Post-Update:
So after Tristan and I finished logging and uploading all the material I had the wonderful job of organizing the project film and labeling every shot. Because Tristan wasn’t familiar with the movie nearly as much as I was it became my job so that it would go faster. It took my 3 full 10 hour days to label all 700+ items on the 36 tapes. Sigh. But we started editing the picture together 3 days ago and have about 20 min assembled. I’ve got scenes 31-61 put together and Tristan doing speratic things in the 200’s. I’ve showed it to a couple of people and they were very impressed. It’s been hard to balance all this stuff because all I want to do is work on the movie and not do anything else for school. I’ve got write this paper for Miguel, produce the last few days of shooting, (which one is tomorrow by the way) and do a few other od jobs and such. Man. I just want to edit. I’ thought I had a final picture lock on the trailer on Friday. Crystal said she was very impressed and told me herself that it looked like a lock and all I needed was a scratch track. I didn’t want to do that but I put some crappy free online music to it for the final viewing for class. The class liked it a lot but had a lot of problems with it visually. Even dan had problems and it frustrated me because I thought I had it locked. But tom can’t start on the score till the break and I don’t plan on putting it out until February anyway. so whatever. I want to put a teaser out by the end of the week but am worried about the time to put it together. I’ll do my best. Truth be told I’d rather just work on the movie. I found out today that I got a job in the lab that I’ll be doing all my editing in! isn’t that great!? During slow times I’ll be able to work on the movie, and get paid! Of course I’d have to stop if someone needed help with something because that’s my job but still. It’s a really really good thing. I’m waiting to here from Kelly Byke if she’ll take on an independent study with me next semester as the marketing director for the film. She’ll be amazing if I can get her. Tristan has a petition at school for an overload so he can get 3 credit hours for post-production supervisor. I had another student call me about the position but I wasn’t sure he was aware of what I was asking for and I emailed him with the details. He hasn’t responded yet with whether or not he’s still interested. Kenny and I did a little photo shoot last night for the teaser poster. He’s already got drafts done and will be sending me a final by the end of the night of which I release on the site and on myspace and facebook tonight. So far it looks great.
12/6/06
12/5/06
Shooting Day 4
Production Day 4
Monday, Oct 2nd
The Police Car
The fourth day of shooting was our first day with our police car. One of the things we needed to get to use it on campus was a mall pass; at least this is what the police told me. Usually a mall pass was for parking on the mall. We wanted to just drive down the mall. But whatever. So Danielle and I looked into getting a mall pass and it turned out that only departments could request them. So we had Miguel request a mall pass for a project his students were doing and we got a mall pass. We were pretty worried about it but it turned out to be an easy thing. We picked up the pass on Monday, the day we were going to use it. This was also our first day shooting at the Frat house, which was a friend of mines house. We were starting what tonight what would end up a trend through out production: only shooting half a scene in one night and shooting the rest later. We were only going to shoot with the police car. If the car wasn’t necessary in the shot, I wasn’t going to shoot it. So like the scene when the guys at the frat house are rescued by the cops, we were going to shoot the first half of that on a later night and do the second half on day 4 with our police car. That way we utilize the police car as it was expensive (in our terms) to rent. Well, because it was a police car and because we were going to use it and the emergency lights in a residential area I decided to let the local police as well as the campus police know where we were and what we were doing. Dan showed up to load the stuff and Danielle and I went to the two stations. 5 o’clock traffic was terrible and when I got the local police station…there was a LINE! Literally I was fourth in line to just turn in a letter letting the police know where I was and what I was doing. I’ve never seen a line in the front lobby of a police station, but I was fourth! Grrr. Anyway, I ended up being 30min late to the shoot. I had made a big mistake in calling crew and cast at the same time and so when I got there half the cast was already there just hanging around. Thankfully Tyler was a good host. So we started shooting and the footage was good but it was taking for ever. We ended up moving to campus very late and poor Danielle was going insane because all the cast and crew kept getting parking tickets. Also, it didn’t make sense to set up at the MU when we were just going to move to the other side of campus so we had to call the rest of the cast coming at later call times to meet us where we were. Yeah, they couldn’t find it. Then Danielle had to go get some food for everyone. She had a hard day this day. We set up on one of the side walks and it took like 40min to set up a shot. Poor Akshay was going insane trying to get people to go faster. Kenny had his 2nd assistant on tonight, Joe something. He was really good. But for some reason he never helped us again after that night. I think Dan might have yelled at him and he got pissed or something. Not sure what happened. Anyway. We took a break and ate some KFC. It was probably one of our better catered nights. Mostly through out the shoot we just had dominos. So we had also scheduled this day according to Colin’s schedule. Most of the cast and crew don’t know this but the initial schedule was done to get Colin in the movie. It’s big part and so we did as many of his scenes as we could every night for the first 2 weeks of shooting because that was the only time he was going to be in the valley. We didn’t get to our next location till probably midnight. The last thing we had schedule for that night was the scene with the sorority sisters in the parking garage. This was our first night with Kristin Kelley. It would be our second night with Ali. Well, Jamie McKeel is in the scene and she got into a car accident (small fender-bender) on her way over and couldn’t leave the site of the accident and ended up not coming out at all. And Ali got really sick and had to go to the hospital earlier that night so she couldn’t shoot either. Well we got what we could with the other 2 girls and officer price and called it a night. Noel was nice enough to let us use her car for Alaska’s. I had also hauled David, Colin, and Jon (for his Van) out for shooting that night but couldn’t because of what happened to the girls. Oh well. Guess we’ll have to do the scene before Colin leaves on a different night and bring the cop car back again for another day. Maybe we could cram it into the second day of shooting with the vehicle. Over all I was very happy with the footage but it was hard day schedule wise. Danielle had a hard day too. We only shot about %50 of what I wanted to get done. It was looking more and more like the schedule was going to change from 16 days to longer. Especially with those extra tunnels scenes hanging over our heads. Well, Tuesday was our first day off and I spent the entire day in the computer lab and extended the shoot from 16-20 days. I spent all day on the phone calling actors, crew, and locations to make sure we could make it work. I gave an extra day in the dorms and broke the hardest days in two. I did this mainly because we couldn’t shoot more than 5 pages a day, which is what we’d shot for the first 4 days. But we did have 20 pages in the can. Which is a great feeling.
Monday, Oct 2nd
The Police Car
The fourth day of shooting was our first day with our police car. One of the things we needed to get to use it on campus was a mall pass; at least this is what the police told me. Usually a mall pass was for parking on the mall. We wanted to just drive down the mall. But whatever. So Danielle and I looked into getting a mall pass and it turned out that only departments could request them. So we had Miguel request a mall pass for a project his students were doing and we got a mall pass. We were pretty worried about it but it turned out to be an easy thing. We picked up the pass on Monday, the day we were going to use it. This was also our first day shooting at the Frat house, which was a friend of mines house. We were starting what tonight what would end up a trend through out production: only shooting half a scene in one night and shooting the rest later. We were only going to shoot with the police car. If the car wasn’t necessary in the shot, I wasn’t going to shoot it. So like the scene when the guys at the frat house are rescued by the cops, we were going to shoot the first half of that on a later night and do the second half on day 4 with our police car. That way we utilize the police car as it was expensive (in our terms) to rent. Well, because it was a police car and because we were going to use it and the emergency lights in a residential area I decided to let the local police as well as the campus police know where we were and what we were doing. Dan showed up to load the stuff and Danielle and I went to the two stations. 5 o’clock traffic was terrible and when I got the local police station…there was a LINE! Literally I was fourth in line to just turn in a letter letting the police know where I was and what I was doing. I’ve never seen a line in the front lobby of a police station, but I was fourth! Grrr. Anyway, I ended up being 30min late to the shoot. I had made a big mistake in calling crew and cast at the same time and so when I got there half the cast was already there just hanging around. Thankfully Tyler was a good host. So we started shooting and the footage was good but it was taking for ever. We ended up moving to campus very late and poor Danielle was going insane because all the cast and crew kept getting parking tickets. Also, it didn’t make sense to set up at the MU when we were just going to move to the other side of campus so we had to call the rest of the cast coming at later call times to meet us where we were. Yeah, they couldn’t find it. Then Danielle had to go get some food for everyone. She had a hard day this day. We set up on one of the side walks and it took like 40min to set up a shot. Poor Akshay was going insane trying to get people to go faster. Kenny had his 2nd assistant on tonight, Joe something. He was really good. But for some reason he never helped us again after that night. I think Dan might have yelled at him and he got pissed or something. Not sure what happened. Anyway. We took a break and ate some KFC. It was probably one of our better catered nights. Mostly through out the shoot we just had dominos. So we had also scheduled this day according to Colin’s schedule. Most of the cast and crew don’t know this but the initial schedule was done to get Colin in the movie. It’s big part and so we did as many of his scenes as we could every night for the first 2 weeks of shooting because that was the only time he was going to be in the valley. We didn’t get to our next location till probably midnight. The last thing we had schedule for that night was the scene with the sorority sisters in the parking garage. This was our first night with Kristin Kelley. It would be our second night with Ali. Well, Jamie McKeel is in the scene and she got into a car accident (small fender-bender) on her way over and couldn’t leave the site of the accident and ended up not coming out at all. And Ali got really sick and had to go to the hospital earlier that night so she couldn’t shoot either. Well we got what we could with the other 2 girls and officer price and called it a night. Noel was nice enough to let us use her car for Alaska’s. I had also hauled David, Colin, and Jon (for his Van) out for shooting that night but couldn’t because of what happened to the girls. Oh well. Guess we’ll have to do the scene before Colin leaves on a different night and bring the cop car back again for another day. Maybe we could cram it into the second day of shooting with the vehicle. Over all I was very happy with the footage but it was hard day schedule wise. Danielle had a hard day too. We only shot about %50 of what I wanted to get done. It was looking more and more like the schedule was going to change from 16 days to longer. Especially with those extra tunnels scenes hanging over our heads. Well, Tuesday was our first day off and I spent the entire day in the computer lab and extended the shoot from 16-20 days. I spent all day on the phone calling actors, crew, and locations to make sure we could make it work. I gave an extra day in the dorms and broke the hardest days in two. I did this mainly because we couldn’t shoot more than 5 pages a day, which is what we’d shot for the first 4 days. But we did have 20 pages in the can. Which is a great feeling.
Shooting Day 3
Production Day 3
Sunday, October 1st.
Ah, today was supposed to be the day we start with Alicia as Alaska. But she had told us a few days earlier that she couldn’t work Sunday because she was in a pageant that wouldn’t let her leave the hotel. Man, was I pissed. I mean it’s not like she had the dates a month in advance. Some how there was a miscommunication and she thought the pageant was the weekend before or something like that. Well, we’ll make due. It just makes shooting for us that much easier because it’s less for us to do. Although it means we had to bring Helen (our waitress) back for another day when she was supposed to be done after one day. It also means we have to secure the dinner location again when we were originally only going to shoot there for one day. Well, all we had scheduled for Sunday was the dinner scenes and the interior of the Rahid’s van for when Colin escapes the dorms. Well, shooting that was really easy. Jamie McKeel’s in the scenes and was a real trooper because she was sick and I begged her to come out and do it seeing as our schedule was so tight. I got to meet her mom. We used Jonathan Baranick’s Van which I had always planned on using because of the kidnapping scenes. The Van stuff went well and was great to start working with the rest of the cast. Up until that point we had mostly only worked with the Tyler, Jeremy, and Daniel characters. But tonight we got to work with the whole cast because everyone eats at the dinner through out some portion of the night. The location was great. The closed at 8pm and we started rolling camera at 9pm. The crew worked great together and we also had a fool cast of extras thanks to a few friends of mine that rounded some people up. From the last two nights of shooting I learned to be a little bit more conservative with my shot list. Each scene had no more than 4 shots and a lot of them were very similar. We did move around a lot though to make the dinner scenes stand out from one another. For example we had the cops at the bar and Will and Rahid at a booth. Helen did a great job and the other actors chemistry was starting to come out. The extras ended up staying till midnight and were sooooo awesome. We ended up feeding them to try and keep them in the seats. Thankfully it worked and none of our dinner scenes look sparse. It’s a packed house all night. There were some conflicts in the crew and some internal politics that I had to deal with but that comes with any game. The best thing to do when people are butting heads is keep the peace. As a producer you have to keep the peace. I’d say that over all Day 3 of production was by far our best day of shooting. My shot list was much more doable, the crew worked great, we had lots of extras, the acting was good,…and WE MADE OUR DAY!!! Yeah! First time in 3 days of shooting we made our day. It was great. Very good. Yippee. I was stoked.
Sunday, October 1st.
Ah, today was supposed to be the day we start with Alicia as Alaska. But she had told us a few days earlier that she couldn’t work Sunday because she was in a pageant that wouldn’t let her leave the hotel. Man, was I pissed. I mean it’s not like she had the dates a month in advance. Some how there was a miscommunication and she thought the pageant was the weekend before or something like that. Well, we’ll make due. It just makes shooting for us that much easier because it’s less for us to do. Although it means we had to bring Helen (our waitress) back for another day when she was supposed to be done after one day. It also means we have to secure the dinner location again when we were originally only going to shoot there for one day. Well, all we had scheduled for Sunday was the dinner scenes and the interior of the Rahid’s van for when Colin escapes the dorms. Well, shooting that was really easy. Jamie McKeel’s in the scenes and was a real trooper because she was sick and I begged her to come out and do it seeing as our schedule was so tight. I got to meet her mom. We used Jonathan Baranick’s Van which I had always planned on using because of the kidnapping scenes. The Van stuff went well and was great to start working with the rest of the cast. Up until that point we had mostly only worked with the Tyler, Jeremy, and Daniel characters. But tonight we got to work with the whole cast because everyone eats at the dinner through out some portion of the night. The location was great. The closed at 8pm and we started rolling camera at 9pm. The crew worked great together and we also had a fool cast of extras thanks to a few friends of mine that rounded some people up. From the last two nights of shooting I learned to be a little bit more conservative with my shot list. Each scene had no more than 4 shots and a lot of them were very similar. We did move around a lot though to make the dinner scenes stand out from one another. For example we had the cops at the bar and Will and Rahid at a booth. Helen did a great job and the other actors chemistry was starting to come out. The extras ended up staying till midnight and were sooooo awesome. We ended up feeding them to try and keep them in the seats. Thankfully it worked and none of our dinner scenes look sparse. It’s a packed house all night. There were some conflicts in the crew and some internal politics that I had to deal with but that comes with any game. The best thing to do when people are butting heads is keep the peace. As a producer you have to keep the peace. I’d say that over all Day 3 of production was by far our best day of shooting. My shot list was much more doable, the crew worked great, we had lots of extras, the acting was good,…and WE MADE OUR DAY!!! Yeah! First time in 3 days of shooting we made our day. It was great. Very good. Yippee. I was stoked.
11/30/06
Logging and Importing Done
Tristan and I finished Logging and Importing. I have about 2 hours left of labeling to do on some of the takes and shots and then we can start editing tomorrow. I met my guideline. Other than that nothing much else happened. I did get a call from a film student interested in helping with editing. I’ll give him a call tormorrow. That’s all for post.
Day 2
Production Day 2 (or the Official first day of shooting)
So as to how the day started I don’t remember. It was a Saturday, but it seems really vague. I remember seeing Jon Baranick the first time with his hair cut for the film and he looked great! Day 2 was going to be one of our easier days of shooting. It was all the stuff on the mall. Like the jogging scene and the chase scene with Jon and Adam. Our contact that had rented us the police car also lent us a lighting fixture so we could generate emergency lights on a cop car with out a cop car present. We used them with the scene with Colin in the elevator. I wrote a letter to the police and dropped it off with my contact info and information about what we were doing, where we were doing it and the contact info for my prof. as well. Pretty standard really. I did this on all my movies shot at night on campus. During the day your fine but at night they ask questions and instead of running the risk of getting sent home you just tell them where you are and what you’re doing and they leave you alone. Easy. Just be honest. We started shooting on time and it was good to have the crew whole crew there. Some of them were a little bit dear in head lights but got better as the night went on. The location I wanted to start at didn’t work because we couldn’t find power outlets. Thankfully across the parking lot we found some and shot over there. We did the chase stuff first. Brad, the actor playing officer Navarro, helped us with lighting a bit because Kenny and Dan were pretty nervous. They did generate some great shots. Like the one with the emergency call box. We were way behind though. We had about 7 pages to shoot and at about 11 we had only gotten through 1.5 or so. I really started to panic. I had prepared a 6 page shot list and at midnight I literally threw it out. The jogging scene was supposed to be done in like 12 different shots and I ended up doing the whole thing in 3 shots, with one master and 2 small inserts. Man I hope it edits together well. We had Adam and Jon on tonight for their first night. Adam ended up providing his own costume because Linnaea and I weren’t able to get anything. I had called him a few days before and told him what I was looking for and he said he had exactly that. Linnaea had found a great shirt for Jon’s character. It fit him great and says “hotties ride for free”. Absolutely perfect for the character. Ali started that night too as the character of Sarah. She had to come really late and we ended up shooting until about 3am. One of our latest days. A lot of the scenes we did ended up being in one or two shots because we just didn’t have time. It was by far the worst night of shooting. The footage wasn’t nearly as good as the tunnels and turned out to be the worst of the whole shoot. We actually may have to redo it if it doesn’t edit together well. We’ll see. This is the first I’ve ever mentioned this but it just may happen. We got some really good stuff that night, like the chase, and Colin in the Elevator, but it was by far the worst night of shooting. We didn’t make our day either. We were about a page short at the end of the night. Sigh. We were off to a great start!:(
So as to how the day started I don’t remember. It was a Saturday, but it seems really vague. I remember seeing Jon Baranick the first time with his hair cut for the film and he looked great! Day 2 was going to be one of our easier days of shooting. It was all the stuff on the mall. Like the jogging scene and the chase scene with Jon and Adam. Our contact that had rented us the police car also lent us a lighting fixture so we could generate emergency lights on a cop car with out a cop car present. We used them with the scene with Colin in the elevator. I wrote a letter to the police and dropped it off with my contact info and information about what we were doing, where we were doing it and the contact info for my prof. as well. Pretty standard really. I did this on all my movies shot at night on campus. During the day your fine but at night they ask questions and instead of running the risk of getting sent home you just tell them where you are and what you’re doing and they leave you alone. Easy. Just be honest. We started shooting on time and it was good to have the crew whole crew there. Some of them were a little bit dear in head lights but got better as the night went on. The location I wanted to start at didn’t work because we couldn’t find power outlets. Thankfully across the parking lot we found some and shot over there. We did the chase stuff first. Brad, the actor playing officer Navarro, helped us with lighting a bit because Kenny and Dan were pretty nervous. They did generate some great shots. Like the one with the emergency call box. We were way behind though. We had about 7 pages to shoot and at about 11 we had only gotten through 1.5 or so. I really started to panic. I had prepared a 6 page shot list and at midnight I literally threw it out. The jogging scene was supposed to be done in like 12 different shots and I ended up doing the whole thing in 3 shots, with one master and 2 small inserts. Man I hope it edits together well. We had Adam and Jon on tonight for their first night. Adam ended up providing his own costume because Linnaea and I weren’t able to get anything. I had called him a few days before and told him what I was looking for and he said he had exactly that. Linnaea had found a great shirt for Jon’s character. It fit him great and says “hotties ride for free”. Absolutely perfect for the character. Ali started that night too as the character of Sarah. She had to come really late and we ended up shooting until about 3am. One of our latest days. A lot of the scenes we did ended up being in one or two shots because we just didn’t have time. It was by far the worst night of shooting. The footage wasn’t nearly as good as the tunnels and turned out to be the worst of the whole shoot. We actually may have to redo it if it doesn’t edit together well. We’ll see. This is the first I’ve ever mentioned this but it just may happen. We got some really good stuff that night, like the chase, and Colin in the Elevator, but it was by far the worst night of shooting. We didn’t make our day either. We were about a page short at the end of the night. Sigh. We were off to a great start!:(
11/29/06
Post Begins
We’ve started post production even though we haven’t officially completed shooting. Below is a copy of an email I sent to cast and crew a few weeks ago with some information that might be of interest to you.
Cast and Crew:
Good morning. I apologize for the long silence. I've spent the last week logging like crazy and doing some data analysis work. Since the production started on September 27th we've shot roughly 23 hours of footage on 36 tapes. Not my best of shooting ratio's but 1/11 isn't that bad...well...comparatively. So far we have shot 94 pages in 23 days of production. 2 of those days were hard 12-14 hour days for the crew. I know that every one's anxious for a wrap party but we still have 5 pages of this monster left to do. Unfortunately these five pages involve a lot of you, a lot of different locations, and the philanthropy scene. Danielle, Dan, and I will be getting together in the next few days to hack out a schedule. you can rest assure that we will schedule things at least 2 weeks in advance so you can free you schedule and be done with this film.
I actually finished logging the day I wrote that email. It took FOREVER. For the last week I’ve been working on logging my shot logs into the computer as well as capturing and working on the trailer. I have to have a trailer edited for my final for my post production class. I was thinking about releasing it Friday but it won’t be ready because it still needs a score. I’ve actually decided I’m not going to release it until February; I want to make it timely. I don’t want to post a trailer so far in advance that people forget about it. So basically I’ve been living in the lab for the last 3 weeks. Literally I’ve been there almost every hour it’s open. Tristan Ringenoldus (an executive producer) has been helping me for the past few days. He assembled a few scenes and is going to help me get a rough assembly of the film done by Dec 13th. The lab closes then for winter break.
Dan, Linnaea, and I met with my post production professor, Miguel, and the directing professor to talk about where we are in the capstone and what we need to do to finish. I gave them a rough outline for deadlines which are below:
Dec 13 Rough Assembly (Lab Closes)
Jan 16 (Lab Reopens)
Jan 30 Rough Cut
Feb 13 Fine Cut
Feb 27 Picture Lock
March 13 Foley and ADR Recorded
March 27 Score and Rough Sound Mix
April 17 Final Sound Mix
April 24 Final Picture done and turned in
May 1st or 2nd campus premiere.
They said this was a tight schedule and hard deadlines but they think it’s a good calendar. I’m going to bring on a few others to help finish the film. I’ve sent out a few invites and am waiting for a response. It’s great though to have my professor looking at the footage. Everyone was so hesitant before and Crystal, my post production professor says the footage is looking really good. Yes. Score one for me.
Kenny and I have started work on the one sheets. I sent him some movie posters that I liked and we’re gonna start brainstorming.
I’m going to peruse a marking person to help devise a marketing plan for the movie. I’ll make that reach tomorrow.
Cast and Crew:
Good morning. I apologize for the long silence. I've spent the last week logging like crazy and doing some data analysis work. Since the production started on September 27th we've shot roughly 23 hours of footage on 36 tapes. Not my best of shooting ratio's but 1/11 isn't that bad...well...comparatively. So far we have shot 94 pages in 23 days of production. 2 of those days were hard 12-14 hour days for the crew. I know that every one's anxious for a wrap party but we still have 5 pages of this monster left to do. Unfortunately these five pages involve a lot of you, a lot of different locations, and the philanthropy scene. Danielle, Dan, and I will be getting together in the next few days to hack out a schedule. you can rest assure that we will schedule things at least 2 weeks in advance so you can free you schedule and be done with this film.
I actually finished logging the day I wrote that email. It took FOREVER. For the last week I’ve been working on logging my shot logs into the computer as well as capturing and working on the trailer. I have to have a trailer edited for my final for my post production class. I was thinking about releasing it Friday but it won’t be ready because it still needs a score. I’ve actually decided I’m not going to release it until February; I want to make it timely. I don’t want to post a trailer so far in advance that people forget about it. So basically I’ve been living in the lab for the last 3 weeks. Literally I’ve been there almost every hour it’s open. Tristan Ringenoldus (an executive producer) has been helping me for the past few days. He assembled a few scenes and is going to help me get a rough assembly of the film done by Dec 13th. The lab closes then for winter break.
Dan, Linnaea, and I met with my post production professor, Miguel, and the directing professor to talk about where we are in the capstone and what we need to do to finish. I gave them a rough outline for deadlines which are below:
Dec 13 Rough Assembly (Lab Closes)
Jan 16 (Lab Reopens)
Jan 30 Rough Cut
Feb 13 Fine Cut
Feb 27 Picture Lock
March 13 Foley and ADR Recorded
March 27 Score and Rough Sound Mix
April 17 Final Sound Mix
April 24 Final Picture done and turned in
May 1st or 2nd campus premiere.
They said this was a tight schedule and hard deadlines but they think it’s a good calendar. I’m going to bring on a few others to help finish the film. I’ve sent out a few invites and am waiting for a response. It’s great though to have my professor looking at the footage. Everyone was so hesitant before and Crystal, my post production professor says the footage is looking really good. Yes. Score one for me.
Kenny and I have started work on the one sheets. I sent him some movie posters that I liked and we’re gonna start brainstorming.
I’m going to peruse a marking person to help devise a marketing plan for the movie. I’ll make that reach tomorrow.
SAG
Screen Actors Guild
In my preproduction post I forgot to mention my goings on with SAG. Well I got all the paperwork after I submitted my initial information sheet via email from my representative. I called my local contact and found out he was on vacation till the 14th. Well we started shooting on the 27th and I had to have all this paper work in 3 weeks before we started shooting. Great. It’s not that it was hard or a lot of paper work. I’m just not a lawyer and don’t understand what some of the stuff means and I wanted to make sure that I did everything write and didn’t get in trouble or anything. Well I ended up call the emergency number left on my local contacts voicemail and talked to the regional director. It was a miracle I got her. Her assistant had the day off so she was answering her own phone calls. She helped me for about an hour as I asked her all kinds of questions. I couldn’t believe how nice she was. I filled out all the paper work and sent it in. it was a little late but the regional director assured me it would be fine. When the time came I called my contact when he got back from vacation and informed him on where we where in the process. I had to give the SAG office a deposit of 350 for the Sag actors to ensure that they got paid had we run out of money or something. Well as we got closer and closer to production I got nervous because I wasn’t hearing anything. I called and called and called and it was impossible to talk to anyone that wasn’t someone’s assistant. Like I said, it was a miracle I got the regional director when I did. Anyway we didn’t get final approval until 2pm the day we started shooting at about 20min before we needed to start shooting with our first sag actor. Talk about cutting it short. From there I had to keep a log of the sag actor’s time and the meal and send the paper work off right way to sag along with a check for the performer. Fun times. ;)
In my preproduction post I forgot to mention my goings on with SAG. Well I got all the paperwork after I submitted my initial information sheet via email from my representative. I called my local contact and found out he was on vacation till the 14th. Well we started shooting on the 27th and I had to have all this paper work in 3 weeks before we started shooting. Great. It’s not that it was hard or a lot of paper work. I’m just not a lawyer and don’t understand what some of the stuff means and I wanted to make sure that I did everything write and didn’t get in trouble or anything. Well I ended up call the emergency number left on my local contacts voicemail and talked to the regional director. It was a miracle I got her. Her assistant had the day off so she was answering her own phone calls. She helped me for about an hour as I asked her all kinds of questions. I couldn’t believe how nice she was. I filled out all the paper work and sent it in. it was a little late but the regional director assured me it would be fine. When the time came I called my contact when he got back from vacation and informed him on where we where in the process. I had to give the SAG office a deposit of 350 for the Sag actors to ensure that they got paid had we run out of money or something. Well as we got closer and closer to production I got nervous because I wasn’t hearing anything. I called and called and called and it was impossible to talk to anyone that wasn’t someone’s assistant. Like I said, it was a miracle I got the regional director when I did. Anyway we didn’t get final approval until 2pm the day we started shooting at about 20min before we needed to start shooting with our first sag actor. Talk about cutting it short. From there I had to keep a log of the sag actor’s time and the meal and send the paper work off right way to sag along with a check for the performer. Fun times. ;)
Shooting Day 1
Wednesday, September 27th, Production Day 1.
For those of you that pay attention to me and my blog you’ll notice that the first day of shooting was always listed as Saturday the 30th. Well, that was all a rouse. The actual first day of shooting was on Wednesday the 27th and had been for a very long time. It was our Tunnels day. We kept it secret because facilities management is very very touchy about the location. For one they try to keep it secret from students that the tunnels even exist. Most people wanted to go into the tunnels. So to make sure people didn’t tag along or show up we kept the shooting day a secret. So the necessary cast and a select group of students for crew, which mainly consisted of me, Dan and Joel, were allowed into the tunnels.
Because there were so many different requirements of the tunnel locations, (like ladders, doors, stairs, intersections etc) we spent 3 days down there during preproduction looking for all these places. We found them all after the 2nd scout and I made a plot map of campus with each location and then figured out the most time and cast efficient way of going to the different locations. On Wednesday the 20th, a week before we started, Dan, Danielle, and I and our two facman contacts went and did a walk through of our path for the day of shooting to time the location moves. We had nine pages to shoot on the 27th and it was going to be one of the hardest days of our 16 day schedule. Danielle and I borrowed some walkie talkies from the campus film club to stay in contact. She would run the home base (kind of production office) in the mu and I’d radio to her when we need new actors or where moving or whatever. We had a plan.
The Tuesday night before we started Colin arrived and I started my shot list for the next day. It was exciting to do that. It ended up being like 5 pages long single spaced. I basically wrote the scene number, then all the shots and their descriptions, things like panning from under grate, or two shot of Tyler and Jeremy.
Because the locations were underground and because the facman guys could only help us during there business hours we had to shoot from 7:30am-4pm. doing day for night would be fine because no sunlight was going to make it in there.
On Tuesday we picked up just the equipment we would need in the tunnels, a tripod and a fig rig and a mic and a camera. Sorry, no lights. There was no way we could light down there and run power cords. The facman guys said they would bring a portable florescent that they used often when fixing things. They also said they’d bring a full florescent incase we needed some serious light. That was nice of them.
So Danielle picked me, Colin, and Joel up at my house first thing in the morning and we got the MU about 7:30. Cast was called at 8am. The facman guys were there early. Linnaea was stuck in morning traffic so we had to wait for her to get there before we could start. We started shooting 30min late. Linnaea had forgotten Colin’s Characters bandanna and had to go get it so I had to switch the schedule right away. We ended up taking mike zduniak out into the tunnels at a different location which also messed up our plan. As we walked there we realized that our walkie talkies weren’t working because the distance was so great. We went into the tunnels and set up the first shot and used the slate. But as we set up the second shot I decided to leave the slate out and leave it at the mu when we got back because it was just costing time and it was one more thing to carry. We had to wait for 15min for a facman guy to go grab an extension cord because we forgot one. We had to wait again because this one wasn’t long enough. To make a long story short we ended up shooting 3 shoots in an hour. It took it equaled about 3/8ths of a page in the can at 10am. We had nine pages to shoot. Man was I panicked. I immediately cut the scene where mike hangs himself from my shot list which was about a page long because I knew we wouldn’t get to it and it was one of the least important scenes. It was a cool scene, a character moment, but it didn’t further the story so I cut it. When we got back linnaea was back and we started shooting with all 3 guys. We went to the original location were we were supposed to start and randy Rubin our DVD guy came along with it. We ended up getting him and extra camera fro the DVD stuff. We spent the next few hours shooting at a few different locations and got some really really great stuff. It took the guys 10 takes to get the big camera scene down but it’ll be great in the movie. While we where shooting Danielle and noel were furiously sewing on official patches onto the cop uniforms, something that we had forgotten to do. We took a break and went back to the MU to get some water and then ventured out again. We went to this room where we shot the scene where they split up. It was 110 degrees in there I kid you not. You should see the footage between takes. It was so hot and uncomfortable. You can see the sweat on the guys in the actual footage. It was great though because that’s why they split up, because it was too hot. Method acting hahaha. Well we’re still way behind schedule and I was panicking. I later found out the facman guys were talking to the actors and crew because they’d never seen me so stressed. When we broke for lunch all my cops where there and in uniform. They looked GREAT! So good. After lunch we went to the next location and did the cop stuff in the tunnels and it became about 3:00pm. I made a decision to finish the cops stuff so I wouldn’t have to bring them into the tunnels again, especially our sag actor, john. I was able to finish the cop stuff and by the end of the day I had 56min of footage and only 5 ½ pages done of the 9 we had started with. I was panicked. Then one of the facman guys approached me and told me that he would help me out and bring me into the tunnels again if I needed to on another day. The original agreement was one day but he said that his assignment was to help us out and if we weren’t done we weren’t done. Oh thank god for these facman guys. They saved my movie. I told them I’d be in contact with them on when to finish so I thanked them and we wrapped up. I had absolutly no idea when we could shoot in the tunnels again because our schedule was so tight. but i knew i'd make it work some how. We went back to the house and watched the dailies and I was very very pleased to say the least with the amazing footage we got. I don’t remember what we did that night or in the next few days but the next day of shooting was Saturday the 30th, the “official” first day.
For those of you that pay attention to me and my blog you’ll notice that the first day of shooting was always listed as Saturday the 30th. Well, that was all a rouse. The actual first day of shooting was on Wednesday the 27th and had been for a very long time. It was our Tunnels day. We kept it secret because facilities management is very very touchy about the location. For one they try to keep it secret from students that the tunnels even exist. Most people wanted to go into the tunnels. So to make sure people didn’t tag along or show up we kept the shooting day a secret. So the necessary cast and a select group of students for crew, which mainly consisted of me, Dan and Joel, were allowed into the tunnels.
Because there were so many different requirements of the tunnel locations, (like ladders, doors, stairs, intersections etc) we spent 3 days down there during preproduction looking for all these places. We found them all after the 2nd scout and I made a plot map of campus with each location and then figured out the most time and cast efficient way of going to the different locations. On Wednesday the 20th, a week before we started, Dan, Danielle, and I and our two facman contacts went and did a walk through of our path for the day of shooting to time the location moves. We had nine pages to shoot on the 27th and it was going to be one of the hardest days of our 16 day schedule. Danielle and I borrowed some walkie talkies from the campus film club to stay in contact. She would run the home base (kind of production office) in the mu and I’d radio to her when we need new actors or where moving or whatever. We had a plan.
The Tuesday night before we started Colin arrived and I started my shot list for the next day. It was exciting to do that. It ended up being like 5 pages long single spaced. I basically wrote the scene number, then all the shots and their descriptions, things like panning from under grate, or two shot of Tyler and Jeremy.
Because the locations were underground and because the facman guys could only help us during there business hours we had to shoot from 7:30am-4pm. doing day for night would be fine because no sunlight was going to make it in there.
On Tuesday we picked up just the equipment we would need in the tunnels, a tripod and a fig rig and a mic and a camera. Sorry, no lights. There was no way we could light down there and run power cords. The facman guys said they would bring a portable florescent that they used often when fixing things. They also said they’d bring a full florescent incase we needed some serious light. That was nice of them.
So Danielle picked me, Colin, and Joel up at my house first thing in the morning and we got the MU about 7:30. Cast was called at 8am. The facman guys were there early. Linnaea was stuck in morning traffic so we had to wait for her to get there before we could start. We started shooting 30min late. Linnaea had forgotten Colin’s Characters bandanna and had to go get it so I had to switch the schedule right away. We ended up taking mike zduniak out into the tunnels at a different location which also messed up our plan. As we walked there we realized that our walkie talkies weren’t working because the distance was so great. We went into the tunnels and set up the first shot and used the slate. But as we set up the second shot I decided to leave the slate out and leave it at the mu when we got back because it was just costing time and it was one more thing to carry. We had to wait for 15min for a facman guy to go grab an extension cord because we forgot one. We had to wait again because this one wasn’t long enough. To make a long story short we ended up shooting 3 shoots in an hour. It took it equaled about 3/8ths of a page in the can at 10am. We had nine pages to shoot. Man was I panicked. I immediately cut the scene where mike hangs himself from my shot list which was about a page long because I knew we wouldn’t get to it and it was one of the least important scenes. It was a cool scene, a character moment, but it didn’t further the story so I cut it. When we got back linnaea was back and we started shooting with all 3 guys. We went to the original location were we were supposed to start and randy Rubin our DVD guy came along with it. We ended up getting him and extra camera fro the DVD stuff. We spent the next few hours shooting at a few different locations and got some really really great stuff. It took the guys 10 takes to get the big camera scene down but it’ll be great in the movie. While we where shooting Danielle and noel were furiously sewing on official patches onto the cop uniforms, something that we had forgotten to do. We took a break and went back to the MU to get some water and then ventured out again. We went to this room where we shot the scene where they split up. It was 110 degrees in there I kid you not. You should see the footage between takes. It was so hot and uncomfortable. You can see the sweat on the guys in the actual footage. It was great though because that’s why they split up, because it was too hot. Method acting hahaha. Well we’re still way behind schedule and I was panicking. I later found out the facman guys were talking to the actors and crew because they’d never seen me so stressed. When we broke for lunch all my cops where there and in uniform. They looked GREAT! So good. After lunch we went to the next location and did the cop stuff in the tunnels and it became about 3:00pm. I made a decision to finish the cops stuff so I wouldn’t have to bring them into the tunnels again, especially our sag actor, john. I was able to finish the cop stuff and by the end of the day I had 56min of footage and only 5 ½ pages done of the 9 we had started with. I was panicked. Then one of the facman guys approached me and told me that he would help me out and bring me into the tunnels again if I needed to on another day. The original agreement was one day but he said that his assignment was to help us out and if we weren’t done we weren’t done. Oh thank god for these facman guys. They saved my movie. I told them I’d be in contact with them on when to finish so I thanked them and we wrapped up. I had absolutly no idea when we could shoot in the tunnels again because our schedule was so tight. but i knew i'd make it work some how. We went back to the house and watched the dailies and I was very very pleased to say the least with the amazing footage we got. I don’t remember what we did that night or in the next few days but the next day of shooting was Saturday the 30th, the “official” first day.
11/27/06
The Rest of Pre-Production
Phew. Wow. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Man things have been crazy. It’s been roughly 11 weeks since I last posted. In the last 11 weeks we’ve shot 94 pages of the screenplay. 5 pages left. What I’m going to do is go back as far as I can and look at my calendar and try and fill in the last 11 weeks. The easiest way for me to do this will to be to take each aspect of the film and go through what happened up until production. I just can’t remember the dates. So here goes:
Sept 10th-27th.
Dorms
I keep trying to find out if reslife will work. Everyday I call to see if they’ll help us out. Around this time I got an idea. One of the AFA events was taking place at the dorms at the downtown campus so I decided to call them and see if we could film there. The lady was really nice. She said I could just come down whenever I wanted to take a look at the location. On some Thursday or something Danielle and I had gone to the west campus to meet with the police commander for the second time and decided to just stop by the downtown campus and see the dorms. We walked in and met my contact. She couldn’t have been nicer. She showed us the facility, the courtyard, the halls, the show rooms, and even an empty room. She said that she thought the residents would be excited because it would be something neat happening in the dorms. She did for a second sit us down and talk serious. She wanted to know exactly what we where filming. Especially when she found out a few of the scenes involved police officers. After an honest answer to her concerns with things like the only crimes committed were trespassing and underage drinking she was at ease. We still wanted to use the main campus dorms so we told her we’d get back to her if we wanted to use them. In the next few days I continued to pester my reslife contact and things weren’t working out. He just wasn’t’ returning my calls. Out of desperation I had an idea. Miguel’s office used to be a dorm. When meeting with him I looked around and realized that the theatre and film office would make a great dorm because it used to be one. It was renovated in the 70’s or something and was turned into offices. I went to the dean’s office and they showed me an empty office and it was perfect. It was a dorm room. I had to talk to the head of the department and she was wary of letting us film there. She said that if there was an empty office it needed to go to faculty. I pursued for a little bit but eventually gave up the path because it didn’t seem like an option. I was getting to a point of desperation. I thought the dorms were going to go to public events who are the bane of my existence. Public events would shut us down in a second if we didn’t pay them all kinds of fines and stuff and have the script approved. I got so desperate at one point and worried that I actually went to the public events office and decided if reslife was going to go to them I’d do it first. While I was waiting at the office my phone rang and it was reslife. OMG. I answered and it was my contact and he said he was sorry but he’d been busy and he was finally ready to meet with me. Well I had had my professor and the head of the department a few days earlier email him because he wasn’t responding. Guess it worked. Man it would have been so bad had I made it to my public events meeting. Grace of god on that one. So we met with my contact a few days later, Danielle and I, and the dorms were absolutely perfect. But the problem was that we had about 2 or 3 days till we started shooting and we needed to know if we could do it. Apparently they were selling the rights to the property and reslife would no longer be in control of the property, so they couldn’t tell me when we could film there. It would be empty but they just didn’t know when the contracts would go through. It came to the point were we had to start shooting and I made the decision to use the down town campus. I didn’t want to for a few reasons. One it looked like a hotel more than a dorm, (because it was a hotel before it was a dorm) two, resident’s lived there (which means an uncontrolled environment) and three, the commute, it’s about 20 minutes from where most of the shoot is. But, it was these dorms or no dorms so I made my diction and we ended up shooting at the down town campus for the dorms.
Police Station
I finally got a response from the police commander. I set up a meeting with him for Thursday. See for some reason he got transferred to the west campus while I was working on the script. So he set up a meeting with him and with the main campus police commander. I met with them and it was a miracle. Everything I asked for they said they could do. All the police cars, the stations, etc. I showed them my schedule which required them for 3 days and they were fine. They said they just had to clear it with the chief of police. And the chief of police wanted a copy of the script. So I did a little doctoring to make it less of an R and to make the police stuff look a little friendlier and turned in the script. A few days later I met with the main campus commander and he said that the chief hadn’t read it but he did say that what we were asking for was too much. He said that the main campus was just too busy. If we wanted the police’s help we could use them for maybe use on car for an hour on one night. HA! I had THREE FULL DAYS! And needed 3 cars for 2-3 hours. What a slap in the face. How was I going to do this movie with out the police? I called my contact at the west campus because we had talked previously about possible using the west campus station and cars. I left messages but didn’t’ get a response so Danielle and I decided to just drive to the west campus and try and catch him in his office. We went to the station at about 10am and it appeared to be closed. The one thing I was most worried about for the police station was the front lobby scenes. The main campus station had a front lobby that was great. I couldn’t’ recreate it. It had a window for the dispatch office and all kinds of memorabilia. The rest of the station could easily be doubled anywhere for any office like place. So anyway, the station appeared to be shut down. We decided to just wait outside. While we were waiting we saw a police car drive down the road. I joked about following it but we just decided to leave. As we were leaving we passed the cruiser parked so I decided to actually go looking for the officer. Danielle dropped me off and I went walking all around this building looking for this officer. I didn’t find and officer but I did find a police aide. The police aide said that the commander was in his office so he took Danielle and I back to the station and let us in. the commander said he was happy to see us and that he apologized for the appearance of the station being closed. They just didn’t have anyone to manage the front desk so they kept it locked. Anyway, he said he didn’t have good news for us. He said the chief did end up reading the script and he didn’t like it. And neither did he. He said they weren’t going to be able to help us out. I started to protest. For one I knew he wouldn’t’ like the script. He’ wasn’t the demographic the screenplay was designed for. I assured him that this was a school project, etc. to make a long story short I pleaded and pleaded and he finally said that we couldn’t use the cars but we could use the west campus station for all the interior station stuff. And the best part of that offer was that the west campus stations’ front lobby was better than the main campus station. The commander was so generous that he even offered for us to use the east campus because they had genuine jail cells with sliding bars and everything. The only stipulation he put on us was that we had to pay a police aide $27 an hour to basically baby sit us. We agreed because there were no other options and we needed the location. The Tuesday before we started shooting we went down the east campus police station and looked at the cells. Initially after the chief denied us access to the main campus station we thought we were going to build cells in the studio. Man they’d be crappy but we were going to do it. But these cells were perfect! So perfect! So it looked like our police station was going to be made up of both east and west campus stations.
Cop Cars
So when the Campus Police said we couldn’t use their cars I panicked. I had no idea what to do. Danielle and I tried to talk to a few different options. We contacted the local police departments and nobody ever got back to us. Danielle did some research online and found a local collector of police cars and emailed him. She even talked to the local film commission. The commission got back to us and had a service that they set up with the local police in which you pay the officers $51 an hour, $7 an hour for the car, plus something like $.57 a mile. Well we didn’t have that money. We needed the car(s) for at least 2 nights. We need 3 for a few hours and 1 for 2 days of shooting. Danielle’s collector got back to us and gave us a GREAT DEAL. Apparently he did this sort of thing in LA, lending his collector vehicles to film productions. Since we were students he let us hire him for $50 a day and food on the Set. OMG he saved the movie. We hired him right away and he provided one Crown Victoria and he also lent us a light fixture to simulate flashing cop car lights. We picked that up on Tuesday the day before shooting.
Production design
Over the 2-3 weeks we had before we started shooting Linnaea and I tried to get together as much as possible. It was really hard because she was working almost full time and going to school full time. Plus she had to go to Wyoming for a weekend to pick up some of her mom’s stuff. We did the best we could as far as props and costumes are concerned. The most important costume/prop was the cop stuff. The uniforms, belts, boots, etc. Dan found this uniform store that was for Law Enforcement specifically so Linnaea and I went there. The class A uniforms cost us about $250 a piece. The thing we were most worried about was the belts and holsters. They were so expensive. Were’ talking $150 a holster. We couldn’t afford that at all. I went around to a few different Halloween places (seeing as it was close to Halloween). I found some toy guns called “Secret Agent” guns that I ended up using for the cop guns (you’d never know). But I couldn’t find holsters anywhere. Then I had an idea. Gun shops! I found a few gun shops slash pawn places and went to one of them the guy rented me 3 police belts, clip holders, cuff holders, and holsters for like $40 for the month! Wahoo. I was a little worried about the costumes and other props but they were easily found enough. I’d been picking things up for a while anyway. Like the dart board in will and rahid’s room. I got that in June. It took me a long time to get all the paperwork to linnaea that she needed. She spent the few weeks before production gathering the different stuff she had that would work and also she and I made lots of errands. Man things were starting to pile up in my house.
Tunnels
The tunnels were the easiest location to deal with. I did have a quick scare though. There was a period of a few days where we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get a person to accompany us in the tunnels because one of our contacts was going away to some training or conference or something. I actually went to the office of facman pleading for them to help me and someone there of importance assured me they’d make it happen. Man that was scary. One of my contacts ended up giving me his cell phone number so that I wouldn’t have to deal with middle management anymore. He said they got all confused because it had already ben approved so why was I dealing with them? That made things a lot easier.
Dinner
After travis’ futile pursuits with ihop we decided to try other avenues. But all of travis’ contacts dried up. Nobody wanted to help us. Not even the village inn. I decided to try a 50’s style dinner that’s located in the school and run by campus dinning. They were totally cool with us filming. Basically they said just call a few days before and they’d lock us inside when the restaurant was closed and we could just leave when we were done. We didn’t have to have anyone watch us or anything. HA! They even said they’d turn on the fountain so we could have free soda! How about that?
Construction site
Danielle and I just decided to walk into the big construction sites and strait up ask the people there how we could get permission. It was actually a fun day. It rained like crazy and I almost ruined my Birkenstocks. That would have been a travesty. Well we talked to a construction worked on Saturday and he told us to come back on Monday and talk to Rick and R.C. When we came back on Monday we found out that it was Rick and Arcey. Yeah, way different than R.C. but these guys were awesome. They thought it sounded easy enough. We only needed to be there for a few hours. One of he regulations was we had to where hard hats which sounded like fun anyway. Also had to have close toed shoes. No objections from us. After calling them every other day or so for a week or two they finally gave us the go ahead. We’d meet a night foremen at about 7pm and he’d hang with us till we were done.
Budget
So one day, I don’t remember which, Danielle and I got together and did a budget. We figured out we’d spend about $5000 and raise about $1000 from friends and family to help with a contingency incase we went over. Most of our budget came from me, Then Dan and his mom, then Tristan Ringenoldus ( a good friend of mine), then Danielle, then Kenny, etc.
Cast
When %25 of the cast didn’t show for the read through you can rest a sure I was concerned. I spent the few weeks before production talking to a few of the cast members and trying to woo them into their parts. The hardest was getting Jamie McKeel to play Michelle. She wasn’t too excited about the role at first and I had to kind of talk her into it. Ever since Dan and I did OK with her I really wanted her to be involved in Freshmen. I had asked her to audition but she never did. Then when an actress turned down the role of Michelle I ran to Jamie. She didn’t really agree to the role until the day before we needed the character, which was the second day of shooting. The third day was her first, which was the stuff in the van on the day we were at the dinner. I also had a terrible time trying to find an actor for the Ricky Carr role. Everyone I approached turned it down. I even interviewed a friend of Josh McDermitt’s for a role in the film and he was a real nice guy, good looking, and if he’s got josh’s support he’s got to be good. Unfortunately he was too old for Ricky Carr and too young for a cop. We had a few actors like that in auditions. So I ended up playing myself. Linnaea’s son Jason Kimble ended up as one of our officers and I was able to get a friend from my past job, Jeff Rensel, at the MU to play the other officer. Still no Ricky Carr though. I was finally able to get a hold of Vic and he had a lot going on in his life at the time we were about to start shooting. I told him I’d love the part but would understand if he couldn’t do it. He said he wanted to and I was stoked! Vic was one of the Very First actors I had in mind for the movie. In fact you could say I wrote the role of Ashton for him. The girl who was playing Sarah also dropped out of the cast and I had very little time to fill the role. I was able to get Jamie Israel’s girl friend, Ali Rae, to do the role (I’d worked with her before). Still no Ricky Carr so I ended up playing the role. Oh yeah, and David emailed me out of the blue saying that his girlfriend all of a sudden felt weird about him kissing a girl at the end of the movie. Rahid kisses Michelle. So I told him he didn’t have to do it. I mean this wasn’t Romeo & Juliet or anything. They could do other things beside kiss. But then during production I found out that she broke up with him and he was too embarrassed to tell me. Him. Glad he put the movie first. But then he got back together with his girlfriend so whatever. He still couldn’t have kissed in the end. Is that a pun? Colin flew into town on Tuesday night the night before we started shooting. It was great to see him.
Crew:
We had crew interviews and I made a huge mistake in scheduling them at 30 min a piece. It seriously took about 5 min per interview and the rest of the time we played around on you tube. We gave everyone a job and our crew turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Joel flew in from LA on Monday and spent the next few days with Danielle and I doing preproduction things. He can Colin became good friends real fast. We had our crew orientation on Tuesday. Man what a “success” that was. Only like half the people showed up and it was kind of awkward. At least for me. I had this whole plan and we were even going to shoot a mock scene to get used to working with one another. Yeah that didn’t happen. Not enough people showed. But Joel got to play around with the camera a little and Kenny and Stephanie showed me the lighting equipment they wanted. man oh man. Kenny and Stephanie scared the shit out of us. It was the day before we started shooting and they we had only planed to use lights in interiors at locations we could control, we’re talking like 4 of you 16 days, and they told us they wanted, wait no… needed lights every day of production. Jesus. Well we bit it off and dove in.
Equipment
So from the school we got Panasonic DVX100b’s, a Fig Rig (Which was amazing), 4 c-stand, a mole Richardson light kit, apple boxes, sand bags, stinger (extension cords), a condenser shot gun mike and boom pole, and on the occasion, a 12 foot strait track dolly. Molly’s friend who has a Costco member ship got us some tape. 40 tapes for $100
Extras
Yeah, Extra’s was something I was worried about but never really gave much thought too. I know we need them, and a lot of them, but there was so much to be done and had that I just didn’t know what to do. When the days came that we needed a few I knew I’d just make the crew do it. But the big days. I hadn’t resolved that yet.
Then we started shooting…
Sept 10th-27th.
Dorms
I keep trying to find out if reslife will work. Everyday I call to see if they’ll help us out. Around this time I got an idea. One of the AFA events was taking place at the dorms at the downtown campus so I decided to call them and see if we could film there. The lady was really nice. She said I could just come down whenever I wanted to take a look at the location. On some Thursday or something Danielle and I had gone to the west campus to meet with the police commander for the second time and decided to just stop by the downtown campus and see the dorms. We walked in and met my contact. She couldn’t have been nicer. She showed us the facility, the courtyard, the halls, the show rooms, and even an empty room. She said that she thought the residents would be excited because it would be something neat happening in the dorms. She did for a second sit us down and talk serious. She wanted to know exactly what we where filming. Especially when she found out a few of the scenes involved police officers. After an honest answer to her concerns with things like the only crimes committed were trespassing and underage drinking she was at ease. We still wanted to use the main campus dorms so we told her we’d get back to her if we wanted to use them. In the next few days I continued to pester my reslife contact and things weren’t working out. He just wasn’t’ returning my calls. Out of desperation I had an idea. Miguel’s office used to be a dorm. When meeting with him I looked around and realized that the theatre and film office would make a great dorm because it used to be one. It was renovated in the 70’s or something and was turned into offices. I went to the dean’s office and they showed me an empty office and it was perfect. It was a dorm room. I had to talk to the head of the department and she was wary of letting us film there. She said that if there was an empty office it needed to go to faculty. I pursued for a little bit but eventually gave up the path because it didn’t seem like an option. I was getting to a point of desperation. I thought the dorms were going to go to public events who are the bane of my existence. Public events would shut us down in a second if we didn’t pay them all kinds of fines and stuff and have the script approved. I got so desperate at one point and worried that I actually went to the public events office and decided if reslife was going to go to them I’d do it first. While I was waiting at the office my phone rang and it was reslife. OMG. I answered and it was my contact and he said he was sorry but he’d been busy and he was finally ready to meet with me. Well I had had my professor and the head of the department a few days earlier email him because he wasn’t responding. Guess it worked. Man it would have been so bad had I made it to my public events meeting. Grace of god on that one. So we met with my contact a few days later, Danielle and I, and the dorms were absolutely perfect. But the problem was that we had about 2 or 3 days till we started shooting and we needed to know if we could do it. Apparently they were selling the rights to the property and reslife would no longer be in control of the property, so they couldn’t tell me when we could film there. It would be empty but they just didn’t know when the contracts would go through. It came to the point were we had to start shooting and I made the decision to use the down town campus. I didn’t want to for a few reasons. One it looked like a hotel more than a dorm, (because it was a hotel before it was a dorm) two, resident’s lived there (which means an uncontrolled environment) and three, the commute, it’s about 20 minutes from where most of the shoot is. But, it was these dorms or no dorms so I made my diction and we ended up shooting at the down town campus for the dorms.
Police Station
I finally got a response from the police commander. I set up a meeting with him for Thursday. See for some reason he got transferred to the west campus while I was working on the script. So he set up a meeting with him and with the main campus police commander. I met with them and it was a miracle. Everything I asked for they said they could do. All the police cars, the stations, etc. I showed them my schedule which required them for 3 days and they were fine. They said they just had to clear it with the chief of police. And the chief of police wanted a copy of the script. So I did a little doctoring to make it less of an R and to make the police stuff look a little friendlier and turned in the script. A few days later I met with the main campus commander and he said that the chief hadn’t read it but he did say that what we were asking for was too much. He said that the main campus was just too busy. If we wanted the police’s help we could use them for maybe use on car for an hour on one night. HA! I had THREE FULL DAYS! And needed 3 cars for 2-3 hours. What a slap in the face. How was I going to do this movie with out the police? I called my contact at the west campus because we had talked previously about possible using the west campus station and cars. I left messages but didn’t’ get a response so Danielle and I decided to just drive to the west campus and try and catch him in his office. We went to the station at about 10am and it appeared to be closed. The one thing I was most worried about for the police station was the front lobby scenes. The main campus station had a front lobby that was great. I couldn’t’ recreate it. It had a window for the dispatch office and all kinds of memorabilia. The rest of the station could easily be doubled anywhere for any office like place. So anyway, the station appeared to be shut down. We decided to just wait outside. While we were waiting we saw a police car drive down the road. I joked about following it but we just decided to leave. As we were leaving we passed the cruiser parked so I decided to actually go looking for the officer. Danielle dropped me off and I went walking all around this building looking for this officer. I didn’t find and officer but I did find a police aide. The police aide said that the commander was in his office so he took Danielle and I back to the station and let us in. the commander said he was happy to see us and that he apologized for the appearance of the station being closed. They just didn’t have anyone to manage the front desk so they kept it locked. Anyway, he said he didn’t have good news for us. He said the chief did end up reading the script and he didn’t like it. And neither did he. He said they weren’t going to be able to help us out. I started to protest. For one I knew he wouldn’t’ like the script. He’ wasn’t the demographic the screenplay was designed for. I assured him that this was a school project, etc. to make a long story short I pleaded and pleaded and he finally said that we couldn’t use the cars but we could use the west campus station for all the interior station stuff. And the best part of that offer was that the west campus stations’ front lobby was better than the main campus station. The commander was so generous that he even offered for us to use the east campus because they had genuine jail cells with sliding bars and everything. The only stipulation he put on us was that we had to pay a police aide $27 an hour to basically baby sit us. We agreed because there were no other options and we needed the location. The Tuesday before we started shooting we went down the east campus police station and looked at the cells. Initially after the chief denied us access to the main campus station we thought we were going to build cells in the studio. Man they’d be crappy but we were going to do it. But these cells were perfect! So perfect! So it looked like our police station was going to be made up of both east and west campus stations.
Cop Cars
So when the Campus Police said we couldn’t use their cars I panicked. I had no idea what to do. Danielle and I tried to talk to a few different options. We contacted the local police departments and nobody ever got back to us. Danielle did some research online and found a local collector of police cars and emailed him. She even talked to the local film commission. The commission got back to us and had a service that they set up with the local police in which you pay the officers $51 an hour, $7 an hour for the car, plus something like $.57 a mile. Well we didn’t have that money. We needed the car(s) for at least 2 nights. We need 3 for a few hours and 1 for 2 days of shooting. Danielle’s collector got back to us and gave us a GREAT DEAL. Apparently he did this sort of thing in LA, lending his collector vehicles to film productions. Since we were students he let us hire him for $50 a day and food on the Set. OMG he saved the movie. We hired him right away and he provided one Crown Victoria and he also lent us a light fixture to simulate flashing cop car lights. We picked that up on Tuesday the day before shooting.
Production design
Over the 2-3 weeks we had before we started shooting Linnaea and I tried to get together as much as possible. It was really hard because she was working almost full time and going to school full time. Plus she had to go to Wyoming for a weekend to pick up some of her mom’s stuff. We did the best we could as far as props and costumes are concerned. The most important costume/prop was the cop stuff. The uniforms, belts, boots, etc. Dan found this uniform store that was for Law Enforcement specifically so Linnaea and I went there. The class A uniforms cost us about $250 a piece. The thing we were most worried about was the belts and holsters. They were so expensive. Were’ talking $150 a holster. We couldn’t afford that at all. I went around to a few different Halloween places (seeing as it was close to Halloween). I found some toy guns called “Secret Agent” guns that I ended up using for the cop guns (you’d never know). But I couldn’t find holsters anywhere. Then I had an idea. Gun shops! I found a few gun shops slash pawn places and went to one of them the guy rented me 3 police belts, clip holders, cuff holders, and holsters for like $40 for the month! Wahoo. I was a little worried about the costumes and other props but they were easily found enough. I’d been picking things up for a while anyway. Like the dart board in will and rahid’s room. I got that in June. It took me a long time to get all the paperwork to linnaea that she needed. She spent the few weeks before production gathering the different stuff she had that would work and also she and I made lots of errands. Man things were starting to pile up in my house.
Tunnels
The tunnels were the easiest location to deal with. I did have a quick scare though. There was a period of a few days where we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get a person to accompany us in the tunnels because one of our contacts was going away to some training or conference or something. I actually went to the office of facman pleading for them to help me and someone there of importance assured me they’d make it happen. Man that was scary. One of my contacts ended up giving me his cell phone number so that I wouldn’t have to deal with middle management anymore. He said they got all confused because it had already ben approved so why was I dealing with them? That made things a lot easier.
Dinner
After travis’ futile pursuits with ihop we decided to try other avenues. But all of travis’ contacts dried up. Nobody wanted to help us. Not even the village inn. I decided to try a 50’s style dinner that’s located in the school and run by campus dinning. They were totally cool with us filming. Basically they said just call a few days before and they’d lock us inside when the restaurant was closed and we could just leave when we were done. We didn’t have to have anyone watch us or anything. HA! They even said they’d turn on the fountain so we could have free soda! How about that?
Construction site
Danielle and I just decided to walk into the big construction sites and strait up ask the people there how we could get permission. It was actually a fun day. It rained like crazy and I almost ruined my Birkenstocks. That would have been a travesty. Well we talked to a construction worked on Saturday and he told us to come back on Monday and talk to Rick and R.C. When we came back on Monday we found out that it was Rick and Arcey. Yeah, way different than R.C. but these guys were awesome. They thought it sounded easy enough. We only needed to be there for a few hours. One of he regulations was we had to where hard hats which sounded like fun anyway. Also had to have close toed shoes. No objections from us. After calling them every other day or so for a week or two they finally gave us the go ahead. We’d meet a night foremen at about 7pm and he’d hang with us till we were done.
Budget
So one day, I don’t remember which, Danielle and I got together and did a budget. We figured out we’d spend about $5000 and raise about $1000 from friends and family to help with a contingency incase we went over. Most of our budget came from me, Then Dan and his mom, then Tristan Ringenoldus ( a good friend of mine), then Danielle, then Kenny, etc.
Cast
When %25 of the cast didn’t show for the read through you can rest a sure I was concerned. I spent the few weeks before production talking to a few of the cast members and trying to woo them into their parts. The hardest was getting Jamie McKeel to play Michelle. She wasn’t too excited about the role at first and I had to kind of talk her into it. Ever since Dan and I did OK with her I really wanted her to be involved in Freshmen. I had asked her to audition but she never did. Then when an actress turned down the role of Michelle I ran to Jamie. She didn’t really agree to the role until the day before we needed the character, which was the second day of shooting. The third day was her first, which was the stuff in the van on the day we were at the dinner. I also had a terrible time trying to find an actor for the Ricky Carr role. Everyone I approached turned it down. I even interviewed a friend of Josh McDermitt’s for a role in the film and he was a real nice guy, good looking, and if he’s got josh’s support he’s got to be good. Unfortunately he was too old for Ricky Carr and too young for a cop. We had a few actors like that in auditions. So I ended up playing myself. Linnaea’s son Jason Kimble ended up as one of our officers and I was able to get a friend from my past job, Jeff Rensel, at the MU to play the other officer. Still no Ricky Carr though. I was finally able to get a hold of Vic and he had a lot going on in his life at the time we were about to start shooting. I told him I’d love the part but would understand if he couldn’t do it. He said he wanted to and I was stoked! Vic was one of the Very First actors I had in mind for the movie. In fact you could say I wrote the role of Ashton for him. The girl who was playing Sarah also dropped out of the cast and I had very little time to fill the role. I was able to get Jamie Israel’s girl friend, Ali Rae, to do the role (I’d worked with her before). Still no Ricky Carr so I ended up playing the role. Oh yeah, and David emailed me out of the blue saying that his girlfriend all of a sudden felt weird about him kissing a girl at the end of the movie. Rahid kisses Michelle. So I told him he didn’t have to do it. I mean this wasn’t Romeo & Juliet or anything. They could do other things beside kiss. But then during production I found out that she broke up with him and he was too embarrassed to tell me. Him. Glad he put the movie first. But then he got back together with his girlfriend so whatever. He still couldn’t have kissed in the end. Is that a pun? Colin flew into town on Tuesday night the night before we started shooting. It was great to see him.
Crew:
We had crew interviews and I made a huge mistake in scheduling them at 30 min a piece. It seriously took about 5 min per interview and the rest of the time we played around on you tube. We gave everyone a job and our crew turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Joel flew in from LA on Monday and spent the next few days with Danielle and I doing preproduction things. He can Colin became good friends real fast. We had our crew orientation on Tuesday. Man what a “success” that was. Only like half the people showed up and it was kind of awkward. At least for me. I had this whole plan and we were even going to shoot a mock scene to get used to working with one another. Yeah that didn’t happen. Not enough people showed. But Joel got to play around with the camera a little and Kenny and Stephanie showed me the lighting equipment they wanted. man oh man. Kenny and Stephanie scared the shit out of us. It was the day before we started shooting and they we had only planed to use lights in interiors at locations we could control, we’re talking like 4 of you 16 days, and they told us they wanted, wait no… needed lights every day of production. Jesus. Well we bit it off and dove in.
Equipment
So from the school we got Panasonic DVX100b’s, a Fig Rig (Which was amazing), 4 c-stand, a mole Richardson light kit, apple boxes, sand bags, stinger (extension cords), a condenser shot gun mike and boom pole, and on the occasion, a 12 foot strait track dolly. Molly’s friend who has a Costco member ship got us some tape. 40 tapes for $100
Extras
Yeah, Extra’s was something I was worried about but never really gave much thought too. I know we need them, and a lot of them, but there was so much to be done and had that I just didn’t know what to do. When the days came that we needed a few I knew I’d just make the crew do it. But the big days. I hadn’t resolved that yet.
Then we started shooting…
11/26/06
New Blog
So I know I told most of you that I would start posting tomorrow but I'm in a productive mood so I started a new blog with the correct address for the new title. That's write. A new title. http://madisonhall.blogspot.com
Title
I know I said I'd start this blog tomorrow, but I'm feeling rather productive so I thought I'd just go ahead and post on this new site. I've officially changed the name of the film from Freshmen, and all it's various subtitles from "The night of their lives" to "The 13th grade" to Madison Hall. It just makes sense. That's the name of the dorm all the students live in and it's the reason they all know each other and the title just makes sense. So...
Welcome to the Blog for Post Production on Madison Hall.
Tomorrow I'll release the finishing touches of preproduction and through out this week I'll blog about photography while keeping you updated on post. Oh yeah, the trailer should be done by the end of the week. Depends on the music.
Welcome to the Blog for Post Production on Madison Hall.
Tomorrow I'll release the finishing touches of preproduction and through out this week I'll blog about photography while keeping you updated on post. Oh yeah, the trailer should be done by the end of the week. Depends on the music.
9/9/06
21 Days and the Decision
We start shooting in 3 weeks. Or 21 days, which ever you prefer. At this point, I've made a decision. I'm going to discontinue this blog for an uncertain amount of time. For one, it's hard for me to keep posting often because of the amount of work that happens in a day. Two, the information is constantly changing. And three, we're going to be starting a video production diary and documentary on the making of the film. Once production's over and the amount of time and work slows down, I'll re-open it. Till then-
Jared
Jared
8/31/06
30 Days
As of tomorrow we are 30 days out from shooting. i've been so busy with school i can barely think. i hate writing these once a week but i just can't seem to find time. Between producing the film, work, school, the club, usg, etc i t's very very hard to find time. I actually did quit my job. i put in my two weeks last thursday. my last day is this coming friday. not tomorrow but the next one. i just can't handle it. i've been tring to finish the shooting schedule with every bit of free time i have. and the lab is only open between 9am-9pm. but I finished it today! so that's good. i'm going to email all the actors tomorrow moring the details. the schedule's not locked but it's done. we're doing it the way it's scheduled. we might switch days around but as of what's being shot in what order in a day is staying locked. it's frustrating becauses some of the actors have piped up with new conflicts they didn't have before. but everything looks like it's going to work so far. speaking of actors the read through went well. some people didn't show and i called them and they had good reasons so i'm excited about that. i had a reading with reslife today. that was both wonderful and horible. they open doors for me and put obsiticals in my way. things were work out well though. you just have to stick through it and not get discouraged. look at me. i'm so tired and worn out i'm not putting this through word, spell check or individual paragraphs. oh well. i got to see some of the equipment the school of theatre and film will be providing. it's soooooo wonderful. so wonderful. it's like i all of a sudden go to a film school. it's so nice to be supported at school in a way i've never been supported. i'm especially excited about the hand held monitors for on the set. oh i can't wait. it's going to be sooo much fun and such a great experiance. see this, even writing about this is like a rollercoaster ride. see, that's what i was thinking of writing about before. is that everyday on this picture is like a rollercoaster ride of emotions. i figure out something going to work and i'm exstatic, then i get knocked down, then i over come it, and so on and so on. a roller coaster ride. well, i'm going to try and start posting more ofter....oh yeah. The Sag thing is rolling along nicely. shouldn't be any problems there. i'm so scarted. going to bed. i'll try to post more oftern. good night.
8/24/06
More Free Food!!!!
This snowball I got going is rolling along nicely.
I need to email the cast a reminder tomorrow about the readthrough. Hope they all can make it. So far I’ve gotten about a 90% confirmation. It’ll be a lot of fun. Only thing is I gave travis the responsibility of getting the contracts together, then he went on vacation for two weeks and I forgot about it, so guess what I’m doing in the next few days. God I hope I can get them all set before Sunday. It should be fine. We’ve already had some guidance in that department.
I talked to a prison guard today that’s a friend of a friends about getting police cars for the film. He gave me some good leads. I also emailed the commander at asu police to set up a meeting. Haven’t gotten a response yet. Travis (who’s now back) is going to contact the phoenix film commission about the cars to see if he can find a company that rents them.
I talked to my new reslife contact and he was awesome. Sounded really easy to work with. He said he’s gonna have his assistant give me a call to set up an appointment to meet with him and discuss are needs. I’ve got Danielle looking into asu west just in case though.
The schedules coming along nicely. I’ve been in the computer lab working hard on it. Should be done by the end of the week. Freakin upgrade is awesome.
I’ve got the support of the new film professors in the program. I’m meeting with the directing professor once a week to discuss the film starting tomorrow. I’m really excited to have all this support.
We sent out a call for crew the other day. I got a bunch of responses so I’m gonna set up interviews for sept 4th later in the week.
Danielle got us more free food! Yay!
I need to email the cast a reminder tomorrow about the readthrough. Hope they all can make it. So far I’ve gotten about a 90% confirmation. It’ll be a lot of fun. Only thing is I gave travis the responsibility of getting the contracts together, then he went on vacation for two weeks and I forgot about it, so guess what I’m doing in the next few days. God I hope I can get them all set before Sunday. It should be fine. We’ve already had some guidance in that department.
I talked to a prison guard today that’s a friend of a friends about getting police cars for the film. He gave me some good leads. I also emailed the commander at asu police to set up a meeting. Haven’t gotten a response yet. Travis (who’s now back) is going to contact the phoenix film commission about the cars to see if he can find a company that rents them.
I talked to my new reslife contact and he was awesome. Sounded really easy to work with. He said he’s gonna have his assistant give me a call to set up an appointment to meet with him and discuss are needs. I’ve got Danielle looking into asu west just in case though.
The schedules coming along nicely. I’ve been in the computer lab working hard on it. Should be done by the end of the week. Freakin upgrade is awesome.
I’ve got the support of the new film professors in the program. I’m meeting with the directing professor once a week to discuss the film starting tomorrow. I’m really excited to have all this support.
We sent out a call for crew the other day. I got a bunch of responses so I’m gonna set up interviews for sept 4th later in the week.
Danielle got us more free food! Yay!
8/21/06
snowball
things are starting to snowball, it's only the first day of classes, and i'm exhausted at 11:30 at nihgt. sigh.
i talked to my professor that's in charge of the postproduction class i'm taking this semester and she was really cool. i asked her if there was some way i could incorparate her class into my capstone. she didn't seem to be apposed but also didn't seem to happy when i said kill two birds with one stone. oh well. tomorrow i have a "directing" class, we'll see how that goes.
i'm making the copies of the screenplays for the actors and crew tomorrow. that'll be fun.
i can finally start working on locking in the production schedule again, i'm getting up at 7:30 and heading over to the computer lab to work on it all morning till my class starts.
work was really really busy. i'm pondering quiting my job for a bit to help with the film. today was just so busy and overwhelming that there's a few things i didn't get done. i just don't want to over load myself and i don't really need the money, well i should say i didn't budget it in with my sememster bills. i could always use the money. i'll sleep on it and do some more thinking.
niether facman, Sag, nor reslife has gotten back to me yet. just waiting tapping my fingers.
i sent out a call today for crew interviews for the 4th of september. that should be a lot of fun.
jeeze i'm tired. i can't write anymore. i'm going to bed. good night.
i talked to my professor that's in charge of the postproduction class i'm taking this semester and she was really cool. i asked her if there was some way i could incorparate her class into my capstone. she didn't seem to be apposed but also didn't seem to happy when i said kill two birds with one stone. oh well. tomorrow i have a "directing" class, we'll see how that goes.
i'm making the copies of the screenplays for the actors and crew tomorrow. that'll be fun.
i can finally start working on locking in the production schedule again, i'm getting up at 7:30 and heading over to the computer lab to work on it all morning till my class starts.
work was really really busy. i'm pondering quiting my job for a bit to help with the film. today was just so busy and overwhelming that there's a few things i didn't get done. i just don't want to over load myself and i don't really need the money, well i should say i didn't budget it in with my sememster bills. i could always use the money. i'll sleep on it and do some more thinking.
niether facman, Sag, nor reslife has gotten back to me yet. just waiting tapping my fingers.
i sent out a call today for crew interviews for the 4th of september. that should be a lot of fun.
jeeze i'm tired. i can't write anymore. i'm going to bed. good night.
8/15/06
Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, Excited
Things are so crazy for me right now. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. Work is crazy. Getting things in order for school to start is crazy. Helping my roommate with the lose of his mom is crazy. Producing a feature in the midst of all this is crazy. But, I’m excited.
Molly stepped down as a producer because it’s too much work for her with nursing school. I completely understand.
Danielle found this subculture of people who collect police cars. She’s gonna look into seeing if we can find a local person involved in this and borrow a few. I’ve yet to here from my contact at the film commission on company’s renting cop cars so I’m going to call him later this week.
Linnaea went over to the police station to take some pictures of locations as well as uniforms. Not sure how that went. I called her today but she’s yet to call me back. It should be interesting.
My computer got a virus or malfunctioned or something and I had to completely reinstall my operating system. That sucked. I was able to save all my files though. It was an obnoxious process involving a Linux operating system running off a DVD in the DVD drive and USB jump drive. But I saved everything. No I’m in the process of rebuilding the computer. But of pain in the ass. Oh well. Better now than a week out from production.
I got something new out of my reslife contact a week ago. She passed me onto someone else. I don’t really know why. But the guy she passed me onto is in operations. This makes me happy. It makes me happy because his job title should mean he only deals with operations and logistics. My previous contact was involved with marketing and had all kinds of concerns that wasted my time like thinking we were doing a reality TV show with out the permission of the students. Sheesh. Well this guy shouldn’t care what were doing. That is at least that’s what his job description suggests. I’ll wait to email him till the beginning of September cause the dorm are crazy right now. Its move in day today and tomorrow. Work is crazy at the MU with welcome week. One of the actors, Kent Walter, had a great suggestion and said to contact reslife at ASU west. He said that have all kinds of empty dorms. Which would be great. I don’t’ mind going to ASU west.
The screenplays locked at 99 pages. I’m very happy. I did one more pass after Miguel approved it and then sent it out to cast and crew on Sunday the 13th. I’ve got a read-through booked for the 27th. So far everyone I expected to come will be there except for one actor. Which is fine. I knew there’d be one. There’s always “that guy”. ;) Unfortunately I had to exclude the SAG actors from the read-through. The reason for this is because if they came I’d have to pay them and I can’t afford it. I’d much rather pay them to be in the film then have other actors that I can invite to the read through. They were very understanding which made me feel better.
There may be a hitch in making the film on an HD format. I’ll look more into it later once school starts.
Danielle’s already gotten us some free food for the shoot! I’m so excited. She’s awesome. The more money I can put onto the screen instead of in everyone’s stomach the better ;) but there will always be free food on the set. It’s one of the fundamentals of low budget filmmaking.
I told the actors I would have they’re contracts for them on 27th at the read through as well as the shooting schedule. I’ve got to get working on these things.
As for the shooting schedule another wrench has fallen into the system. The computer lab where the scheduling software is located at is renovating all they’re equipment and software so I can’t get in there till the 21st. that gives me 7 days to pump out a schedule. But that’s ok because I’ve already got a preliminary schedule. I just need to update it.
We’re going to be doing interview’s for crew on September 3rd. that should be fun. I’m sending out an email this week in regards to the call.
Molly stepped down as a producer because it’s too much work for her with nursing school. I completely understand.
Danielle found this subculture of people who collect police cars. She’s gonna look into seeing if we can find a local person involved in this and borrow a few. I’ve yet to here from my contact at the film commission on company’s renting cop cars so I’m going to call him later this week.
Linnaea went over to the police station to take some pictures of locations as well as uniforms. Not sure how that went. I called her today but she’s yet to call me back. It should be interesting.
My computer got a virus or malfunctioned or something and I had to completely reinstall my operating system. That sucked. I was able to save all my files though. It was an obnoxious process involving a Linux operating system running off a DVD in the DVD drive and USB jump drive. But I saved everything. No I’m in the process of rebuilding the computer. But of pain in the ass. Oh well. Better now than a week out from production.
I got something new out of my reslife contact a week ago. She passed me onto someone else. I don’t really know why. But the guy she passed me onto is in operations. This makes me happy. It makes me happy because his job title should mean he only deals with operations and logistics. My previous contact was involved with marketing and had all kinds of concerns that wasted my time like thinking we were doing a reality TV show with out the permission of the students. Sheesh. Well this guy shouldn’t care what were doing. That is at least that’s what his job description suggests. I’ll wait to email him till the beginning of September cause the dorm are crazy right now. Its move in day today and tomorrow. Work is crazy at the MU with welcome week. One of the actors, Kent Walter, had a great suggestion and said to contact reslife at ASU west. He said that have all kinds of empty dorms. Which would be great. I don’t’ mind going to ASU west.
The screenplays locked at 99 pages. I’m very happy. I did one more pass after Miguel approved it and then sent it out to cast and crew on Sunday the 13th. I’ve got a read-through booked for the 27th. So far everyone I expected to come will be there except for one actor. Which is fine. I knew there’d be one. There’s always “that guy”. ;) Unfortunately I had to exclude the SAG actors from the read-through. The reason for this is because if they came I’d have to pay them and I can’t afford it. I’d much rather pay them to be in the film then have other actors that I can invite to the read through. They were very understanding which made me feel better.
There may be a hitch in making the film on an HD format. I’ll look more into it later once school starts.
Danielle’s already gotten us some free food for the shoot! I’m so excited. She’s awesome. The more money I can put onto the screen instead of in everyone’s stomach the better ;) but there will always be free food on the set. It’s one of the fundamentals of low budget filmmaking.
I told the actors I would have they’re contracts for them on 27th at the read through as well as the shooting schedule. I’ve got to get working on these things.
As for the shooting schedule another wrench has fallen into the system. The computer lab where the scheduling software is located at is renovating all they’re equipment and software so I can’t get in there till the 21st. that gives me 7 days to pump out a schedule. But that’s ok because I’ve already got a preliminary schedule. I just need to update it.
We’re going to be doing interview’s for crew on September 3rd. that should be fun. I’m sending out an email this week in regards to the call.
8/2/06
8/1/06
A Blessing in Disguise as July Goes Bye
In the past months that I’ve been doing this diary every once in a while it goes dormant. Well no dormancy had yet existed that July has become. Today I break that dormancy as I explain what has been going on.
As most of you know, Miguel through a wrench in the works about 6 weeks ago when he all of a sudden finally read the screenplay. He emailed me and told me he had serious concerns. So most of production has been on hold until I can conjure a version of the screenplay he’s happy with. Well I believe I have done that. I emailed him the current “final” version on July 19th. I emailed him last Friday to see if he had looked at it and he emailed me back with these two sentences: “looks pretty solid. I’ll give you a definitive answer on Monday”. Well Monday came and went and I have yet to receive a definitive answer. But the looks pretty solid part of the email makes me very happy. It makes me very happy because I also agree with him. I think that this wrench Miguel has put in the system was a good thing. Because the screenplay is better. Much much better in my opinion. So I’m calling this a blessing in disguise. Now all we do on that end is wait.
The screenplay is fairly different. I changed all the names that were based on real people and changed them around to fake names. For example Colin is now Tyler and Jared is now Jeremy. I also added three VO at the beginning of the film and at the end. Each of the three main characters go on a very specific journey and the VO’s really help to solidify the story.
Reslife’s been giving me a hard time. There really busy because of school starting soon and they don’t want to help me at all. I’m last on their priority list and there treating me like thorn in their side. I’m gonna start looking for back up locations instead of using real dorms. But I’ll keep digging reslife while I’m at it.
I’ve got a friend who works at the Arizona Film Commission looking into companies that sell services such as renting old cop cars and stuff. I’m gonna see if we can avoid using the actual police. We’ll see.
After talking with Miguel I’ve found out we’re going to have access steady cams as well as a dolly. Thank god. We also might get to shoot in HD. Not sure if that’s going to work yet or not. We’ll see.
I’m all moved into my new apartment so that feels good to have out of the way.
Joel Carr has signed on as camera operator.
I offered Jamie the role of Jeremy and he accepted.
Because of the wrench most of the production has been on hold. But there are other reasons that the production has gone on hold too. On Saturday July 22nd, my roommate’s (the person that the character Daniel is based on) mother died in a boating accident. So for the past week and a half I’ve been doing nothing but being a friend. There are just some things that are more important. But, my roommates doing better so I’m starting to go back to my responsibilities. Today is my first day back at work so I thought I’d do a production diary as well.
As most of you know, Miguel through a wrench in the works about 6 weeks ago when he all of a sudden finally read the screenplay. He emailed me and told me he had serious concerns. So most of production has been on hold until I can conjure a version of the screenplay he’s happy with. Well I believe I have done that. I emailed him the current “final” version on July 19th. I emailed him last Friday to see if he had looked at it and he emailed me back with these two sentences: “looks pretty solid. I’ll give you a definitive answer on Monday”. Well Monday came and went and I have yet to receive a definitive answer. But the looks pretty solid part of the email makes me very happy. It makes me very happy because I also agree with him. I think that this wrench Miguel has put in the system was a good thing. Because the screenplay is better. Much much better in my opinion. So I’m calling this a blessing in disguise. Now all we do on that end is wait.
The screenplay is fairly different. I changed all the names that were based on real people and changed them around to fake names. For example Colin is now Tyler and Jared is now Jeremy. I also added three VO at the beginning of the film and at the end. Each of the three main characters go on a very specific journey and the VO’s really help to solidify the story.
Reslife’s been giving me a hard time. There really busy because of school starting soon and they don’t want to help me at all. I’m last on their priority list and there treating me like thorn in their side. I’m gonna start looking for back up locations instead of using real dorms. But I’ll keep digging reslife while I’m at it.
I’ve got a friend who works at the Arizona Film Commission looking into companies that sell services such as renting old cop cars and stuff. I’m gonna see if we can avoid using the actual police. We’ll see.
After talking with Miguel I’ve found out we’re going to have access steady cams as well as a dolly. Thank god. We also might get to shoot in HD. Not sure if that’s going to work yet or not. We’ll see.
I’m all moved into my new apartment so that feels good to have out of the way.
Joel Carr has signed on as camera operator.
I offered Jamie the role of Jeremy and he accepted.
Because of the wrench most of the production has been on hold. But there are other reasons that the production has gone on hold too. On Saturday July 22nd, my roommate’s (the person that the character Daniel is based on) mother died in a boating accident. So for the past week and a half I’ve been doing nothing but being a friend. There are just some things that are more important. But, my roommates doing better so I’m starting to go back to my responsibilities. Today is my first day back at work so I thought I’d do a production diary as well.
7/7/06
Still Holding
Yes, we’re still on hold. I’m getting sort of pissed. We’re going on 3 weeks now that we’ve had this wrench in the system. I’m tired. I actually canceled my meeting with Miguel yesterday because I’m completely throwing out the Voice Overs. I never intended to use them through out the whole writing process from now till back in November and they just feel forced. So I read through half the screenplay last night and I’m going through the other half today looking for ways to strengthen the screenplay. Miguel did as I asked and went and saw Love Actually. He responded saying he loved the film. I’m glad he saw it so now we both can have a frame of reference as far as structure. And it’s fresh in his mind. I’ll admit that some good stuff has come from this wrench. We did get the screenplay down to 98 pages. Which will make everything easier, and I mean everything. So I canceled my meeting with him and he’s headed out of town for the weekend so the earliest time we can meet is next Tuesday.
I offered the SAG roles to the SAG actors. They both accepted and both sent me there Bio’s for the website right away. Wonderful.
We brought Jamie into the meeting on Wednesday to hear him read. He did a great job. I’m about 90% sure I’m gonna cast him. I need to check out a few other actors and work out some details before I make an offer though.
We had a member of the producing team step down on Wednesday. I’m glad he was able to come to me and tell me he just couldn’t make the large commitment. We’ll work on something else together later on. Believe me when I say I know what it’s like to juggle responsibilities.
I offered the SAG roles to the SAG actors. They both accepted and both sent me there Bio’s for the website right away. Wonderful.
We brought Jamie into the meeting on Wednesday to hear him read. He did a great job. I’m about 90% sure I’m gonna cast him. I need to check out a few other actors and work out some details before I make an offer though.
We had a member of the producing team step down on Wednesday. I’m glad he was able to come to me and tell me he just couldn’t make the large commitment. We’ll work on something else together later on. Believe me when I say I know what it’s like to juggle responsibilities.
7/4/06
Not Cool, Cool, Not Cool, Cool
Yesterday Miguel didn't approve the script. That was not Cool. Today I saw the shuttle discovery take off today. That was cool. Then I heard that North Korea test fired 3 missiles, one capable of reaching the US. That was not cool. Then I watched fireworks from the top of a tall building. That was cool. It’s been a rollercoaster of a day.
It’s actually been a rollercoaster of a weekend. I talked to Miguel yesterday. I was able to squash a lot of his main problems, issues I’ve heard before as far as too many characters and police car usage. He said his biggest problem over all with the screenplay was that it lacked a central point of view. I explained to him that it’s from Jeremy’s point of view (Jared(Me)). He said he got that the character framed the story and that it was a good device but he didn’t feel he was a central character. I asked him if he’d seen love actually and he said no. I told him to see it and he’d see the structure I’m going for. Anyway, he said he still wanted a stronger central character so I pitched him the idea of adding two voice overs. One at the beginning and one at the end, both by Jeremy. He liked it. So I did it. I sent it to him this afternoon and he’s going to go over it and get back to me by Thursday the latest. He had some notes and spelling errors and I took them into consideration in this version of the screenplay. Well everything’s still on hold till he approves it. Sigh. Just going to have to wait.
I had a busy weekend and had a lot of emails from actors and crew over the last couple of days that I still haven’t answered. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow?
Also I’m gonna update the website. I got some bios. Yippee.
It’s actually been a rollercoaster of a weekend. I talked to Miguel yesterday. I was able to squash a lot of his main problems, issues I’ve heard before as far as too many characters and police car usage. He said his biggest problem over all with the screenplay was that it lacked a central point of view. I explained to him that it’s from Jeremy’s point of view (Jared(Me)). He said he got that the character framed the story and that it was a good device but he didn’t feel he was a central character. I asked him if he’d seen love actually and he said no. I told him to see it and he’d see the structure I’m going for. Anyway, he said he still wanted a stronger central character so I pitched him the idea of adding two voice overs. One at the beginning and one at the end, both by Jeremy. He liked it. So I did it. I sent it to him this afternoon and he’s going to go over it and get back to me by Thursday the latest. He had some notes and spelling errors and I took them into consideration in this version of the screenplay. Well everything’s still on hold till he approves it. Sigh. Just going to have to wait.
I had a busy weekend and had a lot of emails from actors and crew over the last couple of days that I still haven’t answered. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow?
Also I’m gonna update the website. I got some bios. Yippee.
7/1/06
On Hold
Man did I cut. I cut and cut and cut and cut. I got the screenplay down to 98 pages. Phew. Molly read it and said she couldn’t tell where I cut so that’s good. I guess it needed to be shorter.
I talked with Miguel yesterday and we’re getting together on Monday to go over any issues he has with the screenplay. He said he’s going to read it twice this weekend and make notes. I’ll be glad when this issue is all wrapped up and done.
I was supposed to call linnaea’s son Jason about storyboarding but decided not to. I was also supposed to make a list for linnaea of all the characters and there physical descriptions. I decided not to do either. In face, I’m doing nothing but working on the screenplay till Miguel gives it the final ok. I’ve printed out a copy of the 98 page version and am going through it for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. Something I’m not good at but oh well. I just am sick of wasting time doing things like the shooting schedule and stuff when the script keeps changing. Every time it changes it causes a ripple effect through out the whole production. so all aspects on the creative side are on hold till the screenplay is locked. Hopefully that’ll be this Monday. We’ll see.
I talked to Brad Golden and Josh McDermitt and they both said they wanted to accept the roles (pending the contracts of course). Well needless to say I’m excited to work with both of them.
We’re bringing in Jamie Israel to read for us on Wednesday the 5th. I’m excited to see what he brings to the table. I think it’ll work out nicely. Well I hope.
The drama has started. Some of the producers, and although you think you (producers reading this) know what I’m talking about you don’t, have expressed some concern about other members of the team. I’m gonna have to start kicking some ass. Well, not really. But this is the politics that comes with filmmaking so here I go. I’m pretty good at this stuff so I think I’ll be able to handle it well.
I’ve started directing. Kind of. I had an actor email me with a lot of questions regarding their character, character background and stuff. I emailed them back with very little information. I’m a big fan of the David Mamamet style of directing. His book “On Directing” is awesome. I suggest anyone pick it up. I hope the actor isn’t frustrated with the lack of info I provided them. I still haven’t heard back from them when I sent the email.
Speaking of the email by the actor about their role, I’m so happy with all the support I’m getting on this film from the cast and crew. It’s really really uplifting and when things are hard it’s nice to know I’ve got such great support. Thanks guys. Let’s make a great fucking movie!
I talked with Miguel yesterday and we’re getting together on Monday to go over any issues he has with the screenplay. He said he’s going to read it twice this weekend and make notes. I’ll be glad when this issue is all wrapped up and done.
I was supposed to call linnaea’s son Jason about storyboarding but decided not to. I was also supposed to make a list for linnaea of all the characters and there physical descriptions. I decided not to do either. In face, I’m doing nothing but working on the screenplay till Miguel gives it the final ok. I’ve printed out a copy of the 98 page version and am going through it for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. Something I’m not good at but oh well. I just am sick of wasting time doing things like the shooting schedule and stuff when the script keeps changing. Every time it changes it causes a ripple effect through out the whole production. so all aspects on the creative side are on hold till the screenplay is locked. Hopefully that’ll be this Monday. We’ll see.
I talked to Brad Golden and Josh McDermitt and they both said they wanted to accept the roles (pending the contracts of course). Well needless to say I’m excited to work with both of them.
We’re bringing in Jamie Israel to read for us on Wednesday the 5th. I’m excited to see what he brings to the table. I think it’ll work out nicely. Well I hope.
The drama has started. Some of the producers, and although you think you (producers reading this) know what I’m talking about you don’t, have expressed some concern about other members of the team. I’m gonna have to start kicking some ass. Well, not really. But this is the politics that comes with filmmaking so here I go. I’m pretty good at this stuff so I think I’ll be able to handle it well.
I’ve started directing. Kind of. I had an actor email me with a lot of questions regarding their character, character background and stuff. I emailed them back with very little information. I’m a big fan of the David Mamamet style of directing. His book “On Directing” is awesome. I suggest anyone pick it up. I hope the actor isn’t frustrated with the lack of info I provided them. I still haven’t heard back from them when I sent the email.
Speaking of the email by the actor about their role, I’m so happy with all the support I’m getting on this film from the cast and crew. It’s really really uplifting and when things are hard it’s nice to know I’ve got such great support. Thanks guys. Let’s make a great fucking movie!
6/29/06
Back in the Groove
Yaaaaaaawwwwwwnnnnn. Ah. I’m tired. Really really tired. I think it’s the climate change. I’ve been back in the valley of the sun for about 2 days. But I had to pull an all nighter in Logan airport on Monday night so I’m recovering from that too. It’s really tough trying to get back in the groove of things.
My trip was good. No water skiing. My aunt’s going through a divorce and the boat is “his”. Sigh. Well we did go canoeing and kayaking so that was cool. Got to hang out with some loons.
It took me the whole week I was there to edit down the script. I’d get 10 minutes here, and 20 minutes there. But I got the screenplay down to 104. I’m gonna go through it one more time and look for 4 or 5 more pages to cut. If I can get it under 100 I think I’ll be in good shape. After that I’ll contact Miguel and we’ll get together to do a final approval.
I’ve heard from all the actors that auditioned save one. Mr. Josh McDermitt for the role of Derek Rightman. I emailed him yesterday but still have not received a response. I’ll call him this afternoon. The actors I offered the roles of Michelle and Ricky too turned down the offer. One said the commitment was too much which I respect and the other said the role wasn’t his style. Oh well. Still waiting on Brad Golden. I happened to talk to his boss before I left and his boss said he was excited about the project. So that’s good I guess.
Our production meeting yesterday was good. We went over a lot of stuff.
Noel still hasn’t heard from Microsoft. I gave her an additional assignment. She’s gonna get an inventory list from Miguel regarding equipment we’ll have access too through the school of theatre and film. That was we can plan out way ahead of time what we’ll need for each day with what we have available. We’ll also figure out what we need to find elsewhere.
Travis said Denny’s is looking real good. We just might switch to them. He had a lot of progress with the manager. I guess the guy was excited. I also put Travis in charge of researching deferred payment contracts. I told him to email Miguel for a lead. I want to get the contracts drafted with in two weeks.
Linnaea didn’t get to the police station yet. Hopefully she’ll get there before Sunday’s meeting. She had some questions for me regarding the sorority philanthropy costumes and some of the girls’ outfits. I told her the truth. In that scene I want to SELL SEX. She got the point. I took her down to the stage (which is in the same building as our meetings) and showed her what I had in mind. She liked it and had some good ideas. We’re going to start getting together once a week, just me and her, to go over things for the movie. Linnaea also wants me to send her a list of the characters and their descriptions. I’m gonna do that today.
Danielle said she’s gonna send me the list of contacts for craft services today.
I booked a space for the read through of the screenplay with all the actors. I think I’m gonna change it though. I have for a month from now but I think I’m going to move it closer to the production. By that time we’ll have the whole film cast and the read through will go smoother.
I emailed Jamie about playing the role of me yesterday. He responded with enthusiasm. We’re gonna bring him in for a reading. I’m excited to see what the other producers think. I think he’s gonna work out nicely.
Linnaea had a suggestion about an actress for the role of Michelle. I looked her up on myspace and her look is fine. We’re gonna bring her in and see how she does reading.
My trip was good. No water skiing. My aunt’s going through a divorce and the boat is “his”. Sigh. Well we did go canoeing and kayaking so that was cool. Got to hang out with some loons.
It took me the whole week I was there to edit down the script. I’d get 10 minutes here, and 20 minutes there. But I got the screenplay down to 104. I’m gonna go through it one more time and look for 4 or 5 more pages to cut. If I can get it under 100 I think I’ll be in good shape. After that I’ll contact Miguel and we’ll get together to do a final approval.
I’ve heard from all the actors that auditioned save one. Mr. Josh McDermitt for the role of Derek Rightman. I emailed him yesterday but still have not received a response. I’ll call him this afternoon. The actors I offered the roles of Michelle and Ricky too turned down the offer. One said the commitment was too much which I respect and the other said the role wasn’t his style. Oh well. Still waiting on Brad Golden. I happened to talk to his boss before I left and his boss said he was excited about the project. So that’s good I guess.
Our production meeting yesterday was good. We went over a lot of stuff.
Noel still hasn’t heard from Microsoft. I gave her an additional assignment. She’s gonna get an inventory list from Miguel regarding equipment we’ll have access too through the school of theatre and film. That was we can plan out way ahead of time what we’ll need for each day with what we have available. We’ll also figure out what we need to find elsewhere.
Travis said Denny’s is looking real good. We just might switch to them. He had a lot of progress with the manager. I guess the guy was excited. I also put Travis in charge of researching deferred payment contracts. I told him to email Miguel for a lead. I want to get the contracts drafted with in two weeks.
Linnaea didn’t get to the police station yet. Hopefully she’ll get there before Sunday’s meeting. She had some questions for me regarding the sorority philanthropy costumes and some of the girls’ outfits. I told her the truth. In that scene I want to SELL SEX. She got the point. I took her down to the stage (which is in the same building as our meetings) and showed her what I had in mind. She liked it and had some good ideas. We’re going to start getting together once a week, just me and her, to go over things for the movie. Linnaea also wants me to send her a list of the characters and their descriptions. I’m gonna do that today.
Danielle said she’s gonna send me the list of contacts for craft services today.
I booked a space for the read through of the screenplay with all the actors. I think I’m gonna change it though. I have for a month from now but I think I’m going to move it closer to the production. By that time we’ll have the whole film cast and the read through will go smoother.
I emailed Jamie about playing the role of me yesterday. He responded with enthusiasm. We’re gonna bring him in for a reading. I’m excited to see what the other producers think. I think he’s gonna work out nicely.
Linnaea had a suggestion about an actress for the role of Michelle. I looked her up on myspace and her look is fine. We’re gonna bring her in and see how she does reading.
6/20/06
New England and a Red Pen
Well, I’m in New England. Nashua NH to be exact. I’m here for few days then going to a a camp up in north NH to water ski with some family. Maybe this trip will be more fun than I thought. I’m still going to be doing stuff for the movie though while I’m up here.
So I talked to Miguel on Monday. He called me and we spoke. Over all it was good. I’m not so worried. Below is an email I sent to the crew this morning outlining how our conversation went:
Team:
I spoke with Miguel and it went very well. He had some very constructive criticism. The one thing he wants me to do is cut down the script. He said it's too long. He said, from a producing view point, we're going to be traffic cops trying to manage chaos. He said if the film is shorter and more concise then it will be easier and we'll get to concentrate more on making a good product then on just making a product. So, I'll grant Miguel's wish and go through the screenplay and see what I can cut and condense. He did have good points in saying sometimes there are 7 lines of dialogue that could be condensed to three lines and have the same point and content. I also think this is good because it's something we'll all face in the industry. Good Practice you know. So, while I'm on the plane I'll see what I can find from there. Have a good week everyone.
So while I was on the second plane from Cincinnati to Boston I used a red pen I had bought and started going through the script. Surprisingly enough I got to page 60 and was able to cut roughly 7-8 pages. I might actually get it down to 100 pages if the pace keeps up like this. I haven’t really gone through the screenplay in a few weeks and it’s amazing what I find that can be condensed or simplified. I feel it’s better already. I’m glad Miguel put his thumb down. Thanks Valenti! I’m gonna keep working on it tonight.
I am supper stoked! I’ve gotten four responses from actors so far about parts and they’ve all accepted the roles! I was a little worried about Alicia De La Vega, well… I should say I was worried what any actress would think of the role of Alaska. Because of the scene where she gives head. I don’t know, some people are weird about that stuff and I really really wanted her to play the role. But she accepted so it’s all good. Steve Murphy also accepted the role of Officer Price which I’m happy about. I wonder if he’s figured out that he has to shave his head. Well, I think he reads these posts so Steve, guess what!? Well nothings permanent so we can talk about it. I’m also a little concerned about him living in Sedona. Not sure how that’s going to work (it’s about 3 hours away from phoenix). David Aslan and Katie Pengra also accepted their roles. Yahoo! Like I said. I’m excited.
Just out of curiosity I opened up all my past production diary files and found out that so far this thing is 56 pages long in word. Cool. Book deal, hear I come! Haha. With this speling?
So I talked to Miguel on Monday. He called me and we spoke. Over all it was good. I’m not so worried. Below is an email I sent to the crew this morning outlining how our conversation went:
Team:
I spoke with Miguel and it went very well. He had some very constructive criticism. The one thing he wants me to do is cut down the script. He said it's too long. He said, from a producing view point, we're going to be traffic cops trying to manage chaos. He said if the film is shorter and more concise then it will be easier and we'll get to concentrate more on making a good product then on just making a product. So, I'll grant Miguel's wish and go through the screenplay and see what I can cut and condense. He did have good points in saying sometimes there are 7 lines of dialogue that could be condensed to three lines and have the same point and content. I also think this is good because it's something we'll all face in the industry. Good Practice you know. So, while I'm on the plane I'll see what I can find from there. Have a good week everyone.
So while I was on the second plane from Cincinnati to Boston I used a red pen I had bought and started going through the script. Surprisingly enough I got to page 60 and was able to cut roughly 7-8 pages. I might actually get it down to 100 pages if the pace keeps up like this. I haven’t really gone through the screenplay in a few weeks and it’s amazing what I find that can be condensed or simplified. I feel it’s better already. I’m glad Miguel put his thumb down. Thanks Valenti! I’m gonna keep working on it tonight.
I am supper stoked! I’ve gotten four responses from actors so far about parts and they’ve all accepted the roles! I was a little worried about Alicia De La Vega, well… I should say I was worried what any actress would think of the role of Alaska. Because of the scene where she gives head. I don’t know, some people are weird about that stuff and I really really wanted her to play the role. But she accepted so it’s all good. Steve Murphy also accepted the role of Officer Price which I’m happy about. I wonder if he’s figured out that he has to shave his head. Well, I think he reads these posts so Steve, guess what!? Well nothings permanent so we can talk about it. I’m also a little concerned about him living in Sedona. Not sure how that’s going to work (it’s about 3 hours away from phoenix). David Aslan and Katie Pengra also accepted their roles. Yahoo! Like I said. I’m excited.
Just out of curiosity I opened up all my past production diary files and found out that so far this thing is 56 pages long in word. Cool. Book deal, hear I come! Haha. With this speling?
6/18/06
Offers to Come
Miguel canceled our meeting for Monday. He has a good excuse but it still makes me nervous. I tried to call him and he didn’t answer. I know its father’s day weekend and he’s got a young child so I understand that I’m last on his priority this weekend. It’s just inconvenient. I hope I can get in touch with him tomorrow. He wanted to reschedule to Tuesday but I leave at 6:40am on Tuesday. I expressed his concerns to the production team and they were 100% behind me so I’m at least happy about that. We’re going to do the film with or with out the school of theatre and film but we’d really like to do it as our capstone since it’s only appropriate and it’s going to be so much work. I’ve just got to talk to Miguel.
Our production meeting went well. We made final decisions on cast and are going to make the rest of the offers tomorrow. Well, offers to non-SAG actors. SAG actors are going to have to wait till I make a decision on the subject. I wish I could give the actors I offer roles a hard copy of the screenplay tomorrow but I’m going to be gone for a week and there’s no way to get it to them. But I also don’t want to wait to offer till I get home cause that’ll be over 3 weeks since they auditioned. So what I’ll do is send them an electronic copy and then if they want the part, when I get back, give them a hard copy. Instead of giving the DVD’s I’m also going to upload the rough versions of Credit Counselors, OK, and Rock.Paper.Scissors. That way they can see the films and be familiar with my work.
I talked to the team today about finding someone to play the role of Jared. Of all the actors that auditioned, that role is the one we can’t cast. But I had a long discussion with Jon Baranick, my best friend, about it. We talked about different actors that we knew and we came up with a good idea of who to play the role. I showed the production team pictures of him today and we’re gonna ask him in for an interview when I get back. See what the rest of the team thinks. So far that’s the best we have.
Our production meeting went well. We made final decisions on cast and are going to make the rest of the offers tomorrow. Well, offers to non-SAG actors. SAG actors are going to have to wait till I make a decision on the subject. I wish I could give the actors I offer roles a hard copy of the screenplay tomorrow but I’m going to be gone for a week and there’s no way to get it to them. But I also don’t want to wait to offer till I get home cause that’ll be over 3 weeks since they auditioned. So what I’ll do is send them an electronic copy and then if they want the part, when I get back, give them a hard copy. Instead of giving the DVD’s I’m also going to upload the rough versions of Credit Counselors, OK, and Rock.Paper.Scissors. That way they can see the films and be familiar with my work.
I talked to the team today about finding someone to play the role of Jared. Of all the actors that auditioned, that role is the one we can’t cast. But I had a long discussion with Jon Baranick, my best friend, about it. We talked about different actors that we knew and we came up with a good idea of who to play the role. I showed the production team pictures of him today and we’re gonna ask him in for an interview when I get back. See what the rest of the team thinks. So far that’s the best we have.
6/17/06
Screen Actors Guild
I talked to Vic and he said he’s gonna give me a call next time he’s in Tempe so he can get a copy of the script.
I made two offers for roles yesterday. I offered the part of Matt Snyder to Kent Walter. Kent did a great job in the audition. During his audition I told him that of all the people we’d seen so far he was the only one that read the dialogue the way it was written to be read. Everyone else did a good job and it was interesting to see how other people interpreted it but he hit exactly how I read it in my mind. We thought for a second of having him play Colin but he was just too good looking. Colin’s not ugly but he’s not as attractive as Kent is. But we knew right away that Matt was the role for him. I’m excited to work with him. I also offered the role of Mike Mason to Adam Roa. I’ve worked with Adam before. He played Chad (the lead) in Credit Counselors. I gave Kent his copy of the screenplay on Friday as well as a copy of the shorts I did. Adam’s gonna pick up his stuff on Monday at my work. I told both of them that they didn’t have to accept the part, but that I was giving the offer and that I want them to read the screenplay and once I figure out what the deferred pay is I’ll let them know. Then they can accept the part. But I wanted them to know that the offer is there. I’m excited to work with both of them. I’m gonna take another look at the tapes today and make more offers this afternoon.
I talked to SAG on Thursday. It went well enough. Basically if I want to do a SAG Ultra-Low Budget Agreement I have to pay all SAG actors a Minimum of $100 a day. There’s no way around it and there are not exceptions or other options. I really want these actors. I have a few options in what I can do about the money. I could try and raise the money. I could re-write the scenes and cut some of the SAG actor’s character’s content. I could try and re-arrange the schedule so that the SAG actors work less days but that seems like the hardest and most difficult option. I’m gonna work this out when I get home from my trip to Maine. I leave Tuesday and come back Tuesday. This and a budget will be my top priorities when I get back. I’ll make the SAG offers after I have made a final decision on what to do about the issue.
I’ve been thoroughly talking to Ron about all the SAG issues and he’s been a great help.
I’ve decided to formally put together a business plan. Although we’re not looking for investors I think it’ll be a good thing to do as far as practice and other things. We’re actually looking for donations. We want to try and raise maybe $5000 in donations. I’m gonna be putting in close to that of my own money. At least I hope.
The website was updated a little. I put pictures from the state press up.
Jon’s coming over today and I’m going to give him his copy of the screenplay.
I was supposed to have my lunch with Mallory today but she had to cancel cause she said her work scheduled her even though she asked for it off. She’s gonna call me when she gets out of work to reschedule.
On Thursday I thought it would be a good idea to post on an urban exploration website and ask for help and money. Yeah, I thought since the movie is about some of that stuff people might be willing to help. Wrong. All they did was make fun of me. So I deleted my account. Oh well. It’s was a bad idea anyway.
I made two offers for roles yesterday. I offered the part of Matt Snyder to Kent Walter. Kent did a great job in the audition. During his audition I told him that of all the people we’d seen so far he was the only one that read the dialogue the way it was written to be read. Everyone else did a good job and it was interesting to see how other people interpreted it but he hit exactly how I read it in my mind. We thought for a second of having him play Colin but he was just too good looking. Colin’s not ugly but he’s not as attractive as Kent is. But we knew right away that Matt was the role for him. I’m excited to work with him. I also offered the role of Mike Mason to Adam Roa. I’ve worked with Adam before. He played Chad (the lead) in Credit Counselors. I gave Kent his copy of the screenplay on Friday as well as a copy of the shorts I did. Adam’s gonna pick up his stuff on Monday at my work. I told both of them that they didn’t have to accept the part, but that I was giving the offer and that I want them to read the screenplay and once I figure out what the deferred pay is I’ll let them know. Then they can accept the part. But I wanted them to know that the offer is there. I’m excited to work with both of them. I’m gonna take another look at the tapes today and make more offers this afternoon.
I talked to SAG on Thursday. It went well enough. Basically if I want to do a SAG Ultra-Low Budget Agreement I have to pay all SAG actors a Minimum of $100 a day. There’s no way around it and there are not exceptions or other options. I really want these actors. I have a few options in what I can do about the money. I could try and raise the money. I could re-write the scenes and cut some of the SAG actor’s character’s content. I could try and re-arrange the schedule so that the SAG actors work less days but that seems like the hardest and most difficult option. I’m gonna work this out when I get home from my trip to Maine. I leave Tuesday and come back Tuesday. This and a budget will be my top priorities when I get back. I’ll make the SAG offers after I have made a final decision on what to do about the issue.
I’ve been thoroughly talking to Ron about all the SAG issues and he’s been a great help.
I’ve decided to formally put together a business plan. Although we’re not looking for investors I think it’ll be a good thing to do as far as practice and other things. We’re actually looking for donations. We want to try and raise maybe $5000 in donations. I’m gonna be putting in close to that of my own money. At least I hope.
The website was updated a little. I put pictures from the state press up.
Jon’s coming over today and I’m going to give him his copy of the screenplay.
I was supposed to have my lunch with Mallory today but she had to cancel cause she said her work scheduled her even though she asked for it off. She’s gonna call me when she gets out of work to reschedule.
On Thursday I thought it would be a good idea to post on an urban exploration website and ask for help and money. Yeah, I thought since the movie is about some of that stuff people might be willing to help. Wrong. All they did was make fun of me. So I deleted my account. Oh well. It’s was a bad idea anyway.
6/14/06
The Snags
Man, these production diaries are getting to be a large chore. A lot has happened in the last two days and I’m tired. It’s hard to sit here at 10:30 at night and write a synopsis of the past few days when I’ve got to get up early for work. But I like it none the less. Keeps me sane. Almost therapeutic.
Well first thing Tuesday morning I got in a tift with Colin about him playing himself. He really wanted to and I wanted him to but I just couldn’t fit the shooting schedule to what he needed. He said his work would probably only give him the time off for vacation and that’s only 11 days. He got kind of offended with me because he thought I was telling him that I’d rather someone else play him. Which isn’t true. I’d like him to play himself. But anyway, I assured him that wasn’t the case and today he had his meeting with his supervisor about his vacation time. I didn’t hear from him at all all day and when I talked to Dan at around 5 I told him we probably couldn’t cast him. BUT THEN!!! I got an email from Colin around an hour ago saying he got the whole shoot off and he’ll be here!!! Wahoo. I’m glad that worked out.
Vic said he’s interested in the role I offered him. I’m excited. He played this naked Native American in Jon’s zombie movie “blue juice” and he’s perfect for Officer Ashton. Hell, I pretty much wrote the part for him. He left me a message saying he was interested. I’ll call him tomorrow and work out the details of how to get him a script.
I finished the shooting schedule today. Well the schedule that is. I’ve still got some data entry to do. Stuff with props and set dressing stuffs. I’ll do that stuff when I get back when I start to do an official budget for the film. I’m just glad the preliminary shooting schedule is done that way I can start offering roles after I talk to SAG.
I did research yesterday into the different SAG contracts. I’m a little worried. Of the auditioners there are 4 actors that are SAG that I want to give roles too. But we can’t afford $1700. We have to pay them $100 a day according to the contract. I’m gonna call the head of SAG in our city and talk to him tomorrow about what my options are. Damn, I really want those actors. We’ll see.
The websites are all updated. I think they look nice thank you. I took everything out about the tunnels. Time to start being super secret.
We were in the state press yesterday. A photographer came to the auditions to take our photos for an article about the new film program. The article’s pretty cool but I was way stressed they were gonna say something about the movie. But they didn’t so it’s all good.
So far in the development and pre-production of this project I haven’t hit as big a snag as I did today. I got an anonymous business like email from Miguel saying in nicer words than this “there are serious issues with your capstone project”. Well I jumped right off the computer (which is why I’ll didn’t finish entering in the props and stuff) and walked right over to his office hoping to catch him. I did. We talked for awhile but basically he said I need to sell him on the fact that we can make this film. Which I can and will. We’re gonna be getting together on Monday to discuss the project. Even though this could be a potential problem, I’m happy it’s happening. I’ve been waiting for someone in the school of theatre and film to have serious issues with this project and I’m glad it was Miguel and not someone else. He had a lot of strange things to say and I’m not sure where he was going but he said he’s gonna go through my screenplay and shooting schedule thoroughly and we’ll talk on Monday. I’ll let everyone know how it goes.
Well first thing Tuesday morning I got in a tift with Colin about him playing himself. He really wanted to and I wanted him to but I just couldn’t fit the shooting schedule to what he needed. He said his work would probably only give him the time off for vacation and that’s only 11 days. He got kind of offended with me because he thought I was telling him that I’d rather someone else play him. Which isn’t true. I’d like him to play himself. But anyway, I assured him that wasn’t the case and today he had his meeting with his supervisor about his vacation time. I didn’t hear from him at all all day and when I talked to Dan at around 5 I told him we probably couldn’t cast him. BUT THEN!!! I got an email from Colin around an hour ago saying he got the whole shoot off and he’ll be here!!! Wahoo. I’m glad that worked out.
Vic said he’s interested in the role I offered him. I’m excited. He played this naked Native American in Jon’s zombie movie “blue juice” and he’s perfect for Officer Ashton. Hell, I pretty much wrote the part for him. He left me a message saying he was interested. I’ll call him tomorrow and work out the details of how to get him a script.
I finished the shooting schedule today. Well the schedule that is. I’ve still got some data entry to do. Stuff with props and set dressing stuffs. I’ll do that stuff when I get back when I start to do an official budget for the film. I’m just glad the preliminary shooting schedule is done that way I can start offering roles after I talk to SAG.
I did research yesterday into the different SAG contracts. I’m a little worried. Of the auditioners there are 4 actors that are SAG that I want to give roles too. But we can’t afford $1700. We have to pay them $100 a day according to the contract. I’m gonna call the head of SAG in our city and talk to him tomorrow about what my options are. Damn, I really want those actors. We’ll see.
The websites are all updated. I think they look nice thank you. I took everything out about the tunnels. Time to start being super secret.
We were in the state press yesterday. A photographer came to the auditions to take our photos for an article about the new film program. The article’s pretty cool but I was way stressed they were gonna say something about the movie. But they didn’t so it’s all good.
So far in the development and pre-production of this project I haven’t hit as big a snag as I did today. I got an anonymous business like email from Miguel saying in nicer words than this “there are serious issues with your capstone project”. Well I jumped right off the computer (which is why I’ll didn’t finish entering in the props and stuff) and walked right over to his office hoping to catch him. I did. We talked for awhile but basically he said I need to sell him on the fact that we can make this film. Which I can and will. We’re gonna be getting together on Monday to discuss the project. Even though this could be a potential problem, I’m happy it’s happening. I’ve been waiting for someone in the school of theatre and film to have serious issues with this project and I’m glad it was Miguel and not someone else. He had a lot of strange things to say and I’m not sure where he was going but he said he’s gonna go through my screenplay and shooting schedule thoroughly and we’ll talk on Monday. I’ll let everyone know how it goes.
6/12/06
How we Audition
So, I figured since I didn’t go to much into the auditions in my last post I’ll tell you guys exactly what we did.
I posted auditions by appointment only. Actors were required to provide a headshot and resume. Actors would email me and I’d set them up with a time. I gave actors the option of emailing an electronic copy of their resume and head shot as well. Almost every single one of them brought in a head shot. As I said before, about 40 actors of the 70 that signed up showed up. When they first arrived at the room where they were told the auditions were being held they were given a form and a questionnaire to fill out. The form was generic. Name, date, phone, email, etc. the questionnaire had questions like “are you willing to shave your head?” and “are you comfortable portraying sexual acts for comedic effect” over all there were about 25-30 questions in that nature. We wanted to make sure actors knew what they were getting into and also we wanted to make sure we knew what actors were willing to do if we were interested in offering them a part. Then when, we were ready (the auditioning panel that is) we would radio in to the waiting room and call the actor(s) in. one of our staff would walk the actor(s) to the back room with their forms and headshots and resumes if they had them with them. The actor would come in and if there were two we’d have them read together and if there were one we’d have Linnaea Kimble, our production designer, read with them. I would introduce everyone by name and job to the actor(s) and then I would have them slate for the camera. They would say there name, their audition number, and do a left and right profile for us. Then we would have the actor read the scene twice. First time I told them to read it how they thought it should be read. The scene was two actors telling a story to someone and at the same time talking to each other, kind of like hosts on a morning talk show. If the actor presented the information in a positive manner I would ask the opposite. And if the actor initially presented the material in a negative manner I would again ask the opposite. After that we would go through there forms, ask them some questions about the answers they gave or anything on their resume, and then let them ask if they had any questions for us. And that was it. The actor(s) would then leave and we’d talk about them. Some people we know right away and other’s we’d have to think about. At the end of the day we spread out all the head shots on a table and I had note cards with character names and the whole staff would look at the headshots and we’d debate about who should play who. Over all it was a great, successful weekend and we accomplished a lot.
I posted auditions by appointment only. Actors were required to provide a headshot and resume. Actors would email me and I’d set them up with a time. I gave actors the option of emailing an electronic copy of their resume and head shot as well. Almost every single one of them brought in a head shot. As I said before, about 40 actors of the 70 that signed up showed up. When they first arrived at the room where they were told the auditions were being held they were given a form and a questionnaire to fill out. The form was generic. Name, date, phone, email, etc. the questionnaire had questions like “are you willing to shave your head?” and “are you comfortable portraying sexual acts for comedic effect” over all there were about 25-30 questions in that nature. We wanted to make sure actors knew what they were getting into and also we wanted to make sure we knew what actors were willing to do if we were interested in offering them a part. Then when, we were ready (the auditioning panel that is) we would radio in to the waiting room and call the actor(s) in. one of our staff would walk the actor(s) to the back room with their forms and headshots and resumes if they had them with them. The actor would come in and if there were two we’d have them read together and if there were one we’d have Linnaea Kimble, our production designer, read with them. I would introduce everyone by name and job to the actor(s) and then I would have them slate for the camera. They would say there name, their audition number, and do a left and right profile for us. Then we would have the actor read the scene twice. First time I told them to read it how they thought it should be read. The scene was two actors telling a story to someone and at the same time talking to each other, kind of like hosts on a morning talk show. If the actor presented the information in a positive manner I would ask the opposite. And if the actor initially presented the material in a negative manner I would again ask the opposite. After that we would go through there forms, ask them some questions about the answers they gave or anything on their resume, and then let them ask if they had any questions for us. And that was it. The actor(s) would then leave and we’d talk about them. Some people we know right away and other’s we’d have to think about. At the end of the day we spread out all the head shots on a table and I had note cards with character names and the whole staff would look at the headshots and we’d debate about who should play who. Over all it was a great, successful weekend and we accomplished a lot.
Yay for Communication!
Auditions went very well. I just finished sending out a thank you email to all the actors that auditioned and I told them that of the seven shorts I’ve done this was by far the most talented group of actors I’ve ever auditioned. And that’s the truth. We had about 65-70 actors signed up and about 40 actually made it out. 5-6 cancelled and the rest were no shows. It didn’t discourage me though because if they don’t show to the audition they might not show to the shoot or something like that. Weed out the unreliable ones first. I told all the actors that we were giving ourselves a month to make final decisions. I’m actually going to be notifying people on Friday or Saturday. I’m gonna send them the screenplay, the part I’d like them to play, and a DVD with Credit Counselors, Rock.Paper.Scissors. and OK on it. I don’t want them to accept the role till I give them the shooting schedule details (which I should have by that time anyway) and the sag contract (which I have no idea when that will be worked out). I just want the actors to know that I want them to play a certain part and if they read the script and don’t want that part and they decline it’ll give us enough time to find someone else and make another offer. We’re actually going to be doing more auditions. There were a few crucial roles that didn’t get filled, mainly the role of me. But I’m not being vain or anything. I’m a real dork, and there were no dorks that auditioned really. I mean, everyone was either real cool or a woman. And those are two things I’m not. So we’re gonna do another casting call in a month or so.
Travis got a hold of IHOP and it looks like they want us to pay for the time there. I told Travis to look into Denny’s and see what they say. Denny’s could easily replace IHOP, although I’d love to do it at IHOP. I talked to Ron about it and he had some great ideas. He told us to email them and tell them that the actors are eating in the scene and that they will be paying for food and that the crew and extras we bring will be eating as well. He also said we should ask if we could do some sort of casting call with the waitresses so that we could get IHOP more involved. It’ll be interesting to see what they say.
I have yet to respond to Lamont in regards to his email, I’ve just been so busy. I’ll try and do it tonight.
I’m on my way back to the computer lab in a couple of hours to start work on the schedule again. It’ll be fun.
The meeting last Wednesday was interesting. Everyone ended up canceling so it was just me Dan and Noel. I gave them hard copies of the script then and everyone else got there’s at auditions. Well, Travis got his from me at work but that’s fine.
I offered the role of Melanie (the RA) to Kate Haas and she accepted the role. She got her copy as well. I’ve worked with her a lot before and I really wanted her to play this role. It’s gonna be fun.
Still haven’t heard from the story board guys yet. I’ll call them this evening.
I’ve been going through a hard copy of the script all this last week highlighting characters, props, locations, set dressings, and crucial sound effects. This production draft will be my key while I finish up the schedule; it’ll make it THAT much easier and faster. So I hope anyway.
My cell phone is up and running! Yay for communication!
I got an email from Brad Golden, the gentleman I want to play Officer Robert Navarro. He said he was excited about working on the project which makes me soooooo happy. He gave me his address so I mailed him a hard copy of the screenplay on Friday. Now I just wait.
Travis got a hold of IHOP and it looks like they want us to pay for the time there. I told Travis to look into Denny’s and see what they say. Denny’s could easily replace IHOP, although I’d love to do it at IHOP. I talked to Ron about it and he had some great ideas. He told us to email them and tell them that the actors are eating in the scene and that they will be paying for food and that the crew and extras we bring will be eating as well. He also said we should ask if we could do some sort of casting call with the waitresses so that we could get IHOP more involved. It’ll be interesting to see what they say.
I have yet to respond to Lamont in regards to his email, I’ve just been so busy. I’ll try and do it tonight.
I’m on my way back to the computer lab in a couple of hours to start work on the schedule again. It’ll be fun.
The meeting last Wednesday was interesting. Everyone ended up canceling so it was just me Dan and Noel. I gave them hard copies of the script then and everyone else got there’s at auditions. Well, Travis got his from me at work but that’s fine.
I offered the role of Melanie (the RA) to Kate Haas and she accepted the role. She got her copy as well. I’ve worked with her a lot before and I really wanted her to play this role. It’s gonna be fun.
Still haven’t heard from the story board guys yet. I’ll call them this evening.
I’ve been going through a hard copy of the script all this last week highlighting characters, props, locations, set dressings, and crucial sound effects. This production draft will be my key while I finish up the schedule; it’ll make it THAT much easier and faster. So I hope anyway.
My cell phone is up and running! Yay for communication!
I got an email from Brad Golden, the gentleman I want to play Officer Robert Navarro. He said he was excited about working on the project which makes me soooooo happy. He gave me his address so I mailed him a hard copy of the screenplay on Friday. Now I just wait.
6/6/06
I'll Take What I Can Get
I’m tired. So tired. I’ve had a busy busy first part of the week. And I’m tired.
So last post I said 5 producers was enough. Well, we’ve added another. Noel Lucas. She’s new to the game so we gonna bring her on as a Co-Producer so she can get her feet wet. She’s film student at ASU and had a class with me and Dan. She had been emailing and calling me about summer projects and stuff and I told her that my only commitment thus far was Freshmen. She said she’d like to help any way she could and I invited her to a production meeting so she could see how we do things. Well at the meeting she signed on so I’ll put her profile on the website in a few days.
My production team doesn’t know this yet but I’m going to Maine in two weeks. My family’s there and I was gonna go in august but I didn’t want to leave for a week so close to production. I leave on Tuesday the 20th and come back Tuesday the 27th. I hope I can find something to do for the film while I’m out there. I’ll let the team know tomorrow
The production meeting went well on Sunday. We went a half hour over. Mostly because I walked them through how exactly auditions will run this coming weekend.
I sent out an email to the school of theatre and film today as one last reach to get actors for auditions this weekend. I’m interested to see how fruitful it will be. I made some alterations today for the auditioning room. It cost $25 but I think it will make a huge difference. What I did was had the room rearranged for us this weekend. It will be set up like a panel setting (like an audition!) instead of just a plane room. I also had the table draped. I’m excited about auditions. I think they’re gonna be fun.
I worked on the schedule all day yesterday. Well as long as I could. I didn’t get it done. I thought 8 hours would have been enough but it wasn’t. I was there from 10am-5:15pm. I only got really close to finishing updating the breakdowns. It took forever! I guess I didn’t realize just how different the old script was from the final one. The ladies on vacation till next Monday so next week my top priority is two things. One is finishing the shooting schedule. I wanted to have it done for auditions this weekend but oh well. The other is to get storyboard rolling.
I haven’t really talked to any of the story board guys yet. I haven’t sent them the script. Dan wanted me to have all the details worked out by tomorrow at our meeting but I’m not gonna be able to make that deadline. It was just something I couldn’t pull off.
I finished the script Sunday. I actually changed the title to “Freshmen: In the Night of Their Lives”. It gives the film a little bit of a cheekier mood (it was Jason’s idea. Thanks Jason). I want people going into this knowing it’s supposed to in fun. The final script clocked in at 117 pages. Well, 116 and a half really. Ha. But anyway. 20 copies were made tonight and I’m gonna pick them up in the morning. I’ll give them to the team tomorrow at the meeting. This is the only copy they’ll get from me. I’m gonna tell them that it’s $3 a copy from now in if they want or need another one.
Today I booked the stage in the MU in October for the Philanthropy scene. The stage goes fast so I wanted to book it ahead of time. I’m gonna go in and look at it tomorrow with the retractable wall closed so I can make sure it blocks out sunlight. If it works well we’ll do that shoot day for night. Which would be great. Save time and money.
I got an email from Chris LaMont today about the screenplay. I haven’t’ replied yet. It was ok. He had a lot of good things to say. The main problem he had with it was that he says the movie needs to be edited down heavily. He says he can’t keep track of who’s who. I think he’s wrong. Especially because of the example he used. Which confused me. He said think of great ensemble films like “can’t hardly wait” and how there were lots of characters and when you came out of the movie you could only remember three of the stories, if that many. I didn’t understand what he ment by this. Cause he said it was a great movie but then used it as an example of what’s wrong with mine. I still don’t understand. I’ll have to clarify it with him. I’ll email him tomorrow.
I’m grooming this girl to be either first AD or UPM on the shoot. Her name is Mallory and she’s amazing in a leadership role. I’m doing her a favor this week with some software for sound editing and then we’re gonna have lunch on Saturday the 17th. She’s been out of the country all semester. I really hope I can get her to sign on as crew. She’d be an even better producer but I don’t think she has the time. I’ll take what I can get.
So last post I said 5 producers was enough. Well, we’ve added another. Noel Lucas. She’s new to the game so we gonna bring her on as a Co-Producer so she can get her feet wet. She’s film student at ASU and had a class with me and Dan. She had been emailing and calling me about summer projects and stuff and I told her that my only commitment thus far was Freshmen. She said she’d like to help any way she could and I invited her to a production meeting so she could see how we do things. Well at the meeting she signed on so I’ll put her profile on the website in a few days.
My production team doesn’t know this yet but I’m going to Maine in two weeks. My family’s there and I was gonna go in august but I didn’t want to leave for a week so close to production. I leave on Tuesday the 20th and come back Tuesday the 27th. I hope I can find something to do for the film while I’m out there. I’ll let the team know tomorrow
The production meeting went well on Sunday. We went a half hour over. Mostly because I walked them through how exactly auditions will run this coming weekend.
I sent out an email to the school of theatre and film today as one last reach to get actors for auditions this weekend. I’m interested to see how fruitful it will be. I made some alterations today for the auditioning room. It cost $25 but I think it will make a huge difference. What I did was had the room rearranged for us this weekend. It will be set up like a panel setting (like an audition!) instead of just a plane room. I also had the table draped. I’m excited about auditions. I think they’re gonna be fun.
I worked on the schedule all day yesterday. Well as long as I could. I didn’t get it done. I thought 8 hours would have been enough but it wasn’t. I was there from 10am-5:15pm. I only got really close to finishing updating the breakdowns. It took forever! I guess I didn’t realize just how different the old script was from the final one. The ladies on vacation till next Monday so next week my top priority is two things. One is finishing the shooting schedule. I wanted to have it done for auditions this weekend but oh well. The other is to get storyboard rolling.
I haven’t really talked to any of the story board guys yet. I haven’t sent them the script. Dan wanted me to have all the details worked out by tomorrow at our meeting but I’m not gonna be able to make that deadline. It was just something I couldn’t pull off.
I finished the script Sunday. I actually changed the title to “Freshmen: In the Night of Their Lives”. It gives the film a little bit of a cheekier mood (it was Jason’s idea. Thanks Jason). I want people going into this knowing it’s supposed to in fun. The final script clocked in at 117 pages. Well, 116 and a half really. Ha. But anyway. 20 copies were made tonight and I’m gonna pick them up in the morning. I’ll give them to the team tomorrow at the meeting. This is the only copy they’ll get from me. I’m gonna tell them that it’s $3 a copy from now in if they want or need another one.
Today I booked the stage in the MU in October for the Philanthropy scene. The stage goes fast so I wanted to book it ahead of time. I’m gonna go in and look at it tomorrow with the retractable wall closed so I can make sure it blocks out sunlight. If it works well we’ll do that shoot day for night. Which would be great. Save time and money.
I got an email from Chris LaMont today about the screenplay. I haven’t’ replied yet. It was ok. He had a lot of good things to say. The main problem he had with it was that he says the movie needs to be edited down heavily. He says he can’t keep track of who’s who. I think he’s wrong. Especially because of the example he used. Which confused me. He said think of great ensemble films like “can’t hardly wait” and how there were lots of characters and when you came out of the movie you could only remember three of the stories, if that many. I didn’t understand what he ment by this. Cause he said it was a great movie but then used it as an example of what’s wrong with mine. I still don’t understand. I’ll have to clarify it with him. I’ll email him tomorrow.
I’m grooming this girl to be either first AD or UPM on the shoot. Her name is Mallory and she’s amazing in a leadership role. I’m doing her a favor this week with some software for sound editing and then we’re gonna have lunch on Saturday the 17th. She’s been out of the country all semester. I really hope I can get her to sign on as crew. She’d be an even better producer but I don’t think she has the time. I’ll take what I can get.
6/3/06
Entry in Transit
Here I am in Molly’s mini-van heading back to the city. We had to go up to some hoe dunk town for a retirement party. I guess one of Molly’s mom’s friends is retiring so we had to go. It wasn’t that bad. I would have rather worked on stuff for the film but it’s ok. There’s lots of stuff that I do where I would rather have worked on the film. Anyway.
Auditions are still steadily filling up. As of right now we’re gonna see about 60 actors so I think we should have a good pool to choose from.
I met with Jason and Chad for about 2 hours on Friday. It went fairly well. He had some really good things to say, some good suggestions as well. I took some of them and dismissed some of them. Most of the reason I dismissed his suggestions was not because it didn’t work or was bad but more because the screenplay is already so long. Chad came along and had read the screenplay and had some good things to say as well. I had wanted Chad to come on as a producer and Dan had talked about brining Jason on as a producer. Neither of them were really interested in working on the production. We didn’t talk about it but I could tell by there attitudes and about some other stuff we talked about. That’s fine with me though. 5 producers is enough ;)
I finished everything for the screenplay except for a few technical things. I tightened up the opening tunnel scene and mixed it in with the opening credits. It works much better. I’ve also strengthened the sense of alert in the cops in the beginning by adding some set up for the bomb threat. I’m still in the process of changing character names, location names, and police code. I want to make the police code a little more realistic and concise (Jason’s idea to his credit). The reason I’m changing a lot of names is because I don’t want to offend anyone or get sued. Some of the people the characters are based on have become very involved in the university and are usg senators or presidents of fraternities and stuff. As for the people who dropped, failed out, or I know I’m not changing their name. Like me Colin, and Brandon.
I told the production crew that I would have hard copies of the screenplay for them tomorrow at the meeting but their gonna have to wait till Wednesday or next Sunday. I’ll try and give them to them by Wednesday so that they can read the new draft before auditions on next Saturday and Sunday. I’ll definitely make the deadline for tomorrow for the final shooting draft of the screenplay and I would have had copies for them but the copy shop isn’t open on Sunday. I’ll send them an electronic copy. Hopefully that will appease them before I can get them a hard copy.
Since I was so close to finishing the screenplay Friday I emailed the lady in charge of the computer lab that has the Movie Magic Scheduling software. I’m soooooo glad I contacted her. I asked her when I could get into the lab cause she had told me that during the summer if I needed to use the software I had to contact her directly cause the lab would be closed other wise. So she’s going on vacation for a week on Tuesday! So she’s gonna let me in the lab at 10am Monday and I’m gonna stay there ALL DAY and completely revise the schedule. She’s gonna leave at 10:30 and I’ll just let myself out when I’m done. It’ll be really good to have the schedule done earlier than I thought. This way the production team can really get a head start on different things and at auditions I can be able to answer questions by actors about the schedule much better. Anyway, I’m excited to be getting the schedule done.
As a side not, just to let you know, I saw little scrapper Thursday night. We could here him crying outside so I went out looking for him with a bowl of food. After a few minutes I was able to find him under a car but he wouldn’t let me get close at all. I just left the bowl out for him. I don’t think he ate any of it. It was still full in the morning. I’m not worried about him though. He should be fine. He was wild before.
Auditions are still steadily filling up. As of right now we’re gonna see about 60 actors so I think we should have a good pool to choose from.
I met with Jason and Chad for about 2 hours on Friday. It went fairly well. He had some really good things to say, some good suggestions as well. I took some of them and dismissed some of them. Most of the reason I dismissed his suggestions was not because it didn’t work or was bad but more because the screenplay is already so long. Chad came along and had read the screenplay and had some good things to say as well. I had wanted Chad to come on as a producer and Dan had talked about brining Jason on as a producer. Neither of them were really interested in working on the production. We didn’t talk about it but I could tell by there attitudes and about some other stuff we talked about. That’s fine with me though. 5 producers is enough ;)
I finished everything for the screenplay except for a few technical things. I tightened up the opening tunnel scene and mixed it in with the opening credits. It works much better. I’ve also strengthened the sense of alert in the cops in the beginning by adding some set up for the bomb threat. I’m still in the process of changing character names, location names, and police code. I want to make the police code a little more realistic and concise (Jason’s idea to his credit). The reason I’m changing a lot of names is because I don’t want to offend anyone or get sued. Some of the people the characters are based on have become very involved in the university and are usg senators or presidents of fraternities and stuff. As for the people who dropped, failed out, or I know I’m not changing their name. Like me Colin, and Brandon.
I told the production crew that I would have hard copies of the screenplay for them tomorrow at the meeting but their gonna have to wait till Wednesday or next Sunday. I’ll try and give them to them by Wednesday so that they can read the new draft before auditions on next Saturday and Sunday. I’ll definitely make the deadline for tomorrow for the final shooting draft of the screenplay and I would have had copies for them but the copy shop isn’t open on Sunday. I’ll send them an electronic copy. Hopefully that will appease them before I can get them a hard copy.
Since I was so close to finishing the screenplay Friday I emailed the lady in charge of the computer lab that has the Movie Magic Scheduling software. I’m soooooo glad I contacted her. I asked her when I could get into the lab cause she had told me that during the summer if I needed to use the software I had to contact her directly cause the lab would be closed other wise. So she’s going on vacation for a week on Tuesday! So she’s gonna let me in the lab at 10am Monday and I’m gonna stay there ALL DAY and completely revise the schedule. She’s gonna leave at 10:30 and I’ll just let myself out when I’m done. It’ll be really good to have the schedule done earlier than I thought. This way the production team can really get a head start on different things and at auditions I can be able to answer questions by actors about the schedule much better. Anyway, I’m excited to be getting the schedule done.
As a side not, just to let you know, I saw little scrapper Thursday night. We could here him crying outside so I went out looking for him with a bowl of food. After a few minutes I was able to find him under a car but he wouldn’t let me get close at all. I just left the bowl out for him. I don’t think he ate any of it. It was still full in the morning. I’m not worried about him though. He should be fine. He was wild before.
6/1/06
Help Holding It Up
This is kind of random buy I got bit by a feral kitten last night. Molly and I were driving home and I saw an undercover cop cuffing a hooker. I told molly and she turned to look and when she turned back to the road we hit a cat running across the road. I turned around and saw the cat run off to the side of the road so we pulled over to see if anything was wrong. When we got to where the cat had been there was only this lone little kitten meowing. I don't think we hit him but we may have hit his mom. This stretch of road was really bad. Lots of traffic and construction, no place for an 8 week old kitten. Molly and I approached him and he ran around a corner. We followed and for a bit couldn't find him but started to here him crying again. I found him hiding up in a small tree. I reached up to and pulled a branch down and was able to pet him alright. He didn't hiss or anything. Molly told me to pick him up by the neck so I did. He didn't like that to much. As I was lowering him to the ground he struggled in my grip and was able to bite my right thumb and index finger with all his might. Writing this post is gonna be hard cause I know it's gonna be long. Anyway. We wrapped him in molly's shirt and took him to my apartment complex and let him loose there. Lots of people feed strays there and there's a big pool full of water. It’s a walled community and it's really safe. I named the cat little scrapper. Hopefully I’ll see him around. Little scrapper. Sheesh. Little bastard.
I met with Miguel on Tuesday. I went over to his office and he just happened to be there so we sat and talked for about an hour. We talked about locations on campus and reslife and the police and he's gonna do some administrative battling this summer and wants me to wait on campus locations till late July early august. That makes me extremely nervous. As of 3 days ago we're exactly 4 months out from shooting and I like to have my locations locked as soon as possible. There were also some issues with selling a product made for a class commercially. But these things will be worked out later. We also talked about getting credit for some of the other key students involved in the project. I'm excited about this because it boosts moral in the crew cause they're getting something more than nothing out of it, and also it kind of holds them to the production. So they have more at stake. These things help prevent no shows on the day of shooting ;)
I talked to facman today about the shooting date, location scout, and run through that I want to do and my contact was just full of yeses and oks. I’m so excited that this part of the production seems to be going off so far with out a hitch. Basically what I told him was that I wanted to do one more location scout. Then I wanted to sit with my crew and pick the exact locations for each and every shot/scene of the tunnels portion of the screenplay. Then we’d do a mock run through and go to every location so that when we actually film the crew that will be down there will be completely prepared for what needs to happen. I also talked to him about when we’d actually be shooting down there and everything looks cool. We’re even gonna keep working with the same guys that took us down before. They’ll be there for all three times we go in. they were awesome on the location scout so I’m really happy about it.
The elevator people emailed me Tuesday. it was a flat out no. in the email they sent was copy and pasted text from laws and stuff about only certified people entering elevator shafts and that the school wasn't willing to certify us or take the risk. I talked to the Miguel and the production team about it and they were cool. We came up with some alternative options.
I talked to Frankie and he's definitely interested he's gonna talk to the other guy, JJ, that did the bunny movie with him. I’m excited that their interested. They’ll officially sign on if they read the script. Hopefully they'll like it.
I haven't done much on the script since my last post. I’ve been super busy. But things are calm today and tomorrow and I’m planning on getting a lot done.
I had an epiphany the other day for who to use as a sound guy. I think I’m gonna ask the guy that did ADR for LOTD. I've got to do some ADR for some other shorts and I’m gonna email him to set that up. During the session I’ll mention to him that I’m making a film and looking for crew. I’ll try and use the same tactic I did with Dan Dredger. Try and get Andy to offer to help rather than ask him flat out.
Linnaea came to the meeting yesterday and it was great to see her. I gave her some old prop and vehicle lists so she can get started. I told her she can build her own team and I think she's gonna bring her son on board. She sent me stuff for her bio on the website. I’ll put it up this weekend
Auditions are filling up nicely and consistently.
Last night's production meeting went very very well. It also went an hour over. It was great though. Everyone showed up but Brandon. At the meeting I couldn't remember why he wasn't there but today I talked to him and he reminded me he had told me it was his girl friends birthday. So we talked about everything I just posted, except for the tunnels. I’ll tell them on Sunday if they don't read this. We also set some more dates. We backed storyboards to July 28th 2006. We want to make sure we have enough time to do it right. Posters and similar promotional materials are due February 1st 2007 and the official trailer’s due February 13th 2007. I feel really great about the team I have. I was just telling molly yesterday before the meeting that I was feeling stressed about the movie because we're only 4 months away. The meeting totally lifted that stress. I don't feel like the whole weight of the film is no my shoulders. I feel more like I’ve got 10 people helping me hold it up.
I met with Miguel on Tuesday. I went over to his office and he just happened to be there so we sat and talked for about an hour. We talked about locations on campus and reslife and the police and he's gonna do some administrative battling this summer and wants me to wait on campus locations till late July early august. That makes me extremely nervous. As of 3 days ago we're exactly 4 months out from shooting and I like to have my locations locked as soon as possible. There were also some issues with selling a product made for a class commercially. But these things will be worked out later. We also talked about getting credit for some of the other key students involved in the project. I'm excited about this because it boosts moral in the crew cause they're getting something more than nothing out of it, and also it kind of holds them to the production. So they have more at stake. These things help prevent no shows on the day of shooting ;)
I talked to facman today about the shooting date, location scout, and run through that I want to do and my contact was just full of yeses and oks. I’m so excited that this part of the production seems to be going off so far with out a hitch. Basically what I told him was that I wanted to do one more location scout. Then I wanted to sit with my crew and pick the exact locations for each and every shot/scene of the tunnels portion of the screenplay. Then we’d do a mock run through and go to every location so that when we actually film the crew that will be down there will be completely prepared for what needs to happen. I also talked to him about when we’d actually be shooting down there and everything looks cool. We’re even gonna keep working with the same guys that took us down before. They’ll be there for all three times we go in. they were awesome on the location scout so I’m really happy about it.
The elevator people emailed me Tuesday. it was a flat out no. in the email they sent was copy and pasted text from laws and stuff about only certified people entering elevator shafts and that the school wasn't willing to certify us or take the risk. I talked to the Miguel and the production team about it and they were cool. We came up with some alternative options.
I talked to Frankie and he's definitely interested he's gonna talk to the other guy, JJ, that did the bunny movie with him. I’m excited that their interested. They’ll officially sign on if they read the script. Hopefully they'll like it.
I haven't done much on the script since my last post. I’ve been super busy. But things are calm today and tomorrow and I’m planning on getting a lot done.
I had an epiphany the other day for who to use as a sound guy. I think I’m gonna ask the guy that did ADR for LOTD. I've got to do some ADR for some other shorts and I’m gonna email him to set that up. During the session I’ll mention to him that I’m making a film and looking for crew. I’ll try and use the same tactic I did with Dan Dredger. Try and get Andy to offer to help rather than ask him flat out.
Linnaea came to the meeting yesterday and it was great to see her. I gave her some old prop and vehicle lists so she can get started. I told her she can build her own team and I think she's gonna bring her son on board. She sent me stuff for her bio on the website. I’ll put it up this weekend
Auditions are filling up nicely and consistently.
Last night's production meeting went very very well. It also went an hour over. It was great though. Everyone showed up but Brandon. At the meeting I couldn't remember why he wasn't there but today I talked to him and he reminded me he had told me it was his girl friends birthday. So we talked about everything I just posted, except for the tunnels. I’ll tell them on Sunday if they don't read this. We also set some more dates. We backed storyboards to July 28th 2006. We want to make sure we have enough time to do it right. Posters and similar promotional materials are due February 1st 2007 and the official trailer’s due February 13th 2007. I feel really great about the team I have. I was just telling molly yesterday before the meeting that I was feeling stressed about the movie because we're only 4 months away. The meeting totally lifted that stress. I don't feel like the whole weight of the film is no my shoulders. I feel more like I’ve got 10 people helping me hold it up.
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