The older I get, the more I wonder if one morning I’ll wake up and find I’ve become Grandpa Simpson. I’m already showing tendencies of waffly stories that meander along happily but by the time we reach the end, both the audience and I are wondering what the point was.

There are worse things I could be I suppose, then a grumpy old codger who shouts at clouds and talks about the good old days. The scariest part of that, is that by the time I reach that age, the good old days are going to be today. Funny isn’t it. These are soon to be the “good old days” that we will discuss when we are senile and talking about how bread cost $3.50 and milk was only $2.50 and we could buy a packet of cigarettes for $16.50.

I’ve spent the Queens Birthday Long Weekend doing not a lot really. I’ve cleaned up, listened to the rain, had a glass of wine, read some of my book and attempted to figure out how to condense a 30 minute pilot episode of a TV show into a 7 to 12 minute short film. I’ve got a feeling I should have spent more time drinking and less trying to do the impossible.

I’ve finally given the short film idea up as a bad attempt. I just can’t shrink it enough to end up with a product that makes sense and doesn’t appear to be a series of sight gags. I watched the Aurora Short Film Festival on TV last night. I thought it might give me some idea as to how to set the silly thing up. All it really did was reinforce to me that Short Films are strange.

So now I’m down to either coming up with a new idea, or running away to join the circus. I’m yet to decide what I want to do. Do I start my feature, work on the first 10 pages or so of that during my class, or do I adapt a short story I wrote when I was younger and use that to write my short film.

I’ve had the short story on my mind since I saw a photograph on Facebook the other day. It was odd to see it. It correlates to the short story idea perfectly. The problem is there isn’t much if any dialogue in the short story, which I guess means it will be great at helping me to write visually without telling everything that’s going on.

This is the image that made me think maybe Young at Heart could be the short film I write for my class

I’m going to sit and do some jottings, see if I can make it into a short film. It won’t have a strange twist in it’s tail, but will have a lot of heart and should be able to be done in about 7 to 10 pages.

If that doesn’t work I think I might just run away and join the circus. I’ve always thought I’d make a pretty top notch Lion Tamer.

Talking of taming lions – not that I really was nor has the rest of this sentence got anything to do with lion tamers –  I was on Youtube last night and watched a web series called Gossip Boy. I rather liked it. The episodes are short, they are well written and the acting is good too, which is frankly not something you expect a lot of in independent web series.

Once the course is out the way, I’m going to start editing Fabulous Me, my own GLBT web series. I’ve got to say, I’ve learned so much from my course so far. The main thing I’ve learnt is to just do it. It doesn’t matter if you know where you’re going or not. Just write it. Have some faith in your characters and give them the chance to have their voices be heard.

I guess the point to all this waffle today is that just because the short film I thought I’d be working on didn’t really work in that format, it’s not reason to quit. Instead of throwing my hands in the air I worked out an alternative. Divinity Inc will still get written, Hot Ice will one day be gracing the silver screen in an Event cinema near you, Fabulous Me will be plaguing your Youtube highlights and I’ll still be wearing an onion on my belt, in a tribute to the good old days.

Here’s episode 1 of Gossip Boy if you’re interested in checking it out. For a zero budget web series it’s well made and I actually think the script is quite good: