A New community

I’ve been very lucky in getting in touch with the New York film community.

My first contact is Miles Maker. He is currently based in New York, but back in 2005, he was in the UK. I edited his first short film back then. He’s done a lot more since. We met up on Sunday at the Entertainment Industry Expo. He introduced me to Jean Prytyskacz who is working on a series of specials on Hip Hop Comedians. She’s invited me to a happening at a gallery in the Inwood area of Manhattan (the latest ‘coming up’ area of New York). There I’ll be meeting more media people.

Miles took me to the soundtrack spotting session at Hughes House for his current short film production. It was inspiring hearing about the artiste’s career and current work. Amazing getting an update on Go-Go music – a genre that deserved to be a much greater movement than it was. I also had an interesting talk with Larry Robinson about new ways of marketing jazz music.

That Sunday night I did a search for “screenwriting new york” on Google. Two seconds later, the first link came up: a meetup of a group on Monday night! The small catch: the meeting was about reviewing a screenplay from a member of the group. I quickly read the first sixty pages on Sunday night, read the following 70 pages after my first day of my course (as well as the course reading homework)!

We all had a great debate about the screenplay and the method used to develop it: Blake Snyder’s 15-beat outlining method. At drinks afterwards, two people asked me to review their screenplays!

Miles and I will also be going to a panel on Thursday evening at the 5th Annual Hip-Hop Odyssey international Film Festival…

…what a friendly town!