseries, spin-off from Love Dance, director
• Untitled All Female Creative Project – webseries, director
• “The Women of Starbase Indy” – documentary, director

Writing Projects for 2012

• Mythic waters – Young Adult fantasy novel
• Ingenue Diary – Non-Fiction
• I Blame Lucas – movie memoir

Things to promote in the New Year

• Karmic Courage Collection DVD
• Leah Not Leia DVD
• Love Dance – screenings and DVD
• Home Security/The Collective – screenings, reviews and DVD
• Ingenue
• Mythic Waters

In the New Year I need to remember to say something in all my work. Make sure it has a message. I can have a message that isn’t in tent pole movies. I can make something more daring, more enlightening, more thought-provoking like the movies I used to watch as a kid. I have to give myself permission to make a film that people will want to watch over and over again because they get something new out of it each time.

I have to remember that people are gonna hate. They will want to strike me down because they feel competition, jealously, or see in me something they hate in themselves. I can’t please everyone. I just do the best I can and let the chips fall where they may. Stay away from flame wars, they only hurt everyone.

I do have to continue to remove myself from those who are unhealthy for the person I want to be. I’m a sponge at times and absorb other people’s energy. I need to remember to stay away from the idiots who don’t know what they are doing or have nothing to say. Remove myself from people who are negative and push other people down to make themselves feel bigger. Keep away from people who are trying to harm me or my family.  Stay away from those who spend more time bad mouthing others than working on creating their own work.

I need to remember that it’s not about the money. How much I have, how much a friend’s film makes, about how high the budget is. I’ve made more with less. I’ve had better creative outlets knowing there is little to no money to throw at it. Money doesn’t equal better. Money also doesn’t buy class. Working on another person’s film just for the money doesn’t mean I will be treated well or even respected for the work I put into the project.

It’s not about how many films I work on in a given year anymore. I want to focus on the quality not the quantity. 2011 was the first year that Karmic Courage had in production or screening 4 projects.  The goal has always been 2-3 projects in a year. I still think that is a good number.

I do want to garner a wider fan base. I do want to reach out of Indiana. I think travel will help. I don’t want to leave Indiana just have a wider perspective of writing and filmmaking.

I want to get more independent in my filmmaking and not have to worry if the right equipment will be able to get on set. I’d like to be able to just come up with an idea on a Friday and shoot it that weekend.

My Superhero Family

I have to remember that I only have a few years left of being at home. I only have a few years left for this filmmaking dream. I need to show my girls that is was worth it, that I did some great stuff in that time and that they helped me and motivated me to do my best with the opportunity I had. I need to be able to show them that it’s worth fighting and working hard for your dream even if you need to walk away from it at some point.

I’d like to blog more. Not sure about what exactly but I’d like to write more. Even if they are little film enlightenment pieces, I think it would be nice.

I’d like to do the best I can. I know I’ll anger people in the New Year but I also make some new amazing friends. I’ll have some adventures and setbacks. I’ll see my children grow and my parents get older. I’ll learn more about my complex husband and fall in love a little deeper. It will be a good year, like all the rest. I’m moving forward with the path I’ve worked hard for and that is the best I can. No longer looking back but striving to do better.

National Novel Writing Month

Prepare for the next 30 days of literary abandon!

I’ve signed up for National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I don’t know if I’ll get to 50,000 words but I’m sure going to try. I’m going to do something different this year, I’m going to share the process with all my lovely readers. The experiment I’m going to do is to pick one song each day and write a short story based on or inspired by the song. I’m going to post the story and the link to the song here on the blog. *WARNING* I’m not that great of a first draft writer and a lot of NaNoWriMo is just to get words on the page and not to edit. So there will be rough sentences, spelling errors etc. But hey, that’s all of the fun.

I will have polls and questions to have you help with what songs or artists I should use. I’ll also have at the end of all this polls on which stories are readers favorites, which stories should be turned into movies, novellas or even a novel.

I don’t know what’s going to happen during these 30 days and that’s the excitement of it all. Stay tuned to the blog for stories and progress. Also if you are doing NaNoWriMo “buddy me” my user name is “katechaplin” the temp title of my work is “The Music in Me” although I also like “Rebel Diamonds” (it’s from a Killers Song) and “ituned out: a musical journey”

 

FREE screenwriting workshop – Lafayette

I’ll be the guest speaker at the August 18th, Indiana Filmmakers Network – Lafayette chapter meeting, devoted to Script & Screenwriting.

I’ll be doing a raffle to win a FREE professional and detailed critique on the first 10 pages of your script. (a $50 value). The winner doesn’t have to have their script with them to win.

**about IFN**
Meetings are always free and open to the public!
Meetings are held every 3rd Thursday of each month, at Goodrich Eastside 9 Theater, 7pm-9pm or until everyone chooses to leave.

DIRECTIONS: 300 Farabee Drive North, Lafayette, IN – (765) 449-7469
http://maps.google.com/map​s?hl=en&ie=UTF8&q=eastside​+9&fb=1&gl=us&hq=eastside+​9&hnear=West+Lafayette%2C+​IN&cid=0%2C0%2C13932794725​604369052&ei=RvE9TKLvA4Gpn​gfg2pHeDg&ved=0CB4QnwIwAQ&​ll=40.419181%2C-86.836367&​spn=0.032248%2C0.059609&z=​15

For more information, please check us out at –
http://www.indianafilmmake​rs.org/

Soul-Stealing LA

A requested story…

It started with a dream and ended with a war.

Even at a young age I was disgustingly practical, but I was also a dreamer. I would escape into music and movies and create stories or live in stories I had read or watched. I wanted to be an actress at age 10, but my dad told me I couldn’t because, “all actresses are prostitutes.” So I studied my idols, first Charlie Chaplin, then Steven Spielberg, then Penny Marshall, until finally Quentin Tarantino burst onto the scene.

Not only did I know the adage, “they don’t make movies in [insert name of your small town], they make them in Hollywood,” but once I saw Tarantino do it, and do it cheep, and reap the rewards, I knew I could make my mark. I moved to California five months after I turned 18.

LA is a beautiful city. It is sunny nearly every day. There are so many things to go and do. You can be at the beach and then 30 minutes later being skiing. Your house can be ravaged by flames and mudslides in the same year.

LA is a cruel mistress. She’s beautiful and alluring and you want to love her but she hates you so much. She doesn’t have time for you. She doesn’t return your phone calls. She wants you to leave but you feel compelled to stay. You want her to love you as much as you love her, you want to be accepted and appreciated in her eyes, but she’s always too busy being with other people.

Everyone in LA lives and breathes the entertainment industry.  Even an unassuming diner on the corner has 8×10 headshots of actors who have come in. Talk to a tow-truck driver and soon you’ll be talking about a celebrity they either saw or worked for.

Where ever you go you’ll run into actors, producers, writers and maybe a celebrity or two. They all want to know the “important” people and shun off the wanna-bees. It’s a survival instinct. For each Hollywood job there are thousands that can take 1 person’s place – and they know it.

I lived in LA from 1996-2001; four years after the Rodney King Riots, two years after the Northridge earthquake. I was there during the OJ trail, the Enron power shortages, the clearing of prostitutes and homeless from Hollywood Blvd, and the giant financial recession that hit most of California.

I was the store manager at Suncoast Motion Pictures, a sell-through video store in Thousand Oaks. My celebrity regulars were Kelsey Grammer and Jada Pinket-Smith.  My store was one of the first 25 stores to sell DVD and perhaps the last to sell Laser Disc’s. I sold the movies people liked and returned the movies people didn’t buy. I read all the trades, knew the release dates of every movie, and watched every entertainment show. I lived and breathed my little circle of the entertainment business. I knew maybe too much about the industry to be able to distance myself to write for it.

Before I left for LA, I wrote nearly every day. Scripts, poetry, creative non-fiction, movie reviews and journaling. My stories were dark comedies and character driven. Something Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez would make. The longer I lived in LA, the more stories started to suffer.  I wrote some of the worst 90210-like feature scripts. My lost my voice. I was reflecting back the fake sunshine and palm trees that you’d see on a Universal backlot.  I wasn’t even writing stuff that I would watch. I started wondering just what I was doing in LA anymore, it was clear that I wasn’t going to be the next Tarantino. I would break down regularly that I was a failure in a city that was paved with broken dreams.

The greatest thing about LA was my friends. We were all misfits trying to make it somehow. My good friends were Brandon Kleyla who was in Children of the Corn IV and Gods and Monsters. Ryan Shervington was in Jackie Brown and was a stand in double for Michael Jackson’s “You Rock My World” music video with Marlon Brando and Chris Tucker. We’d go to movies together, play 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon and crash movie premieres.  I didn’t love them for the film credits they had, I loved them because we were there for each other in a city that didn’t care about anyone who wasn’t in Variety.

We were all kings on our corner of shit. We claimed our little chunk and stuck together. We supported each other. Bitched about the same things and of course dug the same movies.

I say that LA stole my soul. For 5 years I didn’t have a grip on who I was. I was an observer in the most expensive cities to just be a spectator. I couldn’t do what I came to the city to do – make movies and sell scripts. I lost my ability to write a decent story. I didn’t care enough to be nice to fake people just to make the connections to boost a career. I was jaded. I hated the fakeness. The selfish-ness. I was becoming a person I didn’t like. I needed a way out.

When two planes crashed into buildings in New York City, my husband was compelled to join the Army. Three weeks later we were shipped off to Savannah, GA.  It took an Army to take me away from Los Angeles.

In Savannah, the stories came back, my writing voice got more developed.

And I finally found the person I had always hoped I would be.

Screenwriting Workshop Videos

For those of you who have attended my workshops at film festivals, librarys, schools and events — a HUGE thank you!

Now all that advice and support has been put into a video series on screenwriting that you can access anytime and for free.

Check out these great episodes!

Episode 1: The Business of Screenwriting 

Episode 2: Loglines! 

Episode 3: Script Formatting 

Episode 4: Defining Your Hero

Working on the Screenwriting Web Series

This week I’ve been diving into scripting the screenwriting web series. Veronica and I have 13 parts to script out before filming. Good news is I got the first 3 written this week. I’m modeling the web series after the in-person class we gave at the Karmic Courage Workshops in September-November 2010. We are taking the 14 hours of the class into 10 minute bits to put on the web. The hope with the project is to help, educate, motivate and entertain writers and filmmakers about screenwriting. We’re doing this not to fill our egos, or feel self-important but rather to share our courage in aiding filmmakers and writers to complete their best work. As more work is produced in the community, it benefits us all.

Personally I will miss the person-to-person interaction. I get a lot of feedback verbally and non-verbally when I give a workshop. I can immediately tell if my examples are helpful or not, if I need to go into more detail if I have lost faces. If I need to slow down if I get a multitude of questions on a topic. Luckily Veronica and I are always online so we can answer questions on our blogs or in the comment section of the videos we post. Having the classes online will help as many of our issues with students was availability. Many are working on various film projects and it was hard to dedicate 6 or 8 weeks to a class. This way people can click on a video when they have the time and watch it over again if they need a refresher later. I’m excited about the web series, it’s going to be tons of fun to film and I think people will dig the information as much as they do at in-person workshops.

Lastely there has been the question of why me? Why am I giving workshops on screenwriting, what experience do I have? Fair question. As I posted on facebook this week:

[I] Can’t believe I’ve been writing screenplays for 19 years now. 21 short scripts completed, 8 feature scripts completed, countless WIP, and 7 screenplays produced into films. I should be tired but my mind has been thinking about 3 more scripts I want to write this month.

Mythic Waters Update!

For those of you who loved the idea of making Mythic Waters: Shoki’s Bag a movie – I hope to have some great news about the Young Adult book version soon!

The Celebration Diet Now Available!

Just in time for the holiday’s The Celebration Diet has arrived at www.lulu.com

The Celebration Diet by award-winning filmmaker Kate Chaplin this wonderful gift book is filled with hundreds of ideas that easily fit any kind of celebration; birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, weight loss, reaching milestoneS, getting that promotion, A+ report card, or just because it’s Friday!

Celebrating is so important because it is a time to pause from your normal routine and do something different to honor an accomplishment. Our culture goes out to eat much more offer than before. What would be more memorable celebration, a night out at a restaurant or test driving expensive sport cars?

The Celebration Diet will inspire you to finds ways to create meaningful celebrations that add to your spirit instead of your waist line. Over 500 ideas in 148 pages. A great gift!

Ideas like

• Celebrate losing the weight by having your portrait painted.
• Celebrate his birthday by hiring a celebrity impersonator.
• Celebrate your anniversary and surprise her with a room filled entirely with flowers.
• Having a bad day? Crash it out in bumper cars.
• Celebrate Friday by singing along to the radio as loud as your can.
• Celebrate a milestone by having a trophy made of your accomplishment.

Chapters include

• Celebrate the Holidays
• Low on Money Celebrations
• Celebrations for the Young (or young at heart)

Download and paperback print copies are available to the public online via www.lulu.com (Note: copies purchased from Lulu are not personalized.)

Worried about shipping? Kate Chaplin will be at the  Anderson Public Library Friday, December 10th from 11:30am-3:00pm. With 111 East 12th Street, Anderson, IN. Kate Chaplin will be there signing copies of Celebration Diet and also The Belief Test.

Nano Blues

November is National Novel Writing Month (AKA NaNoWriMo). As always, I started with a thunder and was above the recommended word count each day.

Then real life hit. I got tired. I got sidetracked. I lost steam. They call it “Week Two’d.”

I’m still in good shape to “win” and I’m not giving up on my novel. But I’m starting to rethink the whole NaNo thing.

Last Year I took the month of November to write the Young Adult book “Mythic Waters.” Haven’t heard of it? Oh, yeah, that’s because after getting over 35,000 words I abandoned it. In the last year, I have edited maybe the first 4 chapters. It’s a mess. It’s a gobbledygook of words on a page with no through line and subplots that I don’t think tie into the rest of the story. In other words, It’s going to take me months to edit and I know that. I might even be faster if I just started over.

So now this years NaNo project is “I Blame Lucas” a movie memoir. I told myself that I needed to finish the novel in 2010 because of the yet-to-be released short film “Leah Not Leia” that I wrote and co-produced is a perfect tie in. But I wasn’t working on “Lucas” as much as I wanted so it became my NaNo. I was thinking 30 days, write about 30 movies. I had 37 movies left I wanted to cover in the manuscript and I thought this would be a great opportunity for accountability.

But my new chapters are sucking. The pre-Nano chapters were about 1800 words and they had a nice conversational style to them, they weren’t rushed, they explained the movie, they had a wonderful flow. The new chapters are maxing out at 1,000 words. I’m mostly explaining the movie, a little bit about how it effected me and then moving on to the next movie.

The manuscript is losing its personality and its charm.

Because I’m rushing to get 1677 words written per day to met the Nano goal of 50,000 words in November, I’m really losing what the novel ment to me in the first place – heart. I’m not taking the time to really think about the movie, then write a heart-felt chapter. It’s rush-rush-rush onto the next movie and the next chapter.

A couple of my friends have also mentioned the headache of fixing a NaNo manuscript. Sure we can write a novel in 30 days but won’t it take us over a year to fix it? Does that make sense?

Maybe if I was a faster -and stronger – first draft writer, which I’m not, I’d be really great at Nano. With Screenplays my average is 25 days for a feature length script. I though I could do the same thing with a novel.

After all I do like the polishing of a manuscript. I spend more time polishing a piece than writing the first draft. And as countering as that may sound to my bitching, at least I’m polishing words that I liked in the first place. The Nano stuff, It’s a brain-drain of conscienceless and I swear some of it doesn’t even make sense to me, and I’m the one whose mind it came from!

I think I need more than 30 days to write a workable 50,000 word novel. Maybe I’ll get better, but for now, I’ll stick to taking my time, writing the chapters I like, not worring that word count makes a chapter done, taking a few days on a chapter if it needs it, and getting back to writing from the heart and who knows maybe I’ll still hit 50,000 words in November, we’ll see.

National Novel Writing Month

That’s right, I’m crushing for a brusin’ for the second year in a row. I’m signed up for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo).

Last year I had great success with the MYTHIC WATERS novel. I accomplished 36,000 words for a great foundation for a young adult novel. However it’s been slow in the editing. ARG

This year I need to finish my movie memoir I BLAME LUCAS. I have 15,000 words completed and polished so far but there is still a lot to cover. I have outlined, researched…I just need to flippin’ write it. Enter NaNoWriMo. NaNo gives me 30 days with accountablity to finish the novel.

Then from December to my death, I can be editing MYTHIC WATERS and I BLAME LUCAS :p

If you’d like to friend me on NaNo click here