Category: Opinion

New Year’s with Bri Castellini Part 2 – @brisownworld

My 2019 New Years Resolutions
by Bri Castellini

  1. Write 5 new projects. Be them short films, web series pilots, TV pilots, audio dramas, or a play, I want 5 brand new things written in 2019. 5 scripts doesn’t count unless they’re from 5 different projects.
  2. Host 3 table reads. Since I’m stepping back a bit from producing this year, I’m going to miss my actor friends. So in order to focus on my writing but also keep my creative, talented friends involved, I want to host at least 3 table reads for 3 unique projects in 2019.
  3. Post one blog and one YouTube video a month. I really did try last year, but it got away from me. This isn’t an insane ask, though, so let’s try again.
  4. Cook dinner at least twice a week. Quinn has taken a lot of the burden of cooking for us- when he doesn’t, we order out, and that’s not fair or healthy. Plus, I used to love cooking! I want to recapture that this year.
  5. Start or end my day active at least three times a week. No excuses 2019.
  6. Release and submit for festivals both projects I have in post. I filmed two major projects in 2019, and they both deserve a shot at glory and laurels. This is my pledge to actually put them into the world.
  7. Leave New York at least 4 times. Everyone knows I’m bad at boundaries and balance, so in 2019, I’m making an effort to live a less workaholic life. I have 2 guaranteed trips (DC in January and Christmas) that I’ll be out of the city for, so it’s unfair to just say “2” like the last few years.
  8. Save $2k. Last year I saved $1500, which was great, but I’m an adult who goes more into debt every time I make a student loan payment because of accrued interest, so I’m not in great financial shape. Savings will at least keep me, well, safe, in case something terrible happens.
  9. Pick my battles. As I age, I get better at when my input or opinion is needed, but I’m also a naturally argumentative person. In 2019, I want to really analyse when a topic deserves a debate or when I should just let it go.
  10. Be a better adult. When I get overwhelmed or over-tired, I neglect important things like dishes and emptying the trash and cleaning my room and the bathroom. I am almost 27 years old- that’s gotta stop. Regardless of my exhaustion level, the dishes need to be done, and not just when company is coming over.

What are YOUR resolutions this year?  How did yours last year shape up? Let me know, and here’s to at least a pretty ok 2019!

Bri Castellini is an indie filmmaker and Community Director at Stareable, our favorite web series hub. Watch the remarkable Ms. Castellini’s award-winning web series, Brains, HERE. See Sam And Pat Are Depressed HERE. This post first appeared on Bri’s wonderfully refreshing blog.

New Year’s with Bri Castellini Part 1 – @brisownworld

How My 2018 New Year’s Resolutions Faired
by Bri Castellini

High level: this was an incredibly busy year, just not in the ways I’d planned back in January 2018.

Produce 2 new projects I write to completion- COMPLETE! read article

Gerry Conway on CBS vs. Nielsen

CBS at “Contractual Impasse” with Ratings Provider
by Gerry Conway

This could be the beginning of the end for the decades-long Nielsen ratings scam.

As the main, if not only, source of a supposedly objective measurement of audience views, Nielsen has been the foundation of the broadcast entertainment business financial plan since the days of radio. read article

Coming Soon(ish) – Mickey Mouse and Batman will be Public Domain OMG!

It’s been a long, long time since characters with the following and impact of Disney’s mascot and DC’s biggest headliner became public domain, but in the next few years – even less time than we have to stop climate change – that’s a-gonna present a whole new (and theoretically much more fixable) entertainment world:

 by Timothy B. Lee

As the ball dropped over Times Square last night, all copyrighted works published in 1923 fell into the public domain (with a few exceptions). Everyone now has the right to republish them or adapt them for use in new works. read article

John Ostrander: The (Im)Possibilities of Christmas

NOTE FROM LB: Exhausted human beings that we at TVWriter™ are, we were vacationing (in my case lying in bed trying to catch up on some of the sleep I lost for a variety of reasons last year) Christmas week and missed the chance to publish John’s Christmas column at the appropriate time. Here it is now, in all its nostalgic glory. Thanks, John, for making me smile:

by John Ostrander

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” read article