The process...

Looks like I live my life surrounded by screens, right?

You wouldn't be half wrong.

Maybe we divide it into thirds.  A third of my life on airplanes.  A third on-set somewhere shooting something, a third of it in an edit suite somewhere surrounded by screens.

Or quarters...

1/4 airplane + 1/4 on-set + 1/4 edit suite + 1/4 with my wife and kids and our friends and family or in my office getting ready to go do the other 3/4's and you get a pretty accurate picture of what my life as a Producer/Director/Performer is like.

Sorry the above one's so lousy.  I took it on my iSight camera and, since it was taken in a darkened edit suite, it turned out grainy as all-heck.

But you get the idea.

*****

Tuesday.  Up at 4:00am, drive to the airport, fly to Vancouver, scout the neighborhood we'll be moving to for Jan-April 2009 and time the walk to the shopping district for my wife, visit the ocean and the sailboats 'cause I'm me, take the water taxi across the water, eat lunch, walk to the Hotel, settle in, walk to a building in the heart of downtown where we're hoping to put a production and post-production facility, meet the owner, see the space, tell him within ten seconds of being there that we'll take it.  Meet my editor, cut a mock-trailer for 'DEATH'S DOOR'  a new dramatic TV series we're pitching.  Finish by 10:30pm PST (one thirty for me) walk to the Hotel, sleep.

Wednesday.  Get up.  Taxi to the airport.  Ten degrees and sunny.  Arrive Toronto, minus five and snowing.  Sit in the traffic jam to end all traffic jams because it's the first snowstorm of the season turning what's usually a 35 minute drive into a two and a half hour ordeal.  Get home. Kiss my babies, put 'em to bed, have some Thai with Niki, try to work but can't 'cause I'm so fried.  Sleep.

Thursday.  Get up.  Drive downtown to Optix.  Sit down with my colorist/online editor Mark Driver (pictured above), import all the files from Tuesday into the system, order lunch, start working, eat lunch (they bring it to you on nice plates all heated up and out of it's delivery packaging) take a picture for you.

*****

So by the end of today I'll have the entire visual presentation for 'DEATH'S DOOR' done in high-definition and ready to have sound put to it.  "Putting sound to it" will entail spending a session with (more screens and) my composer, first laying down a voiceover track, then mixing it and adding in sound effects to 'thicken' the whole thing up.  Once that's done the soundtrack will be laid back over the final picture giving me what I like to call...

"The Six Million Dollar Pitch".

And it was hilarious the reaction I got from my Executive Producer the first time I laid that title on him--he got all nervous, like 'What do you mean six million dollars?'--and I told him, 'No man, like we show this to them and they give us six million dollars.'

He sighed then said--like any good EP would--'Yeah right and good luck with that'.

But that's the business I'm in.

(and once they give me six million dollars I'll give you the most smokin', awesome, scary, uplifting, redemptive, honest, authentic, supernatural TV series ever--coming Fall 2009 [DV]...)

See, I come up with, construct, then tell stories that, hopefully, move people to action.

(first the execs give me money, then hundreds of collaborators bust their butts for a year or more, then the thing hits TV and, hoping beyond hope here, millions of people like you watch the thing and the truths of it sink down into their hearts and start changing things for them from the inside...)

Same thing when you're preaching.  You construct then tell a story based on an original work and hope that your interpretation is applicable in your audience's life to the point that they up and change something in their actual life.

Same thing when you're building your life.  You come to an 'image' of what you want your life to be and, whether it's just you or you and a partner or you and a family, you 'tell' that story to yourself (at least mentally) and share the reality of that story with those around you hoping that, as you think on it and begin living it, it actually starts coming alive in your actual life.

A friend of mine puts it's this way: "You don't get what you wish for.  You get what you picture."

And I think he's kinda' onto something there.

Which leads me to ask you...

What are you picturing?  What kind of marriage?  What kind of sex-life?  What kind of kids? What kind of job?  What kind of legacy?  What kind of home? What kind of God? What kind of boat? What kind of ice-cream for later tonight?

Yes, we are in fact, that mix of mundane and magical; thoughts of God and butterscotch ripple all rolled into one.  Dust and Divinity.

And that beautiful mix--which is sometimes a mess--is the hallmark of what it means to be human.

And that's the stuff of our lives.  The stuff of our myths and legends.  The stuff of our scriptures. The stuff of faith and story.

The stuff worth shouting from a pulpit.  The stuff worth putting on a screen.  The stuff worth putting into your life.

T