We belong read!
Wellllll, um... .. er... .
Ben here. It’s hard to believe it’s been three months since my last Movie Advocate post. I feel bad, but actually, well, I don’t feel that bad.
You see, Justin, Luke, Ryan, and I have been chipping away at the corpus of filmdom for almost 2 years now on the Movie Advocate, and before this summer’s big falloff in content we were averaging 5-6 lengthy stories per week. That’s a lot of work, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: we all do it for free, out of love for the movies. It’s easy to balance the books at the Movie Advocate, because, um, there are no books.
So, in all honesty, I just burnt out this summer. I was writing 1-2 new movie reviews a week, and I started to notice that I wasn’t watching movies for fun anymore. Now if this were my job that would be one thing, but movie are my hobby and my passion, and I was actively killing my love, 1000 words at a time.
It's scary how much I relate to this.
So I stopped. I didn’t watch a single movie for almost a month, though admitting that might win me a spot on the movie geek blacklist.
But I am a true blue movie nerd, so my rehabilitation was swift and overpowering. Without even realizing it, I’m back to watching 4 or 5 movies per week, lower than my previous average but high enough (considering my myriad other hobbies these days) to earn me back my stripes. And so I'm tentatively dipping a toe back into the pool of online ranting. I’m getting the band back together.
In my heart of hearts, I know there is a VHS tape in my man-gina.
I think there were some problems with the old Movie Advocate, so don’t be surprised if you see some changes in the content and style of my articles. My main goal with the site was always first and foremost to encourage the fine people of Denver, CO to ignore the nice weather and go see more movies. I’ll admit now that perhaps writing 15 impassioned paragraphs about the 1946 bleak British melodrama Brief Encounter might not have been the best way of going about that.
So I have a couple of thoughts in mind as I pick up the digital pieces:
-More coverage of events – It continues to blow my mind how many great film events happen in Denver on a weekly basis. The Mile High City is now host to world class film screenings and events on a weekly basis, and I want to do my part to spread the word.
-Shorter reviews – Though there are a few of you out there who I know really do appreciate my extended ramblings, there are so many reasons this is a good idea. Over the past few months, I’ve taken an honest look at my own web habits, and I must come clean about the fact that I would probably never read my articles if I didn’t know me. Of course I love my own ideas, but I would like for the Movie Advocate to serve as more of a spring board for your own adventures in movieland. Also, practically speaking, the workload of writing longer articles is half of what burnt me out in the first place. Also, in case you didn’t notice, I’ve already broken this rule and it’s only my first article back. I must really love the sound of my own fingers typing.
So I’ll take my own advice and cut this short. This article is over righttttttttttttt…
Now.