If you asked me today, I'd tell you I'm tired. I'd tell you it's overwhelming.

There's a general notion that anniversaries are happy, and I'd love to say with whole-hearted exclamation that the notion applies here. But, if you asked me today, I'd tell you it's a mixed bag. I'd tell you that it's all harder than I could possibly imagine.

That's just one truth though, and fortunately, few of us outwardly cater in any. Our hesitations and concerns are often left private, our pride refusing to allow us to make waves. So, rather than dare myself into honesty, I'll share what I wrote a few weeks back, a factual account of our beginnings seeped in optimism. I meant all of this when I wrote it. I think I still mean it. I hope I still mean it:

In February 2007, having emerged from gray winters months secluded in a cabin in North Carolina, I called my parents and asked if I could visit home for a while. Glad to have me back, my father cleaned his art space and laid out freshly-laundered sheets on the futon. For the next month and a half, this small space, shared with my cat and dog, would be the base of operations for the set up of the ShortEnd Magazine.

The idea to start an online film journal first hit me on the afternoon Lily Percy and I sat in Bryant Park. She was speaking about her visit to Walden Pond, how much it meant to her to spend time there, how we should go see it together at some point. Not two months earlier, I'd met Lily in the MovieMaker Magazine offices. She was associate editing at the time I was interning, and in large part, I lobbied for that position because an enterprise story she'd written on the Latin American film movement had caught my attention and mesmerized me with its fearless and in-depth reporting.

What preconceived notions I held about Lily, I don't now clearly remember, but I do know that upon meeting her, she struck me as nothing I'd imagined. Decked out in a t-shirt and overalls, she looked little more than a year or two older than I was at the time. Her immediately warm smile drew me in, and any former nervousness I had about being around her dissipated. As it turned out, Lily and I both grew up in South Florida, both have insatiable passions for film and literature and both, at least on this particular afternoon in the park, shared in optimism and idealism. Knowing it was safe to share my yet unspoken scheme, I explained the idea for the online venture to her.

In mid-February 2007, news stories out of South by Southwest began to buzz about this upcoming movement called 'mumblecore.' Not having seen any of the films on that docket, I frantically rented what I could and read copiously every interview and review, listened to every podcast and watched all videocasts relating to that group of directors. By some stroke of divine grace, after sending out a few e-mail inquires, Ry Russo-Young, Todd Rohal, Jay Duplass, Joe Swanberg and the then Kris Williams, returned my notes. I had only the vaguest notion how lucky I was that these five filmmakers would get back in touch with me.

If I search my heart out even now, these first interviews are among my favorites conducted throughout the year. For each, I sat in my old bedroom, now the guest bedroom, on the third floor of the townhouse, and as I listened to each, I watched the ocean flow in and out from the shore. Each of them said things quite memorable, things I hadn't heard expressed as honestly in that way before. Russo-Young talked about how hard it can be to express yourself to other people; Rohal about how filmmaking is a joyous sort of process of discovery; Williams about how in making a documentary once, she learned stories about her Cuban heritage that she otherwise would never have heard.

Duplass caught me off guard most with: “When The Puffy Chair got into Sundance, I honestly thought that everything in life was going to be better. I was really happy for about month or two, and then it was on to the next thing. I realized that, and I know everyone says it…achieving success doesn’t make you happy. I actually got really depressed afterwards because I realized that no amount of success was going to “make me happy.” I used to sublimate all of my desires and all of my needs to keep making movies, and just to keep this thing going forward because I wanted it so bad. Basically I realized that no matter where you are in life, everyday you need to wake up, and figure out how to be happy, to be inspired, to laugh and have fun. That doesn’t get fixed at any point in time…So, now I have to be responsible for my own happiness, which is the primary achievement of adulthood.” Even this seemingly long year later, when I wake up in the mornings, that's what I think, "So, now I have to be responsible for my own happiness, which is the primary achievement of adulthood.” It's strange how that small statement guides so much of how I see and interact with the world around me now.

In general, I'm not sure how often people realize the consequences of their actions. I'm not sure they truly believe that what they said or made has a lasting effect on someone else's imagination or thought process. For these four people, the interviews were at most innocuous. For me, as a compilation of thoughts for that very first article, all were revelatory.

Here's the funny tidbit about Joe Swanberg and why we didn't run an interview for that same story. Always pounding the ground with work, Joe was shooting in North Carolina at the time. I called for our interview, but his schedule, I imagine, was manic, so we missed one another. I left a message with my cell number and told him to call me back anytime. At 7 or 8PM that night, our house phone rang, and as I never answer it, I kept up with my research. My mom as it turned out was the one who picked up the phone.

"Nora, there's a Jeff on the phone for you."

"Joe? You mean Joe Swanberg?"

I leapt a few steps to snatch the portable phone from my mother and spoke with Joe for a few minutes, apologizing with blushed cheeks and reassuring him to call me back on my cell number at his convenience. Although Joe and I have in passing written e-mails back and forth since, we've never actually talked, and to be frank, I find it more than a wee bit comical at this point, particularly considering that when I met Bryan Poyser at Sundance this year, he remarked: "You've written about Joe Swanberg--and that group."

Coincidentally, the only other filmmaker who's spoken with my mother is Aaron Hillis. On our way into a bar during the Cucalorus Film Festival, Aaron would nab my cell phone, answering it, "Nora's not here at the moment. I'm her secretary. How can I take your message?" Shortly after, Aaron would recite the entirety of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky for SM Associate Editor Kim Storeygard and myself. We clapped, stunned and amused expressions all around.

After a strong first issue--at least editorially; Web design would go through two more transitions to get where it is now--SM floundered for three weeks, and I was certain that I'd begun a project I could neither sustain nor control. While unexpected last minute lack of funding kept me from attending the Sarasota Film Festival as planned, film school friends Barry Jenkins and Alejandro Cruz really came to the rescue, and a solid interview with filmmaker Frank V. Ross was a light in what appeared a very dark tunnel.

A lucky break however found our late applied press credentials for the Atlanta Film Festival approved. Just recently on the job Gabe Wardell and Dan Krovich pulled together a stellar programming slate, and attending filmmakers Craig Zobel, the Fake Wood Wallpaper crew and a host of others generously put some time aside for interviews. The AFF absolutely gave us that in that the magazine would have failed without.

When I look back on the year now, it's all funny, inspiring, enervating and challenging at the same time, and from a personal perspective, what the magazine represents for me is a growth that I couldn't have earned any other way than by the always stumbles, always failures, always vastly discouraging days of burn out. Yet, with that, there's in these articles a sense of hope, a sense human truth, a sense that filmmaking is getting at something much greater than an art form can ever initially imagine itself. It's a catalogue in many ways of friendships forged and artistic collaborations begun, and I thank four people specifically for contributing to that progress in manners which I'm not even fully conscious of yet--Mark Wynns for his guidance, support and gently expressed criticisms; Kendra Skeene for her inspiration and hard work with the design; Kim Storeygard for believing in a crazy dream; and Barry Jenkins for jumping on board so willingly and so joyously. More than that I thank all of SM's writers, and I thank all the filmmakers kind enough to let us borrow minutes of their time.

Here's what I know we've done, in numbers, in the last year:

No. of Filmmakers Interviewed (all long form): 130; 108, 83.1% male/ 22, 16.9% female

No. of Filmmakers Interviewed who Identify with Telling Stories to Represent Minority: 11, 8.5%

No. of Filmmakers Interviewed with SXSW Connections: 28

Possibility Year's Coverage Is a Love Song to SXSW Programming: 21.5%

No. of Stories, Interviews & Videocasts Published As Relates to Joe Swanberg & His Work [As of 7 Feb. 2008, 14 out of 430]: 14, 3.3%

General SM Percentage of Focus on Any One Individual Filmmaker: 0.7%

Meaning SM Covers Swanberg & Work Nearly 4.7 Times as Often as Any Individual Others.

Estimated Discrepancy Between SM Coverage & Swanberg Annual Production Schedule Productivity [as Compared to Individual Others]: +2.6 times on Side of Coverage

No. of Contributing & Staff Writers: 19; 10 male/9 female

No. of Writers who Identify As Minority: 7, 36.8%

No. of Reviews Published [Feb. 2008]: 76

No. of Positive: 27, 35.6%

No. of Negative: 9, 11.9%

No. of Lukewarm: 40, 52.6%

Only two films to receive multiple reviews, Hannah Takes the Stairs [One Positive, One Negative, One Lukewarm], LOL [One Positive, One Negative]

Long Term Stats

Average Daily Unique Readership [April 2007-December 2007]: 32

Average Daily Visit/Reader [April 2007-December 2007]: 2.1

Average Daily Pages Read [April 2007-December 2007]: 247

Average Daily Hits [April 2007-December 2007]: 1380

Short Term Stats

Average Daily Unique Readership [February 2008]:91

Average Daily Visit/Reader [February 2008]: 1.83

Average Daily Pages Read [February 2008]:454

Average Daily Hits [February 2008]:4267

Looking at these numbers it seems pressing to set some goals and explore some issues. First off, despite a staff half composed by women, we're not speaking with enough women filmmakers, and second, we should poke around to find out why women film directors out in the independent scene aren't as often represented. Primarily, we do speak to the directors, much less often writers, producers and editors, the fields where women are much more readily found working.

Second, we've got to dedicate ourselves more fiercely to interviewing filmmakers producing independent films about issues addressing minority, whether those concerns be about race, class, religion or sexual preference. That's not to say that the filmmaker has to identify with minority, simply that their work, as does John Sayles', David Gordon Green's and now newly Lance Hammer's for example, illuminates a portion of human truth that isn't solely defined by a straight, White-American, Protestant perspective. Our goal here is not to skew the field away from good work unjustly but to spotlight equally deserving work that carries with it different universal viewpoints.

Knowing that we cover Joe Swanberg's work 2.6 times too often, or essentially we should have rightly published six, not 14 pieces on his work, we'll also severely cut back commentary on his films and web series, although it's unlikely, given our thus far unshakable feelings of support for SXSW that there'll be a dip in our coverage percentage of their programming.

I write all this because transparency of intent in a publication is hugely important, and as a staff, we'd like here at SM in any we can to serve readers with the best and most diverse information possible. We welcome along this journey any suggestions, and hope that you'll write to us through our contact page at any time. It's been a great and trying first year. Here's to the next one.

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