Shity Shopping

I went shopping yesterday with Jon. He's a good friend of mine and is playing Jason in Freshmen. I was looking for something for my fiance, Molly. I went to go buy what she told me she wanted but the store said they were out cause the product had been recalled. Stupid. And I found out later that What I thought she wanted wasn't even what she wanted. Stupider. But I spent 3 hours combing the mall and couldn't find anything I thought worthy of her. I bought stuff but I'm disappointed. She's so good at this stuff and I'm not. Last year she got me a directors chair for my birthday. How thoughtful huh?

anyway I got to page 97 of the rewrite and I'm somewhere in the 80's of the printed out version. I've been jumping around skipping whole scenes that are unimportant now. Like I said in one of the previous entries. Jared, Colin and Brandon's story's going to take a hit in this rewrite. And it has. I still have some plot issues to work out too. I'm probably not going to finish today like I wanted too. But I've got a plan to work on it while in Texas for the holidays. I'm gonna bring my software with me on USB drive and install it on molly's sister's computer. I have to do homework while there anyway (online winter course) so maybe I can say it's for homework. A little underhanded yes, but finishing this draft soon is important to me. And I think if I take an entire week off I'll lose my "creative flow". Molly would kill me if she knew I plan to do this...So shhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone. ;)

Scripting the Script

I'm just writing away. Writing writing writing. It's good though. I'm at page 57 of the printed out old version (which has 102 pages) and on page 81 of the re-write. I think there are going to be significant changes in the last 45 pages. Mostly cutting. The old version of the script highly revolved around Brandon, Colin and Jared's part of the story. Since the film is now more of a collection of interacting stories, Jared's Brandon's and Colin's is going to get cut down. That's just the way it is. But I made a lot of progress yesterday and the film's going to be great. I'm so excited. However I did run into a plot snag. More of a logic thing. People being in two places at once. It appears I've written myself in a corner and need to do some back tracking. But I'm confident it will work it's self out. I called the copy stores yesterday while I was taking a break to see how much it's going to cost to make like 100 copies of a 100 page script. yikes. Like $500. If I provide my own paper it will only be $150. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve so we'll see.

Merry Mary

Well, i just spent thursday night through monday morning with Aunt Mary and family. I thought i would be able to work on the screenplay some of the time they were here but it looks like i did spend every wakeing hour of the day with them so nothing got done. but that's ok, it was fun. a lot of stories to be logged away to come out in another sceenplay some day. As for the Freshmen Screenplay. things are coming along nicely. i hope to get a lot done today at work. i was able to put in an hour yesterday and got a few more pages writen.

WOW

Wow, i'm so proud of my self. i got like 25 pages of the script re-written yesterday. i'm on page 55 in the re-write and page 35 of the original. 20 pages of new material! and i think it's pretty good. i had a friend take a look at it and he liked it. so that's good. I'm not gonna get to work on the movie at all today cause i have family that came in to visit. we went to the zoo.

Kong and Campus

Yesterday I was able to make a lot of progress with the script. I wrote probably another 10-15 pages and rearaged a bunch of things. I hit a snag with the plot and am gonna see if I can work it out some how. not sure how it will work though. we'll see.

The location scout with Dan and Kenny was good. We visited old main and Sahuaro. the reason i wanted to do this was so they could get a feel for how most of the movie will look. I can't wait to start this and i could tell niether did kenny and dan. got to finish the script though.

I talked with a good friend, ron newcomer for a good hour about this and that. he's gonna read the script when it's done. i'm anxious to hear what he thinks.

i saw King Kong. it was awesome. Only peter jackson can make you cry over a gurilla.

Small Set Back.

I've come to the forboding conclusion that i will not be able to finish the rough draft of the screenplay by Dec 15th. I'm going to back it a week to Dec 22nd. I have to finish it then because i'm going out of town for a week and wont be able to work on it while i'm gone. I'll be done with school after today so that will be good. i'll have family here but i wont spend every wakeing hour of every day they're here with them. so i should have some time to work on the screenplay this weekend and tomorrow. i have one paper left to do for this class. it's due at 6:40 so i'll wiat till i get out of work at 5 to do it. i could do it at work but i'm gonna use the screenwriteing software i have installed here to work on the screenplay instead. I worked on it a little yesterday morning and got some stuff done. i put in this funny story about public urination. it's told by officer navarro and i really like the scene. right now it takes place at ihop and gives a nice insight to all the officers' characters. Tonight i'm doing a preliminary location scout for the movie with dan and kenny. i'll let everyone know how it went. then after that...Knog!

Homework and Steven King

I didn't do anything for the movie sunday or monday. well that's not completely true. i didn't do any writing on the script, that's for sure. I did however talk to my aunt about the movie and she seemed excited about this one. she was always the one who didn't really support the whole filmmaker thing but since she saw LOTD she's changed her mind. She's gonna try and help me raise some money for the production. Steven King, the writer himself, lives down the street from her. well in the next town. but in Maine, the next town is down the street. I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work but it makes me happy that she's wants to help. there actually coming into town on thursday for my cousins graduation. it'll be cool to see them and i can give them a clearer picture of the project. i've done nothing in the past two days but write for this class i'm taking that i haven't done anything for all semester. i've got like 25 pages in papers due tomorrow. i'm gonna keep working on it today as well and hopefully finish. i really need to get on the sp if i want to have a rough draft completed by thursday. it's really looking slim. We'll see.

Nothing but Hookers

I didn't do anything yesterday, for the movie that is. I have family coming in at the end of the week so Molly, I, and the real Brandon, that the Character in Freshmen is based off of, super cleaned the house. like i'm talking dusting and washing the floors and washing the sheets and everything. not only is the house sparkling, but i'm sparkling too.

While waiting for the bus this morning I saw a hooker walk into a 7-11 crying. This girl had blonde curly hair all done up. He boobs were bounceing and falling out of her Coursit like black top as she walked. she had black hi heals on and a mini skirt. the word mini is falttering to how short this thing was. like i could see the curve of the bottom part of her ass. the thing that baffled me the most was the time and day. it was 10am on a sunday morning. and she was crying! crying her eyes out. I wondered if it was her first night being a hooker. it was pretty sad. Some old 50 year old guy in a red buick lesabre pulled up and talked with her. He left and she continued to cry. I was too far away to hear what they're conversation was but i glared at him as he left the parking lot. dirty old man. Maybe i'll put this in a Screenplay some day.

The Lighting Yanga

Today was a long day. I did responded to the Police Commander and he responded back saying to give him a call when we have more details. I’m getting excited about this cause the police sound fairly willing to help out. I was afraid I was going to have to fight with them to get them to help. I met with Valenti for a few hours today and discussed the project and other things. He sounded very excited about it and had a slue of inquiries and suggestions. Things just seem to be falling into place. I’m a little nervous about when the shit’s gonna go down. Cause usually it does at one point or another.

Dan has hired Kenny Yanga on as his Lighting Director for the project. I’m totally cool with that.

I emailed Terry Donnelly today and asked him if he’ll take a look at my Business Proposal and board and budget when I’m done. We’ll see what he says.

Dan and I, Kenny too if he’s available, are going location scouting Wednesday night on campus. It’ll be fun. He’s bringing his camera so we’ll see how everything looks, do a couple tests, the usual.

I really need to start working on the script if I’m gonna have a rough draft done by Thursday night. I still have a lot of stuff do for one more class too. It’s do Wednesday. I should start that now.

Calling the Commander

The Police Commander emailed me back yesterday. His email consisted of one sentence “Please call me so that we can discuss your needs and to also give me an overview of the project”. This makes me very nervous. I don’t want to speak with him at all. I’m just not ready. I’d much rather converse via email. I went to Prof. Valenti’s office and he suggested I email him a synopsis of the film willingly and then call him later. See, I need to finish the screen play first. I’m afraid that if I talk to the commander without a clear understanding of what I want then he won’t help me. We’ll see.

I took some picture of the stage at the MU. I think that’s where we’re going to film the philanthropy scene.

Police Cars and Politics

I didn’t work on the script much today. Just did homework. I did however email the chief of police about how I can get access to police vehicles for filming. Other than that I didn’t do much. I spoke with Prof. Valenti a little bit about the production. He had worked with police cars, uniforms, and weapons before. It was all interesting. He talked to me about the different laws with police uniforms and vehicles and stuff. Don’t want to get busted for impersonating a police officer, especially when we weren’t trying too. We might have to do some fancy footwork to pull off what the production needs. But I’m confident.

Bruckheimer's Seat

So yesterday Chad was about 15mins late picking me up. I don’t really care except for the fact that it was really cold out. Chad’s friend Jameson drove us to the theatre and steak house. We listened to right wing radio the whole way there. I guess it’s a new thing they do. Strange. Whatever. We get to the place and Chad thanks Jameson for the ride and asks him if he wants to try to get in. Chad RSVP’d the invite that only two were coming; but maybe they made a mistake? We walk around this complex trying to find this Morten’s stake house. We come around a corner and find it. We didn’t find because of any sign or anything like that. No, we found it because we found a person. We found Chris LaMont, Founder and Director of the Phoenix Film Festival, of whom we have a tangled past with. He was genuinely surprised to see us there. We stopped outside the steak house and talked with him for a while. Our talk consisted of him trying to find out just why we were there. See, we always seem to crash Chris’s party at the strangest of times. We talked about school and stuff and then we left Chris and went to check in. at the table they had this list with names and the number of people each reservation had. Chad gave his last name. They looked on the list and low and behold he wasn’t there. But strangely enough this wasn’t a problem. They just wrote down his name and he said he had a reservation for 3 and Jameson got to hang with us. Now Chad and I were dressed fairly nicely. We had collared shirts and slacks. Jameson on the other had was wearing ratty jeans, flip-flops, and a grey faded hooded sweat shirt. Everyone else was in suits. It was awesome. We went into the steakhouse and found out quickly that this was not dinner, but a mixer. There were probably 200 people crammed into this little restaurant. We looked around for someone we knew, Maybe a professor from ASU or something. I recognized a lot of people from the Phoenix Film Festival and Phoenix Film Project, but nobody I felt comfortable walking up to and saying high. After awkwardly standing around for a bit we went back out side to talk with Chris. We talked about Lord of the Discs and he had some interesting things to say about the movie. I debated with Chad on weather or not to tell him about my feature freshmen. It was a coin toss on weather or not he’d think it was a good idea. When I wanted to do Discs, before we had even started pre-production, Chris told me it wasn’t a good idea. He had good reasons but I wanted to do it anyway. Chad and Jameson decided to go track down a convenience store and buy some cigarettes. I stayed with Chris and kept talking to him about my movie and stuff. He told me that I should build my reel, write my feature, shoot a scene from my feature, and use those materials to try and get funding for my feature. I asked him if he thought it was a good idea, if the movie was cheep enough, to just do it on my own with my own producing team. He said he was totally for that. I still hesitated to let him know that I had 2 of the 3 requirements he laid down done. I’ll tell him eventually but only when the time is right. So Chris then had to go and mingle with the people so I stayed outside and waited for Chad. It got cold so I decided to go in and circle the steak house and see if I can see anyone I recognize. As I went through I past Jerry Bruckheimer, who was being crowded by a lot of people. He was a lot shorter than I thought. My height actually. Probably 5.5, 5.6 max. He was looked tired. I went back outside and stood by the door and continued to wait for Chad. There was a group of girls probably 27-37 giggling next to me. I couldn’t believe it. They kept talking about Josh Lucas and Charles Barkley (who apparently was there but I didn’t know what he looks like). I saw Josh Lucas come out from the steak house and the girls next to me went wild and were pointing and giggling and screaming like they were on TRL with Carson Daily. People started to file out of the steak house and head up to the theatre. Bruckheimer left, then Chris with some large black guy. When they passed me the girls to my right screamed “we love you Charles Barkley!” the guy turned and sheepishly said thanks. Chad came and we headed up to the theatre. We got in line, the end of the line; literally we were the last people in line. When we entered the theatre there was no where to sit. No where. The place was full. Except for a roped off session. After standing around a bit Chad went up to one of the ladies sitting in the roped off section and asked if anyone was sitting there. She said no so we stepped over the rope and took a seat in the best seats in the house. A microphone came on and some guy up at the front of the theater introduced himself as the coach of the basketball team at ASU. He then introduced Jerry Bruckheimer who introduced the actors. When they were done introducing everyone there was about a 2 minute wait, maybe technical difficulties. Finally the movie started. The movie, “Glory Road”, was ok. When it was done we left and the actors were talking to people in the lobby about the movie. They were signing autographs and taking pictures. It was kind of weird and I felt bad for them because they looked uncomfortable. I didn’t want to bother them too much so I shook Derek Luke’s hand and told him I liked the movie (which was half true) and then we kind of stood around. Jerry Bruckheimer was standing around by himself in the lobby. Nobody wanted to talk to him it seemed. Probably cause nobody really new who he was or what he did. I didn’t recognize anyone after the screening. Not even Chris was there. All the filmmakers must have left before the screening. I decided to take this opportunity and say high to him. I walked over stuck out my hand. He smiled at me and shook it. “I just wanted to shake your hand.” I said. “What’s your name?” he said smiling. I introduced myself and told him I was the president of the AFA and that our school had just gotten a film major and that we were very excited. He said “Oh nice” and then I told him I just wanted to thank him and then I left. Jameson informed me that as I turned away from him he made a face. Maybe he wanted someone to talk to and was mad I left quickly, or maybe he was mad I didn’t ask for his autograph. As we walked back to the car Chad and Jameson told me that we had taken his seat in the movie. Apparently the basketball couch sat next to Chad after he introduced every one and the 2 minute wait was because they were trying to find seats for Bruckheimer and the actors. Chad said that Bruckheimer starred at us in the reserved section while the Harkins staff tried to find him a seat. When they couldn’t the actors and Bruckheimer retired to the lobby and they started the movie. Maybe that’s why he made a face? Because we took his seat. But the only thing I could think about the whole night was how short he was. I just thought he was taller. Huh.

Plugging away at it

Today is Tuesday and I haven’t written anything since Saturday. Sorry. Sunday nothing happened so there wasn’t anything worth writing about. I did absolutely nothing on the movie. I worked on homework and stuff. Monday however, yesterday, was very very productive.

As you know I started a re-write a few weeks ago. Since the ride-a-along I have re-written my re-write. So now I’m where I left off. I’m very pleased with the dialogue of the officers and the environment of the police station. I’m also really happy with the new story line of Rachel and the fake kidnapping (Which I’m almost done writing). I’m on page 33 right now. Some significant changes need to take place as I get further into the Screenplay. For example: when Wayne and Rehman scare people with masks. I had them do it at the dorm. Now I think I’m going to have them do it on campus. It’ll work out really nice. I’m a little nervous about meeting my deadline. Its nine days away and I still have a lot of homework due. *sigh* I’ll get it done though. I’m having a little trouble with logical timelines for the story. I have to make sure that things aren’t happening at the same time, especially the crime elements, because the police can’t be in two places at once. I only have 5 officers, 1 sergeant and 2 police aides working at night (which is very realistic) so I can’t have 2 big crimes happening at once. I’m also having a hard time fitting in a MIC (minor in Consumption) that I witnessed on the ride-A-long. The event was priceless and belongs in the movie. I just have to find an appropriate and meaningful place for it.

I also spoke with Facman about the tunnels and they’ve officially given me the green light. YES!!!!. It’s gonna be awesome. I emailed my Dan, the DP, and Daniel, the tentative sound guy, about coming with me on location scout down there. I also emailed my Dan asking him if he wants to do a location scout on campus at night. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet

The website should be up soon. I recently got a web designer and she sounds enthusiastic about doing the sites naturaldoor.com and freshmenthemovie.com. I’ll move this diary to freshmenthemovie.com when the time comes.

This has nothing to do with the movie but I thought it was neat so I’ll share it. This evening I’m going to dinner with Jerry Bruckheimer and some celebrities at some steak house. There might be a free screening of the new movie “Glory Road”. Some basket ball movie. I’ll let every one know how it went.

Scripts and Deadlines

Today was fairly progressive, as far as Freshmen is concerned anyway. My homework for school on the other hand is not going so well, but that’s not what’s important…right? I had to work this morning at 8pm. When I got to work I played my game boy till about 9:30pm and then started working on the sp. I added a whole new plot line to the movie. It was inspired by my ride-a-long as well as something I just remembered that happened on campus 9 months ago. This girl was having a bad day and she was waiting for the bus when a mini-van pulled up and 2 guys jumped out in ski masks and kidnapped her. All the witnesses called the police. Two days later the girl called the police and told them that her friends pulled a joke on her to cheer her up. I think it’s a brilliant little thing that will be very funny in the movie. Writing the dialogue for the cops has become amazingly easier since my ride-A-Long I really have a good handle on the characters. One of the strange things about writing for the police is that I have to designer my own set of radio codes. So Tom533 stands for Officer Ashton and 25 stands for “meet with”. It’s gonna be interesting.

I brought the first 15 pages of the screenplay to the AFA screenwriting workshop today. It was Josh, Jeff and Chad. They really liked it. I think the best part of the reading was when Mike and Jeff jumped out the window. The readers stopped reading and were like “whoa, they jumped out the window?” They said exactly the way I want the audience to feel when they watch the movie. It got me excited. Chad was there to talk to me about a TV-show he’s looking into producing. I’m gonna help him out with it. It sounds cool. Maybe I’ll use it to test some night shooting with Dan or something. We’ll see. But Chad offered to help produce when things are more concrete. This makes me really excited because Chad’s the man when it comes to producing. He was the sole reason, aside from myself, the movie got made.

I got home about 5pm and have been doing some maintenance on my computer, moving files etc. I’m setting up a file structure for freshmen sense I’m starting to have so many versions of the script electronically. Every time I work on it I save it as a new file with the date in the file name. Like freshmen120305.scw. I also printed out a two calendars. One 2 page yearly calendar with the years 2006-2007. I then printed a 25 page monthly calendar from Dec05-Dec07. I used the yearly calendars as top sheets for my monthly calendars in my production binder. I then set these tentative deadlines for myself.

Dec15: Completed Rough Draft
Jan17: Completed Final Draft
Jan31: Board (Shooting Schedule) and Budget done.
Feb 14: Create and Lock in Production Team and set Production meeting schedule
Apr 15&16: General Call Auditions
Oct 6th-29th: Tentative Shooting Dates.

Ride-A-Long: Done and Gone

Whew, last night was a dozy. Not really actually. Last night from about 5:45pm to 6:30am I did a ride-a-long with campus police. Needless to say it was quite interesting. I arrived at the station at about 5:45pm and had to wait till 6:30 to actually start hanging out with the police. Dispatch told me that the officers need to check their cars as well as sit through briefing. The officer I spent most of the night with came in about 6:30, introduced himself and asked me to follow him. I did so, expecting to be padded down and interviewed and stuff like that for safety reasons. I entered the compound and followed the officer. We got to a cruiser and he opened the trunk and told me to put my bag in there. I did so. He then went to the drives side door and got in. I heard him unlock the passenger’s door so I took it as a que and got in. it was a little cramp because he had a touch screen laptop hanging from the dash on the passengers side. We then left the compound and started driving around campus. That was it. No background checks like I was told, no dress code check like I was told. I just showed up, got in the car, and away we went. I thought it a little strange but whatever. Right away I was intrigued. The car was brand new and had half a cage in the back seat and half a regular seat. He said they did that so that if they need to give someone a ride to their car or something they would be more comfortable. And it sucked a little bit more for people being arrested. The officer I was with was very cool. He was about 40-45. He said he’d only been an officer for a year. He just decided half way through his life that he wanted to be a police officer and changed course. He was married and had a couple of kids. He had a microphone on and there was a little camera in the windshield and a little monitor over head so that when we pulled someone over I could watch and hear with out getting out of the car. We drove around for a little while and I asked him about police stuff like codes, reports, calls, etc. at about 7:30 we passed someone with out their lights on and went after them. He said that most of the time people with out their lights on were probably drunk and forgot to put them on. We flipped a Uy really fast and speed off after the person. It was really cool. He turned on the lights and they pulled over. Nothing happened. The guy just forgot to turn on his lights because he was parked in the structure. We then drove around a little more and I asked him all kinds of boring questions about routines etc. He told me he had to drive with the window down because that way he could hear if someone screamed help or something. I noticed that the officer’s dashboard radio was set to 99.9 KEZ but the volume was muted. We patrolled the frats and I found out very quickly that campus police dislike greeklife a great deal. Mostly because they’re their primary source of stupid drunk calls when the police have more serious things to deal with. The night was very quiet. Nothing was happening at the dorms or the frats. I learned from the officer that the education building’s bathroom is a hotspot for “anonymous homosexual sex” which I found to be very strange. It doesn’t surprise me too much that it happens, I just never new it happened there. Every time I walk by the building I’m going to look at it differently. There were too things that happened last night that I thought were just great for my research. For one, on the laptops in the car is a window that shows the location off all the units on duty at that particular time, and at about 1pm it showed the sergeant at lunch at none other than IHOP, which was one of my concerns for the film. I had a scene where the officers go to lunch at Ihop but I wasn’t sure if that actually happened. And I meant the lunch break at a restaurant thing. But not only was the sergeant taking a lunch break at a restaurant, but at IHOP itself! The second thing that happened was that at about 11pm I got to switch officers. The officer I was with had to run an errand at the west campus so I got put with someone else, and this guy was like a polar opposite. He was young and hot headed and out to get people. It was awesome! I asked him why he wanted to be a cop and he said “it’s a good job, besides you get to arrest people, drive fast, and carry a gun”. He said it like it was a game. We drove around campus and listened to love line with Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla, while patrolling. It was really strange. With this guy I got to see him bust an 18 year old girl for minor in consumption. It was such a scene I’m going to try and include it in the SP. At around 3:30am I switched back to the other officer and finished the night with a theft call at one of the dorms. It looked like a prank nobody fessed up. We got back to the station at about 4:30am and he took about an hour writing the report. I talked with other officers while I was there and watched as the officers talked to each other. I think one of the most interesting things I found was just how honest all the cops were. Even with their differing personalities, these guys didn’t want people breaking the law. They believed in the law and believed it was there for good and valid reasons. It was also interesting to see them talk to each other informally, while so formally dressed up in their uniforms. They way they interacted with one another when on a call together was interesting too. There were only five officers on duty all night and usually 3 or 4 would all go to suspicious call together. At around 2 we went to a possible bike thief/suspicious person call at the north side of the mu. It was cool to see the officers, who before would tease each other and horse around, now be so serious and work as a team. They wouldn’t even have to speak to communicate with each other. Just a small gesture and the other officer would know what to do or what was going on. All shifts are the same so officers work with the same officers all the time. You could really tell. They always knew what the other was doing or was going to do. They were cool guys but when they needed too they could really take charge of a situation and you could feel their presence. They all had very strong personalities. I guess that’s a requirement for the job. Anyway I really enjoyed the experience, not only was it cool, but I now feel very very confident in finishing the police portion of the sp. Hopefully I’ll have a good draft by xmas.

Director of Photography

I have locked down a Director of Photography for Freshmen; Daniel Dredger. I’ve actually wanted Dan to DP the shoot for a while now but I wanted him to come to me. We had classes together before but never really formally met. The AFA (student film club) showed one of his movies at the LOTD premiere (my last big project) and so when we had class together with Miguel we got to talking. He came and helped out on Tyler and I’s midterm and showed great dedication and interest in the filmmaking process. The more I talked with Dan in class the more I liked him. He showed a strong dedication to filmmaking as well as specializing in cinematography. I thought “hmmm, I don’t have a DP for Freshmen yet…” So I kind of had him in mind. I started to talk to him about the project and he put me in my place, which I respected. See, as president of the student film club here I see a lot of students that have never hit record on a camera tell me they’re going to shoot the next El Mariachi or Blair Witch. They have no idea what they’re in for. So I was talking with Dan once about it and I kept talking about all these people doing features and how I tell everyone to do a short instead because if they try and do a feature they’re going to kill them selves and that it’s a bad idea, etc, etc. When I started talking to Dan about my feature he was like “Wow, Mr. “students should never do features” is now doing a feature?” While in my defense; Yes, I’m an amateur, but I don’t consider myself to be that much of amateur relative to student film. But I like that Dan called me on my apparent hypocrisy. It shows maturity, honesty, and good communication skills. So I slyly slipped him a copy of my reel in hopes that if sees some of the other stuff I’ve done he might be interested in working on Freshmen. He gave me a copy of his short he did for his midterm and it only re-enforced that I wanted him to shoot the movie. He emailed me after he watched my reel and said he liked it. I then sent him a link to this blog in hopes it would be more bait for him to work on the production. It worked. He sent me an email telling me he’d like to work on the movie. I emailed him back and asked him what he wanted to do. I didn’t want to out right ask him to DP. I wanted him to tell me he was interested. I wanted to be sure that he wanted to work on the project, not just doing me a favor. Needless to say he emailed me back saying he wanted to DP. I spoke with him in class and told him it was going to be hard and a pain in the ass and that it was going to suck. He sounded up to it. I also talked to him about doing tests next semester and he thought it was a good idea. I’m excited to work with Dan. I think things are going to work out very well. I’m also going to offer his partner in crime, Ben Folsom, a part in the movie.

Ride-Along here I come.

Since the police never contacted me about the ride-along, I decided to contact them. I called and dispatch told me to get in touch with the sergeant that was going to be on duty for the shift I wanted to tag along with. I emailed the sergeant. He got back to me in about 20min and said it was fine that I go. WAHOO! I'm so excited. I think this experience is going to very interesting. I'm thinking about humming the cops theme the entire time I’m there. JK. I'm going to bring a little not pad with me so I can take notes on what happens. Maybe something will happen that I'll want to include in the sp? My shift starts at 6pm and goes till 6am. I stayed up last night till 3 and slept to noon. Hopefully that will get me adjusted for the midnight shift so I’m not too tired. We'll see.

I emailed the Police Department yesterday as well to find out how much it would be to rent a police cruiser and police bike and etc. There are a couple things that happen in the SP were a police cruiser is crucial. Like when 3 cruisers and 2 biker cops surround one of the dorms. God this is going to be expensive. If you reading this, would you like to invest? Donate some money? Feel free to donate and invest as much as you want, as the police dept has yet to inform me of just how much something like that would cost.

I also, just for fun, started making birds-eye-view diagrams of some of the locations. like the layout of Rehman's and Matt's room, The layout of Colin and Brandon's room, the Layout of Sahuaro dorm and Sahuaro dorm's court yard and hallways. These will be important when talking to my designers (when I get designers.)Because the architecture is important to plot points, the designers need to know where to start from.

I also forgot to tell everyone in the "status so far" post about Ihop and The location contact list. A few weeks, when I contacted Reslife, the MU, and Facman, I also contacted Ihop. A great deal of the movie takes place there. The representative said to email him the scenes that will be shot there. I dont' see any problems arising because the characters love ihop and talk about it when they're there. The sort of way everyone loves Denny's when you have nothing to do at 3 or 4 in the morning. After contacting all these people I made a locations contact list in which I included the contacts of the MU, Facman, Ihop, Reslife, and the sound stage being built on campus. Oh yeah, there's a sound stage being built on campus and I plan on building holding cells in there. I know it sounds strange, but you'll see.

Board and Budget Begins

Today I had an hour and a half to kill before a meeting with Mr. Ohnstad. To kill the hour I went to the computer lab on campus that has the software designed for making schedules and budgets for motion pictures. I got really frustrated with the software. It's called movie magic scheduling and budgeting, strait to the point I guess. Anyway, who ever installed it did something wrong cause the only way I can save my progress is by waiting for the auto save, which is every 30min. sheesh. I'd buy it myself but it cost like $5000... oh well. I shouldn't even be starting the board and budget either. You’re supposed to wait till the script is completely done before doing that. But I need to get on it cause when I talk to reslife and facman about the on campus locations I need to be able to tell them how long I’m going to be shooting and what I’ll need. I started by adding all the props, characters, sets, locations, extras, set dressings, vehicles, etc. into the database. I’ll start the schedule next time I’m in here. That may be a while though.

Status So Far

The production status of Freshmen lies somewhere in the triangle of Development, Script Writing, and Pre-Production.

The Script is not yet completely finished. 4 of the 5 stories are written. The 5th story that has yet to be completed is that of the Officers. My biggest problem with this part of the story is that I know little about the culture of police officers. What does one police officer say to another while patrolling together in a police car? To gain this kind of information, like any good writer, I need to do research. I've already interviewed an ASU Police officer via email but the info doesn't seem to be enough. For this reason I have signed up for a ride-along with ASU police for this Thursday night. But I merely signed up. The police department is supposed to contact me and let me know if it's yay or nay. I have yet to hear word from them. I really hope I can go. I'm actually looking forward to the experience. Yes it will be good for me to do the research I need to finish the SP but it will also be interesting in of it's self. The shift I have signed up for is on a Thursday night/Friday Morning, close to finals, from 6pm-6am, the exact time frame and day the movie takes place in. With out the officer's story the SP is 104 pages long. It needs to be trimmed and to do so I have started a complete re-write. I'm on page 30-something for the re-write and hope to really start working on it when finals are over.

The movie will be made for an independent study with Prof. Miguel Valenti in the Fall of 06. So, by default, the shooting dates are tentatively scheduled for Fall of 06. We'll shoot then as long as everything falls into place. I've talked to facilities management about shooting in the tunnels and they're pretty ok with it as long was we fallow their guide lines, which is fine with me. They're going to set me up with one of their employees to do a location scout/tour of the tunnels sometime in the next month. I spoke with reslife about shooting in Sahuaro Dorm and they transferred me to the marketing director of reslife, who seemed excited about the project and even offered to help me find some empty rooms in Sahuaro in Fall of 06. We have to shoot in Sahuaro for several reasons. One is that that's where it all really took place, and two one of the scenes relies on the architecture of the building to convey a plot point. I know this seams complicated now but when you see the movie it will make sense. I've also been talking to the people in charge at the MU about shooting in the back of the bowling alley and possible using that entrance to the tunnels as a break station for when we shoot in the tunnels. Facman likes that so that's probably what we're going to do.

I've been talking to certain actors about key roles. I know I want a few actors for certain parts so I’ve sent them emails stating my interest in them for the film. I asked them to email me back if they were interested or not. Tentative means they're interested but would like to see a script, Request Pending means they have yet to respond to my email, and Confirmed means they want the part no matter what. Here’s a quick list of what the cast may look like.

Brandon: Michael Zduniak (tentative)
Colin: Colin Redemer (tentative)
Rehman: Rehman Anjum (Request Pending)
Matt: Josh Smith (Request Pending)
Jeff: Kris Kaufman (Request Pending)
Aric: Arthur Trout (Request Pending)
Alaska: Kate Haas (Request Pending)
Jason: Jon Baranick (Confirmed)
Frat Guy: Jon Deremiah (Request Pending)
Officer Ashton: Vic Martinez (tentative)

I offered the role of Wayne to Walter Shedroff but he has a previous commitment in Fall of 06 and had to decline on the offer.

As for Crew I and Jeff Moran are the only for sure crew. There are several other interested parties but none of which are confirmed.

What's it about?

I'm sure all of you anxious readers (ringo that's you) are just dyeing to know what "Freshmen" is all about. Well, here goes. Freshmen is a compilation of all the crazy things that happened to me my freshman year. The plot structure is an amalgam of stories in the vain of Love Actually, Crash, Magnolia, American Graffiti, Cant Hardly Wait, etc. There are five main groups of characters: Brandon, Jared, and Colin, who have a night of adventure as urban explorers in the underground tunnels, Wayne and Rehman just wanna not be bored anymore, Mike, Matt, Jeff, and Aric can't seam to find a party no matter how hard they try, Alaska and Jason's relationship is a little unstable to say the least, and Officers Ashton, Navarro, and Price have to juggle it all, in one night, on the ASU campus.

So...

The only reason I started this blog was cause I wanted to leave a comment on Ringo in Iraq's blog but blogger.com wouldn't let me unless I was a blogger myself, so... Now I'm a blogger...And while I was forced to start this page I figured I could use it as a Production Diary for my Big feature... Freshmen. Probably nobody will read it but Ringo in Iraq but what the hell. Maybe I could turn this into a book someday, Rodriguez style, and then I could make more money...Well...Some money, Hopefully.