I’m Making a Movie.
I knew a while ago, mid-pandemic, that what I was doing on youTube wasn't working any more and I needed to change my creative strategy. I reconnected with why I even started doing any of this in the first place - not just doing YouTube, but why I wanted to be an artist at all. Why I stopped showing up to my telemarketing job back in the day so that I could start selling comic books to strangers on the street. The whole reason I did any of this was because I wanted to write and direct feature films. And with no money, equipment, education, or connections, creating comic books and photocopying them at Staples was just what I could do with what I had. I was starting from the gutter to build a brand and a body of work.
I've been on many adventures and side quests in the time since then, including an incredible success on YouTube. In 2018 I finally felt like I was ready to make my move. I invested a bunch of cash into a horror short film that would be my film school as a producer. I hired industry people to work on the thing so that I could learn from watching them how to run a professional set (as opposed to the home movie style of my YouTube productions). The mistake I made was letting the creator of the IP the film was based on, write and direct the piece. He was one of the core members of my YouTube team, and I thought we were close enough that our trust was supreme. We had nothing in writing - I wanted to do this short film as an experiment, then make a formal agreement based on what we'd learned doing the short, when we do the feature. But when the film was done he put up roadblocks that delayed the release. Then, just before the pandemic hit and while I was out of commission tending to a health crisis involving my newborn daughter, the film still unreleased, he insisted that because he created the IP, the film belonged to him and he intended to carry on with the business of the film without me, even though it was my idea to do it in the first place and I had paid for everything.
All of my plans for making movies were wrapped around my YouTube crew. We were going to make the horror feature. Then we were going to play ourselves in a movie that takes place during one epic day at a comic con. Then would come what I really wanted to make, which was a stylized crime thriller that takes place in the world of publishing during the silver age of comics (1960s & 70s).
The breakdown of trust between me and my collaborators caused by the horror short's failure to launch, destroyed the team dynamic at my studio. The team quit together and made a coordinated social media post about how they're no longer associated with me or my show. I think I created a monster in that, because the other guy now had a 'professional' film as writer & director under his belt, he was now a bigger deal than me in their eyes and they went with him in the divorce, thinking they would all go make the horror movie without me. To my knowledge, a feature film based on my former friend's IP is not in active development.
It was all I could do to try to maintain my YouTube schedule during pandemic lockdowns with a new cast, while managing my daughter's health situation. By the time I realized that a new YouTube strategy was needed, I thought long and hard about my goals and refocused on making a feature film. I created a new Youtube strategy that involved releasing music, and creating music videos that would show off my skills as a director. But very recently I had the thought that even if the new strategy was successful, I was still just a guy with an idea until I've got a script complete and a pitch package in hand. Something came over me and I put other plans on hold to set about writing the first draft of my 'silver age of comics' crime thriller. I went from zero to a 112 page first draft it in a marathon 5 days. I reached out with it to the industry connections who were going to help me create a movie when the idea was to have a feature length Youtube video on my channel as a rental, alongside my weekly uploads. Their feedback was all the encouragement I needed to give myself the summer to commit full time to writing this script, and now nothing matters to me - not weekly videos or social media reach or any other creative endeavors - as much as making this movie. Whether it's an independent project made on a micro budget or a $2 million project with stars appearing in it, this movie is my new obsession the same as with my self-published comics back in the day, or my daily videos in the early days of my Youtube career.
If you are inspired to help me on my mission to uplift spirits and inspire generations through the stories I tell, you can click Join on my Youtube channel to become a monthly supporter or send a donation via paypal to sean@seanward.net
