2011: Our Odyssey

2011 is the year. It's the year we reach for the stars and storm forth into each day, dedicated to making everything happen. Yes, we say this every year, and yes, we lose steam after two weeks. But not this time. We have this thing now, we have this community; we are filmmakers, and writers, and bloggers, and actors and camera operators and a million other things and we are getting good at supporting each other with our creative pursuits. Now is the year that we turn it on full-time. We're gonna keep working and trying and creating till 3am and we'll stand in freezing fields at six in the morning figuring out how to get the boom mic to work when all the batteries are dead. This is the year for it. 

Sometimes we're gonna lose confidence and sometimes we're going to feel worthless and sometimes we're going to feel convinced that we're talentless. But things are different now. We've found people online and slowly but surely we find people in our communities who get it. They like talent and they like coloring things in and they like cameras and they like how words magically gel together and they like YOU and they like ME. We need to stand up for each other and stand up for our art and stand up for all the things we've achieved, are achieving, and will be achieving. We need to be confident and we need to be aware that when failures happen, they teach us more than our successes will and they make us come back stronger the next time. But from now on, next time is right now. And it's right now every time. It's not next year and it's not in five year's time. 

Now is the time to write those movies. Now is the time to get cast in a dream role. Now is the time to get your favorite movie star to be in your movie. Now is the time to take that class, to read that book, to email that producer who scares you a little, to blog like crazy about all your favorite movies. Now is the time. It's now. And we're all here for you and we need you to be there for us. Because we want to make movies that express who we are and what we're feeling. We want to do what we love, and meet people we love, and feel the love of audiences and friends and people who GET IT. GET US. You are those people, we are those people. We are here because we know a movie isn't just a movie. That feeling you get when Andy Dufresne crawls through a sewer of shit isn't just a movie. That feeling that rises in your heart when getting the train to a meeting while the theme to Forrest Gump plays in your headphones isn't just a movie. That feeling you get when a cinema audience laughs at your one-liner isn't just a movie. It's more than that. What we do, how we feel, and how we make others feel and how they make us feel -- that's the stuff that makes life worth living. That's what gets us up in the morning. And this year; we're focusing on that. 

Are you signing the pledge? You don't need to sign with a pen or hand me any money.. you just need to keep showing up, and keep supporting people, and keep sneaking food into cinemas, and keep loving what you love and keep standing up for it. Are you with me?

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