Last week, I had the extraordinary pleasure of seeing a film I wrote premiere at the Minnesota Film Festival. Seed of Doubt, directed by William J. Cox, based on an original story by William J. Cox and Jon Julsrud, may be coming to a streamer near you soon – distribution details are TBD. In the meantime, the film premiered at the MFF in Duluth. I couldn’t have had a better time. This was a warm, friendly film festival with national and international works in a broad swath of genres and topics.
My adventurous aunt and uncle flew in from Pittsburgh to be there for the big night, and nothing can top the feeling of gasping and giggling with them as we saw my words come to life on the screen. It’s been a long, arduous process to get to this point – and I can’t take any credit for it coming to fruition – that goes to producer Sara Hamilton, Jon (also a producer), and Will. I wrote the script back in late 2017 and the film shot in 2018, and obviously the industry (and the world) have been through some stuff since then.
This was my first script that was turned into a feature film, and I learned so much from the entire experience. First, there’s just a huge difference between writing that stays on your computer and seeing the cast and crew bring the lines to life. You see very quickly what works and what falls flat. Second, I had a lot of lessons learned about how to collaborate with others and produce quality drafts. I ended up doing multiple rounds of edits due to staggered reads, and would advocate for instead gathering everyone’s feedback at once. I also developed the muscle of knowing when to take the feedback and when to dismiss it.
Writing is 99.9% being in a room by yourself, dreaming in your sweatpants. I’ll keep writing because I love it, not for any external validation. But at this moment, I have to say – going to a film premiere for a project I wrote also felt very, very good.
