Seems the heads on my camera need to be cleaned, so no video this week. I’ll be back with some out takes next week, hopefully.

So, I recently had the pleasure of participating in a contest known as the 48 hour film project. If you’re in the Louisville area, come and see our film at Village 8 Theaters – Thursday at 9:15 pm -get tix here! Get them early! they sell out before showtime usually. Come and vote for our film as Audience Favorite “Loba” (which means “She-wolf” in spanish).

If you’re unfamiliar with this source of both stress, elation and a weird time dilation due to lack of sleep, check it out here. I had no idea that something like this would end up leaving me a little changed.

On Friday night, we sent a couple of our team members down to draw our “have tos”. These are the things that HAVE to be in the film to prove that we did it in 48 hours.

We drew the genre “Film de Femme”, which means it has to have strong female leads. We drew the character “Bert or Bertha George, the gardener” , the prop “A 3 ring binder”, and the line of dialogue, “Just tell them Joe sent you”. All of these things had to be incorporated in the 4-7 minute film we were about to create. From the time we drew these items (6:30 pm), we had 48 hours to write, develop, cast, shoot, edit and turn in.

Sadly, we were 5 minutes late.

However, we produced  a great short film!

I wrote the tale based on the native american legend about how we all have two wolves within us.  To make it very short: One is all about giving, joy, harmony, the collective, while the other is angry, hateful, selfish.  I played the role of an insane killer who thinks she is a wolf and shares this legend with the psychologist who has come to the asylum to meet with her.

Everything was so rushed, worked smoothly, but I had little time to really think about what I had written, where it had come from, and how it felt to play this role. I was just going with the flow..and lots of mocha.

Saturday night came along and we all settled in to watch the raw footage… I was frozen solid as I watched it. It really opened something up within me, and my performance terrified me.  I have to say that is was really hard to watch.  Seeing myself look so insane left me feeling…well, disturbed.

Why? Because in the past, I have been the lone wolf that wants to be a part of the pack.   Unaware, I’ve found some pretty ugly thought patterns running amuk within me, and this just said “you can’t hide from that anymore”.

There’s one line in particular that really stands out. “She wants to run with the pack…she does..but there’s just too much pain. She can’t trust them. .. So, you see… she hates what she longs to become.”

And another producer/actor in the film, Matthew Blake Wallace, and I really found the timing for this film spoton: we’d both already come to points in our lives where we didn’t want to be lone wolves and are learning to be part of a pack.

So many people say “I hate the rich”… I don’t need a  life partner…This or that company is awful…so on and so forth…yet inwardly dream of having money, love, and all the stuff they perceive as good…yet harbor ill feelings towards those that have those things.  So, if we harbor those feelings – how can we ever expect to acheive those things?

(if you’re getting this by email, don’t forget to come and see the picture posted here)