Archive for September, 2006

After we decided to make a movie, we had to get a story. It was May of 2006.

I always wanted to write my own story. I love storytelling, and when I write, I always see things in my head. It’s see the surroundings, the people, the buildings. I hear the sounds, the music, the voices. I sense the smells, the emotions, the dangers.

So, I spent the next weeks studying story structure, reading Chris Vogler’s book on the Hero’s Journey. He outlined twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey:

• Ordinary World
• Call To Adventure
• Refusal Of The Call
• Meeting With The Mentor
• Crossing the First Threshold
• Tests, Allies, Enemies
• Approach
• Supreme Ordeal
• Reward
• The Road Back
• Resurrection
• Return With Elixir

With my math background, I was now eqiupped with a formula for success. After all, Star Wars followed this outline. Woo hoo! Let’s start writing.

Quickly, I realize that storyteling was considerably harder than just plugging in a formula. It actually required some amazing creativity. Yet, we pressed on.

We came up with a story about a guy who dreams of a car crash, but awakes in bed with his wife. It was only a dream. Later, throughout the day, things start to unravel. Things don’t seem real. Bizarre things start to happen. There is a lady there throughout the story to help him through his ordeal.

We thought it was a great start. It was only a couple of locations and a small cast, so the budget was low. So, we sent our writer friend, Mike, down that path. Yet, we only had about three months, because we wanted to start shooting on July 1.

But, July 1 came and went. The story development was going to take more time than we had planned for.

So, we decided to take another route–find a story that’s already developed.

We created a website page. Here, we described our goals, targets and movie objectives. Then, I posted the site to some writer’s forums.

The stories flooded in. Within in one week, we had received about 450 submissions. I specifically asked for a logline, synopsis (no scripts) and for the story to meet our criteria:

• Had to be a redeeming story.
• Had to be low budget.
• You need to be flexible with you story, so we can tweak as needed.

Note to writers: If someone wants a story with certain criteria, please make some effort to meet those criteria. We trashed hundreds of stories that were the most unredeeming stories. And we trashed many big budget stories. And, there were a few who demanded that we cast Bruce Willis or J Lo or Samuel Jackson. Ain’t going to happen! Let us produce the film.

So, we had our webiste and stories were coming in. We narrowed it down to about 30 stories. Narrowed it down to 30! It was crazy, but exciting. I enjoyed skimming through the stories and reading the creativity of others.

But, we found this one story–Fissure. It was really amazing. It was written with a low budget in mind. That was key. It had somewhat of a redeeming ending, but not quite what we were looking for. We wanted that commercially successful, walk-out-of-the-theater-crying, redeeming story. But, it was workable. And the writer was flexibile.

The story structure was truly amazing. The twists, the misdirection, flow, the intesity, the strategic plot points to move the story–all was quite amazing. Rick and I quickly selected it.

We then started working with Nick (our writer) on a new ending, one that would have the redeeming impact we were looking for. After a few revisions, he nailed it.

We had our story!

Spring of 2006 arrves, and we’re trying to decide what kind of movie to make. That’s where we started–three kids lost in the woods. Thankfully, we didn’t go down that route, because everyone and their dog has made a movie like this, and it’s almost always shot on DV.

But, that’s where we started: let’s just make a movie, and we’ll use some of our own money to fund it. So, we allocated $5,000 of our own personal money and set out to make a movie.

During that time, we “stumbled” across a writer who was willing to help us write the story. That was exciting. So, he started writing, and we started brainstorming.

We were making a movie.

In October of 2005, I decided to resign from my cushy, corporate job and pursue my dreams of producing. It was a scary but exciting step. And, today (a year later), I have no regrets (and still no health insurance). But, I’m loving life. Everyday, I get to create. I get to produce. I get to be as successful as I choose to be.

Taking that step was not as hard as it could have been, because I had partnered with a good friend of mine, Rick Morrison, to launch MorrisonPond, a creative marketing agency. Having that partnership helped me land a little softer on the other side of the pond. Thanks Rick!

In January 2006, Rick and I decided to “make a movie”. It’s both of our dreams to tell stories–me on the fiction side, Rick on the non-fiction. But, we’re storytellers. So, we decided to tell a story.

And, we want to share that experience with you as well. So, join us on our journey as we step into the world of movie production.

Our goal is to blog as much as possible so that you can experience this journey with us.

We’re going to spend the next few days (blogs) describing how we got started. And, we’ll play catch up and give you some background on where we came from and where we’re going.