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.

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!

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.

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.

APROVED

Miguel said yes. he finaly, finaly said yes. let's start this ball rolling.

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.