Thursday, October 1, 2009

A New Home

What a year. I can't believe that a year ago next week, Michael Davies, Stephanie Thorpe and I launched our scifi webseries After Judgment and in doing so dipped our toe into this world of new media that I would now like to consider home. In less than a year, webseries and the platform upon which they exist, have become my life. I have been fortunate to have After Judgment embraced by the community and the critics; being nominated for a Streamy was such a thrill. I have been a part of two new webseries recently (as an actor) and have five new shows in development or pre-production, two of which I have written. I don't think that would have been possible if, a year ago next month, I had not launched this blog. I had no idea what I was doing or what I would write about but I knew that it would challenge me to define my own voice, give me a platform to explore ideas that were meaningful to me. And so birthed All Things T.

What have been my favorite posts? Probably ones you haven't read. 'The Perfect Man is a Vampire', 'Creativity', 'The Trade Off', 'It's a Bird, It's an Invisible Plane...' and probably my first post, which was untitled. I didn't know who was going to read them and I didn't really care (analytics aren't my forte), but what ultimately mattered was that I finally had a place to give my thoughts (and feelings) free reign and articulate them in a way that felt natural. I've found that I'm fairly personal, passionate and idealistic in the way I write and like to use 'asides' (as my Gemini brain often likes to comment on what I am thinking- it's like a Brecht play) and that format was never one that I could previously adhere to in college or even my early attempts at screenwriting. So it would always make me smile when someone would tell me how much they liked my writing style and how specific 'my voice' was; I'm just writing how I think! The feedback that I most treasure, however, is the occasional email or facebook post telling me that I have inspired someone. I hope that doesn't sound conceited (as I actually sat here for a few minutes figuring out what I should follow that sentence with, and that never happens), but I guess these comments make the countless hours that I put into a post worthwhile.

I am inspired daily by people, by a lot of you new media peeps who are reading this now. We are in the trenches are we not? Trying to climb up onto the other side where our content is valued and our risk is rewarded. We are redefining what it means to be a creative storyteller; master of our own destiny has a new meaning as we can control the idea all the way through to the distribution of it. We can also control our 'brand', how we are perceived and 'consumed' by our audience and our virtual communities, through our avatars, postings, blogs. Or at least we can try to. I may post a lot about my love of scifi and being a badass babe in training, but my real brand is 'my voice', the one that I have developed here on this blog, the one that has given me the courage to really go after the professional career that I can now envision, the journey of which I'd like for you to be able to join me on.

And so the voice has a wonderful new home. The uber talented principals at EQAL, Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, have been kind enough to host the new and improved All Things T site on their exciting new Umbrella platform. My new site will connect all the dots: All Things T blog posts, my Twitter and Facebook communities (soon YouTube), webseries and acting updates, videos, pictures, you name it! And the best part is that there is a forum where users can be a part of it all; each post I make will have a forum in which people can foster discussions, thus hopefully letting us each inspire each other (but be constructive as I am a lethal weapon). So this will be my last post here at Blogger. I'm a little nostalgic as I've been on such an amazing journey this past year, and I can see it reflected in what and how I wrote, but it's time to get off the interstate and make my own tracks. So thank you for reading and supporting my blog and I hope that my new home is one you will come over often to.

Be back soon....but at www.tarynoneill.com

No comments: