Movies, Screenwriting & Independent Film
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I spend about an hour a day (at least) reading movie, television and technology news. It’s a nice relaxing way to kickstart my brain every morning.

So I decided that it would be a great to post the list of sites I visit daily.  However, this is not just a list.  These sites are in the exact order I visit.

There are about 2 dozen others that I visit regularly but these are the sites I can’t go a day without.

XTRA: Top 6 iPhone Apps For Movie News

I start with work and social networking:

Then it’s off to my websites for maintenance and updates:

Movie & Television news:

Blogging, Technology and Design:

And this is the ATHLETIC nerd after all…

And that’s it.  After that I usually load up Final Draft, Final Cut, Photoshop, Dreamweaver or WordPress to work on whatever I have planned for that day.

which websites do you visit daily?

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The Athletic Nerd Movies Television Technology

The Athletic Nerd has definitely evolved over the last 9 months.

I set out to build a blog that would allow me to write about the movies that inspire me.  It was also going to be a place to keep people up to date on my own film projects and screenwriting adventures. 

A personal look at my professional passions.

Well, it’s been 9 months and The Athletic Nerd is exactly what I had hoped it would be.  I’m still posting daily original content while constantly increasing my knowledge of the blogosphere and how to survive it.  Slowly, the traffic is coming and I’m more passionate than ever about my blog, my websites, my company and my career. 

But I’m not done yet…

I dont’ think a website should ever become stale and hopefully that hasn’t happened yet.  So I wanted to kick off my 9 month celebration by going over what’s coming for the rest of 2010.

The Climb

17 West’s latest short film

As I continue to edit the film, I’ll be updating my Editing Short Films series regularly with articles about the entire post production process.

Strings

17 West’s Co-Production

A new short film being produced in Sudbury, Ontario that I wrote and will be co-producing.  The film is currently in pre-production and I’ll be updating often as the production progresses.  Visit UnoPark for more.

Screenwriting

Shorts & Features

I’m still writing as much as I possibly can.  If everything goes according to plan, I’ll have my new feature done by summer’s end.  I’m also planning a series of new and ambitious short scripts for both competitions and 17 West Productions.

Screenwriting is my number 1 passion and I write about it here often.  That will continue.

Product Launch

New eBook in the works!

I’m going to be keeping this project a secret for a little while longer as it is still in the planning stages.  I’m pretty excited to tackle a project like this.  I’ve never attempted to package a product before and I’m loving the challenge so far.

The Athletic Nerd

New Features…

Over the last 9 months, I’ve launched several regular features that have gained me a lot of traffic. 

These include:

Recently, I added 2 NEW features:

These are still in the early stages of evolution but I’ll be continually adding new and useful content in the coming months.

Anything new coming?

I spent some time tinkering with my design this morning and I’m in the planning stages of some new graphics and an updated look.  I tend to revise my websites often.  I enjoy Photoshop.

I’ve learned that the best way to attract people to my site is to continue to write new and fresh content about the movies I love.  10 Flicks and Rainy Sundays are among the highest ranked pages I’ve written and I’m planning 2 new features on this site to hopefully increase momentum and really boost my traffic numbers.

The first will not surprise those who visit my blog often.  I started the All Time Best feature to write about the little moments we remember in films.  So it makes perfect sense to start a brand new feature to examine the opposite. 

Today, I’m proud to announce: All Time Worst

This new feature will launch in the next few weeks.  I’m pretty excited about it. 

I’ll be keeping the second new feature under wraps for now but it’ll be launched before the end of the summer as well.

Lessons Learned

I love writing.  Until September, most of my writing took place inside of Final Draft.  While screenwriting will always be my favorite writing discipline, I’ve learned that having a blog and writing every day is just as satisfying.

As I get closer and closer to the all important 1 year mark, I’m thankful that I haven’t let The Athletic Nerd fall into a blogging black hole.  It’s still very much alive and gaining momentum.

I still have a lot of work to do and it’s not going to be easy.  However, the more challenging it gets, the more fun I have.

Stay tuned…

PS: This is a giant post…

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The Athletic Nerd by Jason McKinnon

This week, The Athletic Nerd celebrates 6 months of movies, television and technology.  I don’t plan on writing anything enormous to commemorate the occasion as the blog is still in it’s infancy but I think it’s important to acknowledge the milestone.  Expect a gigantic post on the 1 year anniversary though.

I decided the best way to reflect on 6 months of blogging is to look back at the most popular posts.

Much of this blog is about my company 17 West Productions. Since no one is really searching for us yet, those posts haven’t exactly sky rocketed up the traffic standings.  This doesn’t mean you’ll see less of those posts though as this blog’s primary function will always be to promote 17 West and my love of filmmaking.

However, I’m also a massive fan of the production process and movies in general.  Over the last 6 months, I’ve written a lot about both.

Here are the best of the best during the first 6 months of this blog’s existence.  Enjoy!

The Overall Top 5 Posts

  1. 10 Flicks: Pre-Drinking Comedies
  2. 2009′s All Time Top 5 Movies
  3. The Bottom 3: 2009′s Worst Movies
  4. Spotlight: ScriptWrite vs Screenplay
  5. 10 Flicks: Bad Ass Movies

Top 5 Screenwriting Posts

  1. The Screenwriting Balance
  2. Screenwritng: Portable Writing
  3. 10 Flicks: Movies That Make Me Feel Like Writing
  4. iPad And The Screenwriter
  5. 10 Screenwriting Books That Inspired Me

Top 5 Movie Posts

  1. Rainy Sundays: Cool Runnings
  2. 10 Flicks: Christmas Classics
  3. Rainy Sundays: The Sandlot
  4. 10 Flicks: Terrible Movies I Own
  5. All Time Best: My Favorite Laugh

Be sure to check some of them out if you haven’t already.

I’d also recommend checking out the categories that interest you by clicking the ‘Categories’ section in the sidebar.

If you have any comments or suggestions for posts you’d like to see or just a general comment about the site toss me an email jason@17west.ca

PS: I recently posted Pre-Drinking Comedies 2. Just saying…

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Milestone: 10,000 Page Hits!

March 9th, 2010 | Posted by jasonmckinnon in Web - (0 Comments)

The Athletic Nerd by Jason McKinnon

Sometime today, The Athletic Nerd will reach a pretty big milestone considering it’s a relatively new blog.

10,000 page hits!

I’m not an expert on web traffic patterns and statistics so I’m not exactly sure if that is good or not. 

This blog has been in existence for nearly 6 months now and I have had a blast creating content on a daily basis.  Lately traffic has levelled off somewhat but that has only inspired me to work harder at gaining more links and visitors.

With 2 movies in pre-production and a lot of new projects on the horizon, I’m hoping more and more people will discover this blog and return often.

I can hope can’t I?

In the meantime, if you are a regular reader, I’d love to hear what you think of the site.  You can email me at jason@17west.ca or on twitter @17west.

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What!? Dexter Finale

December 14th, 2009 | Posted by jasonmckinnon in Television - (0 Comments)

dexter

Whoa.  That’s all I can say.

One of the greatest aspects of scripted television is twist endings.  Over the last few years, we’ve been treated to some amazing series with incredible surprises.

Dexter is at the top of that list second only to Lost according to my personal rankings.  Season 4′s finale had one of the most shocking endings I’ve ever seen.  I loved it.  There’s nothing better than a twist ending you didn’t see coming.  It was awesome.  I’m so happy I became a fan of the show.  Ironically, there was a time when I didn’t even know Dexter existed.

I had never heard of the show until someone at work told me about it.  Based on that glowing recommendation, I went out to buy the first season on DVD and it was actually hard to find. (I’ll bet that won’t happen again.)  It took less than a week to get through the first season.  Iwas immediately impressed with the writing.  It’s some of the best writing and character work you’ll find on television these days.  Lucky for me, the second season was nearly over at that point and I didn’t have to wait long to catch up on season 2.  I was addicted.

Once season 3 ended, I figured they wouldn’t be able to top it.  How could they?  The show is too good.  They couldn’t possibly keep it up…  Could they?

Not only did they find a way to make the show better in every way they made one of the best stand alone seasons of television I have ever seen. (I’m a big fan of the show as you can tell.) The introduction of John Lithgow’s Trinity killer should earn a minimum of a million award nominations next year.  He’s the best villain we’ve seen yet and the showdown between him and Dexter was epic to say the least.

Trinity_John_Lithgow 

In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I’m not going to get into the details of what happened during the finale. (You can google it all you want to find out what happened last night)  Those who have seen the show know exactly what I’m talking about.  For now, I want to reach those who haven’t seen a single episode yet.  Go back and start from the beginning.  You have 4 complete seasons to catch up on. 

What are you waiting for!

PS: Making us wait until September to see what happens next is mean.

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