Wish Me Luck

Not too much has happened in the last few days. Since it was a holiday weekend I’ve yet to hear from the facman or elevator guys. I don’t expect them to get back to me for a week or so. If a couple weeks go by then I’ll contact them again. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass if I don’t need to be.

On Friday I had to do some financial aide stuff at the student services building so while I was there I went and met with the new person at reslife. I new their office was there and was just hoping she was there. She was. The meeting was interesting. She asked me what the movie was about. She told me I needed to go through public events to get a filming permit, which I sooooo don’t want to do. We’ll see. This is a situation where I need Miguel at my rear, or in front for that matter.

Miguel FINALLY emailed me. I felt like abandoned for the longest time. Well not really. He emailed me with one sentence. “Just got back into town and haven’t’ gotten a chance to read your emails yet. I’ll read them this weekend.” He has yet to get back to me. I’ll talk to him when I contact him tomorrow about Frankie Mendoza.

Frankie Mendoza did this awesome, and I mean awesome, and I don’t through that word around with student films, animated film about dust bunnies. I wanna see if he’s interested in doing story boards for us. Unfortunately Dan and Drew’s schedules clash so much I hesitate to commit drew to the job. I wanna work with drew again and I think he would be a great addition to the team but his schedule and Dan’s clash so bad that it would take literally months to finish story boarding. So anyway I’m gonna contact Miguel tomorrow to get this kids information and offer him a job as a story board artist.

Linnaea Kimble, our production designer, has been MIA for the past couple weeks but finally emailed me tonight. Apparently she was having email problems. I wasn’t worried when she wasn’t coming to meetings though cause her job wont really start for a month or so. All though I’d like to keep her in the loop.

At our production meeting on Sunday we set down dates for the major deadlines for the whole project. I’d like to premiere the film at the 2nd annual school of theatre and film Student Film Festival. I got to talk to Miguel about it but it just seams appropriate since that’s around the time the project would be due for my capstone anyway. Here’s a list of some of the dates we set. Obviously there are some dates that still need to be set but this is what we accomplished on Sunday. I’m happy with it.

2006
June 4th - Lock Shooting Draft of Screenplay
July 14th – Finish Story Boards
August 31st – Lock Locations
September 30th – First Day of Shooting
October 27th – Wrap Shooting
November 10th – Completely Digitize and Organize All Footage
December 8th – Rough Cut of picture

2007
January 19th – Final Picture Lock
April 2nd – Finish and Lock Entire Film
April 30th or there about – Premiere of Film

As for the screenplay. I’ve started the re-write. It’s ok so far. I’m not ecstatic with it but it works for now. I’ll keep plugging at through out the next couple of days and hopefully come up with some good stuff. I’ve since added the scene I talked about with the cat and the tunnels and I’ve removed some stuff. It’s at 113 right now. I’d like to get it shorter so I’m gonna do some serious and hard editing. Wish me luck.

Yup, That’s Right, I Said It.

Well, I found Miguel...sort of. I still have yet to communicate with him but I did talk to his boss and she said he's been out of town. So I’m just twiddling my thumbs waiting for him to get back to me.

I emailed facman about doing another location scout in the tunnels. I emailed the guy on Wednesday and he has yet to get back to me. I told him we set a date for shooting (which I did) and that I wanted to do one or two more location scouts. I hope the date I picked is good for them. I told him to get back to me if it's not. So I’m waiting for him too.

So while I was at work this lady from the elevator safety department or something like that called to book a room. I immediately pounced on the opportunity to and asked her who I’d talk to about shooting in an elevator shaft. She gave me some guy's contact info so I’m gonna email him this afternoon.

Auditions are filling up nicely. It’s going to be a good turn out. I’m getting excited.

I set dates for production meetings for the rest of the summer. We’re gonna be meeting on Wednesdays and Sundays at 6pm and 7pm. I emailed the producing and creative teams with the details.

I met with Ron yesterday at Chilies for 4 hours. We went over my screenplay and his. He had a lot of really good things to say and some really good suggestions of how to make it stronger. I'm totally excited to do another re-write. Yup. I said it. I’m doing another re-write. I’ll probably finish this weekend. I'm not gonna do an intensive retype the whole thing kind of re-write. But I am gonna go through and tighten up some stuff as well as add a few things. That’s right. You heard me. Add a few things. But what I’m gonna add is crucial to the story. I’m gonna add this scene in the beginning where the cops go into the tunnels because an alarm is going off. What they find is a kitty. But it'll help show that the cops are on high alert and that they're nervous and skeptical of the tunnels at the same time. I'm also gonna strengthen my character as the lead and I’m gonna do some scene re-writes. Needless to say I’m excited.

Miguel, Where art thou?

I had a little panic attack this morning. I posted to the audition notice web service that I usually use on Saturday and the website said it was supposed to be distributed on Monday. Well, Monday came and went and no news letter with my audition post. In fact no news letter at all. First thing I did this morning when I got to work was email the website to see what’s up. I was afraid that my post was rejected because it was virtually the same as the previous post I put up back in April. But, low and behold, right after I send my email of concern I get the news letter and there’s my audition post. Later the person in charge of the website emailed me and told me they had had technical difficulties the night before. All’s good so far. I’ve already got about 10 actors scheduled for the auditions and I’m sure more will come as people get home from work and vacations and such in the next few weeks. But I was really scared. Where was I going to find actors if this didn’t work?!?!

Monday I sent an email to reslife to reopen the line of communication I started a while back. I got a response from my contact today that I was not to happy with. For one, she said that she was no longer with reslife. This pissed me off because I started talking to her months and months ago to set up a relationship with her and now that seems frivolous. And for two, she said I need to go through public events. And public event’s red tape is soooo thick. I tried to get in touch with Miguel again today but no luck. I wonder if he’s on vacation or something. It would have been nice for him to inform me. Tomorrow I’m gonna talk to the head of the department about the capstone class and the where about of Miguel. Miguel’s gonna be my number one hitter in dealing with all this red tape, as he’s the faculty advisor for my project.

Cancellations and Calendars

The Production meeting didn’t go that well today. Well… it didn’t go at all actually. Everyone canceled on me so we didn’t meet. So nothing’s really new. However, I can tell you what I had planned to go over today. On the agenda were 2 things. 1. The Screenplay. I’m trying to meet with all my advisors in the next few weeks to discuss the screenplay and where it’s at. I get the feeling that my advisors still think it needs work. And I myself, having spent some time away from it, am starting to think so too. I’m gonna a give it a read through on Wednesday and try to be as objective as I can. Then I meet with Ron on Thursday and hopefully with the other advisors soon as well. I have a feeling though I’m going to be doing another draft. I wanted to know how the rest of the producing team felt about this. But we couldn’t go over it. I don’t think doing another draft would halt preproduction though. Because the draft wouldn’t change significantly to the point where we’d don’t need a location anymore or new characters and locations are added. We can still location scout and do concept drawings even if the screenplay isn’t locked into a production draft just yet. 2. The calendar. I printed out 10 calendars. 5 that go from May, 2006 to October, 2006 and 5 that go from May, 2006 to May, 2007. I hope to have the entire production done by March of 07 but may would be the ultimate deadline as that would be when the capstone class would end. I wanted to set deadlines and target dates for every aspect of production, especially post production. That was the biggest mistake we made on producing LOTD. We planned everything out to the smallest detail for preproduction and principle photography of LOTD but no post production. I just thought we’d edit it together and then we’d be done. That cost me almost a year and half of headaches. So I want to completely preplan all of post production as well as the rest of the producing process. Obviously we don’t need all the producers to continue on through post production so I wanted to see who wanted to commit all the way to may, 07. I guess it’s going to have to wait till the next production meeting.

I talked to drew today. His natural door email doesn’t seem to be working. I think I fixed it. He’s still gonna be doing story boards. I told him I’d get back to him with in the week.

Auditions and Jason

I rescheduled auditions. I’m getting a little anxious and I wanted to book them for the 3rd and 4th of June but I thought it too soon for my crew. It’s only about 12 days away and it’s not enough time for the producing team to get off of work and other commitments. Oh well. I’d rather have auditions sooner than later because I can feel October creeping up on me. So I scheduled the auditions for June 10th and 11th. Three weeks should be enough.

I’m gonna have dinner with Ron next week but I still have yet to hear from Chris or Miguel. Hopefully they’ll get back to me soon. I really need to confirm some stuff with Miguel as far as the capstone is concerned and I’m interested to see what Chris has to say about my screenplay.

An old acquaintance, Jason, read a version of the script and wants to meet with me and talk about it. It’ll be interesting to see what he says. We have an interesting history. It’s filled with good things and some hard times. He wrote a feature about a year ago and wanted me to come on board and I didn’t like the script. He didn’t take it that great. A lot’s changed since then though. Our professional relationship has really matured in the last semester so I’m thinking this will be a good thing. Just going to have to wait and see.

Website Update and Nate

This whole week was spent mostly working on the websites. They look pretty good I think. I’ve added a lot to natural door. There are 14 new members and 5 new movie pages. I’m gonna keep plugging away at it. I kinda like this stuff, web design that is. As for the freshmen website I’ve made some changes but I want to wait till I’ve updated the whole thing before I upload the new material.

Nate Klaer’s really interested in playing the role of Jared. He’s gonna audition but I’m not 100% sure I want him for the part. He really wants to play it though. He told me he wasn’t gonna shave all his facial hair because he looks twelve when he does. I was like “that’s perfect because I look twelve when I shave”. So if he gets the part, the facial hairs going.

Sick of Hard Work

I canceled auditions last weekend. I was deathly sick from Sunday to Friday and didn’t have any time to prepare at all. Plus I was still recovering through out the weekend where auditions would have been held. I had a 102 temp from Sunday to Thursday. The worst part about it was the festival I was running was on Monday, May 1st. I ran the thing with a 102 temp the whole time. That’s probably why I crashed so hard in the middle of the week. But I had to do it. It had been months in preparation and I was in charge. There was nobody able to take control if I didn’t do it. So I did it. I’d do the same thing for the film if I had too. But auditions are different then actual filming. And I want to make sure I’m completely focused during auditions so I make the right choices.

After I was done being sick I had a lot of school work to make up. Everything was due by Tuesday. I was able to get everything done in time. I was so tired from the last two weeks I decided to take a little vacation. Today’s the first day I’ve started to work on stuff now that schools done. My vacation didn’t really end up being a vacation though. Sure I took the time off of work, but I had so many graduations and graduation parties to go to that I didn’t really get a chance to do what I wanted to do, relax and play video games. Oh well.

I called another production meeting for this coming Sunday, we’re gonna start making a calendar for the summer. Set some goals and deadlines. Also reschedule auditions. Ah the producing begins I’m excited.

I also set up lunches with my advisors today. I’m gonna meet with them to discuss the script as they’re reading it right now.

Oh yeah, I deleted the freshmen account off of my computer. It was too complicated trying to remember which account files were under. I’m just going to keep my personal account and keep all the files on it. I think it will keep things simpler and easier