What's in a Name?

So I’m getting more and more responses to the copies of the script I sent out. An interesting one came up recently. One reader's (Erik Gustafson) biggest concern was that the character based on my retained my actual name. He thought that for the script it was ok but when the movie was finished it would be strange to see "written and directed by Jared Scott Mercer" and then find out the character that frames the film has the same name. He said it might be jarring and could come off weird. He also said that it limits the range of the writing by forcing it to stay true. He suggested I change all the names. I haven't yet decided what exactly I’m going to do. hmmmm. I’ll think about it.

I saw brad golden today. I really want him to play Officer Navarro. I emailed him a while ago but he didn't answer. Anyway I was walking down the street to go get my hair cut and I hear "Jared!" I turn and it's him driving his van in the middle of rush hour. I asked if he got my email and he said he did. I had told him that the students really want him to run the studio that the school of theatre and film is building. He yelled to me to keep him updated but he meant about the job not about the movie. I will. I’ll email him again and hope that this time he replies.

Uh-Oh

so I had my regular gmail account set to Jared@freshmenthemovie.com so that when actors and friend email me when I reply it looks professional and also may spark some interest in the website. Well gmail has this function were you can change the from address on your emails. When I email asu officials or people of a more professional nature I usually set it to jared.mercier@asu.edu or jsmercier@gmail.com

well…I received on email from a state press reporter inquiring about the film festival I’m helping run and I responded to her without changing the email address from freshmenthemovie. Needless to say I’m a little worried. I don’t want any reporters to find out I’m doing this movie till after I’m done. Because some of the locations are really sensitive, like the tunnels, and reslife, I don’t want to burn any bridges or get on the bad side of people. See most entities at ASU like the state press when they’re not featured in it. And also when it doesn’t reveal secrets that might be tempting to young foolish freshmen, like that existence of the tunnels. In fact when I talked to facman for the first time they wanted to make sure I wasn’t school media before they would even talk to me about them, and they made sure that I wasn’t going to go telling everyone about them (is this blog doing just that? I don’t think so but anyway). So I deleted the freshmen accounts from my regular gmail and started a freshmenthemovie@gmail account that’s completely separate. So that I wont make the mistake of emailing the wrong people the existence of this website. I’m not too worried but I figured id to this now rather than later.

Tis a Gathering

Producing is about to begin. I've sent emails to all the producers, co-producers, and creative team to rally a meeting. At the meeting I’ll give everyone hard copies of the scripts and have everyone meet each other and talk and get to know each other. We’ll also start to talk about what are the preliminary steps we need to take to really get the ball rolling on the film.

I'm in Chris's class as we speak. At the beginning of class I gave him a hard copy of the screenplay. He’s gonna read it and give me notes. Hopefully he'll have it for me by the end of the week. I'm starting to get notes back on the screenplay. Some are great. Some are not so great. one of the interesting things that's happening is I’m having people tell me that they felt a certain way about a certain person/event/theme and that's exactly how I wanted them to felt. It’s great to know your achieving what you've strived for.

Mariposa I Suppose

So more and more actors keep emailing me about auditioning. We're gonna have a great turn out. It's gonna be really diverse too, as far as people auditioning for different roles.

I changed the Sahuaro Dorm in the screenplay to South Hall. In my mind it will always be sahuaro since that's where everything took place, but I wanted to change the name to give it a more generic feel so it wasn't so specific to any school or state.

I finally got a chance to go and look at mariposa dorm as a substitute for the sahuaro location. I spent about 45 minutes over there last night just browsing the halls, exteriors, and stairwells, etc. I think it will work out but I’d like to use it as a last resort. I’m gonna push for sahuaro as hard as I can with out stepping on toes and having everything yanked out from under us. It might be better to use mariposa anyway because of the police's involvement with the project. Don’t want to cause any alarm during shooting.

I still have yet to receive any of the screenplays that have been proofread. Well I guess that's not 100% true. Molly proof read a hard copy for me and I fixed those corrections. I’m waiting on a few other people before I mass produce hard copies. Today I’m gonna make up a list of who needs a hard copy then distribute them.

Proof Reading

So i finished draft five of Freshmen. it feels so great to be done. i've got a few people proof reading it for spelling errors. as soon as they get back to me i'll make the corrections and send it out to all the current people involved in the production. i'm very excited to start really produceing. as much as i love writing i'm a little tired of it. but what i've got is good and works well. I've added a new element to the screenplay that really ties everything together. I'm not gonna talk about it just yet cause i want the people reading it to be surprised. needless to say, i'm very happy with the work i've done.

If You Post It, They Will Come

The websites have stayed up and running and their haven’t’ been any problems. I posted auditions to a great listserv for actors here in the valley and when the notice went out Monday morning we had around 400 hits by the end of the day. I got so excited I kept the hit counter page up and kept refreshing it all day watching the numbers climb. Kinda of silly really. I’ve gotten a great response from actors and a few I’ve known or worked with before. I’m really excited for the weekend of the 6th and 7th. Oh yeah, I posted a typo on the audition notice and told everyone the auditions were on the 5th and 6th. I’m glad I put by appointment only. I’d hate to have people show up on Friday and nobody be here.

The producing team and creative team have started to send me their bios and pics for the website. I’ll wait till I have everyone before I launch that portion of the website. As for the cast section of the website it says that so far no one has been cast. I have some offers out to established actors that I know and have worked with in the past but I want to make sure that I don’t discourage anyone from auditioning that might not other wise if they see that a part they might want has already been cast or an offer is out.

The Secret Knowledge

So I got my letter of acceptance to the film and media production letter today. This means that I can now publish what I wrote last Wednesday. Here it is:
________________________________________
So I found out today that I was accepted into the film and media production concentration. None of the other applicants know yet. I was the first. The chair of the department told me in confidence when I met with her to discuss the advertising materials for this film festival the afa is helping put on. I guess all the letters went out today. I was asked not to tell anyone because they don’t want to get flooded with emails and questions about the applications. So if you’re reading this. Don’t tell anyone. Thanks. Which I understand but I’m a little disappointed I can’t go out and celebrate with my friends. Never the less I’m very very excited. It’s not only great for me but it’s great for the movie. Now I’m a legitimate film student with legitimate needs from the university. Making this movie (theoretically) should be much much easier.

So I wrote the above before I met with Miguel today. I’ve since met with him and found out that my capstone is going to be much more structured then usual because the film program is so new. Oh well. He said it shouldn’t be a big problem using this project as the project for the course. But it’s something that probably wont get addressed to the summer.
_______________________________________
That’s it. Aren’t I a stinker for keeping this to myself?

Websites!!!!!

The websites are up! wahooooo! if you wanna see them just click on the links to the side over there. or you could just type in www.naturaldoor.com or www.freshmenthemovie.com. I started putting them together a few days ago and yesterday I figured out how to upload and tada! There they are. Aren’t they wonderful? They’re ok. I hope it's not obvious I tweaked a couple of templates because man I don't know anything about web design. Anyway. Freshmen the movie is good for now. I need to email all my crew, cast and producers and have them send me a bio and head shot. It’s the natural door site that needs a lot of work. Right now it's like an empty skeleton. I’ve got put all the meat and substance into it. I’ll do that in my free time this weekend.

The Last Two Weeks in March

So I guess I‘ve kind've gone on sabbatical from this production diary for a while. Sorry about that. My writers block lasted from the 14th of March to around the 30th of March. I had an intensive meeting with Ron, my primary advisor (story wise) on the project and he had some great things to say to me and really helped push me in the right direction. I’ve decided to take out the bonnie element all together. The character will still exist and her fundamental character qualities will stay the same but she’s not gonna be a criminal, just an annoying police aide. I printed out a copy of the movie in its current state and am going through the 111 page screenplay making notes and corrections with a pen. I’m on page 96. As soon as I finish I’ll go back and incorporate my notes and I should have a finished screenplay that I can start to really a production team around.

Don’t know what I’m going to do with the character studies. I think I’m going to write them after I finish this draft. I’m just so on a role right now that I don’t want to stop. I do think that that part of the process is important but I think it will help me more with the actors then with the writing of the screenplay. Time will tell eh?

Chad bowed out of the project Friday because he’s going to be producing a feature documentary. I’m a little disappointed but completely understand.

At the phoenix film festival I ran into Brad Golden, the gentleman I’d like to play Officer Navarro, I was a little drunk and so was Dan. Dan was all like, “You’re in the movie!?” and pointed at him. Brad had no idea what was going on and I almost shit myself because I wasn’t ready to approach him. But I bit the bullet and told him I’m doing my first feature and I’d like him to play a key role. He told me that he would seriously consider it, which is a huge up lifter for me. I’m just excited that he’s willing to read the script. Because before he had told em that he wasn’t interested in doing student projects. Well we hung out a lot and talked a lot and I really got to know his wife. Brad suggested that I take his class on acting, which I’d love to do so I’ll contact him about it before I send him the script.

The website will be up by the end of the week hopefully. My current web designer is just to busy to get anything done for it so I’m doing it myself. It’ll be fine. I’m excited. So far I think my design looks good.

There. I think that’s everything that’s happened in the last few weeks. If I remember anything else that I haven’t’ talked about I’ll be sure to mention it.