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The Dieline

Good morning. 

Dos is in prelaunch and limited bags are available online here. Yes, bags are quite expensive. Apparently making snacks that won’t kill us is costly. 

This morning we released ‘The Dieline’, a short film I wrote and directed in May. The film brought together many talented people, including our teams across the portfolio of brands, most of which we’ll work with again on my feature later this year, ‘Guero’. 

A dieline is a diagram or template that shows where to cut, score, fold, or perforate a material in packaging and printing. The dieline that centers the narrative of this film is for the bag of Dos’ Texas Salt. 

The film is a fictional retelling of another stranger than fiction piece of the creating and launching Dos saga. The story and the characters are based on real events and people that were unfortunately instrumental to getting chips in bags. 

I wrote the film during my morning practice of creation for the sake of creating. Another delay had been presented to me by a vendor that was intended and advertised as the solution to a previous, incompetent vendor.

Rather than going absolutely mad, as I’ve done in the past, I wrote, with no intention of making the film, about what these vendors must be doing to cause such frivolous and comical delays. 

It was cathartic and effective in reducing my angst. 

Then, in May, a commercial project was postponed just days before production was to begin. We charged the client a ‘kill fee’ and without hesitation pivoted to using the time we reserved with crew, locations, and gear to produce ‘The Dieline’. 

It was a quick pivot and few were privy to the change in material when arriving on the first day of production. Nonetheless, all were ardent to create something novel and compelling despite the nuance of the source material. 

Now we pull the results from this experiment, in which we attempted to create something comical and dramatic to many from events that so few were affected by (primarily me). 

That’s storytelling. That’s filmmaking. Tell a personal story that connects with many to impact culture, and challenge and change perspectives. 

‘The Dieline’ is the current story of relevance in my life. There are many others, some of which will be told, most of which will be shelved and borrowed from to complete the stories that do get told. 

As with all of my projects, ‘The Dieline’ is practice for the next one. With practice, and time, I’ll improve so that each piece is slightly better than the previous one. 

That’s life. 

Thank you for letting me sit with you.

– mills

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