Archive for February, 2007

We’re on the backside of the  mountain, working our way down. It sure feels good to have 2 weeks of our 3-week production behind us. Plus, we’re ahead of schedule and on budget.

I was hoping to have more updates for you throughout the week, but week 2 was a bit of a blur. I remember doing the Week 1 update, but then all of sudden, it was Saturday night and we had just finished week 2.

Our days are still averaging about 12 hours, but it’s not bad. We’ve hit a good rhythm and things are coming together nicely. I’ve been reviewing the footage everyday, and it’s great. The acting is great. The photography is beautiful. The set design is excellent. I’m really excited about how well this is all coming together.

We’re still continuing to get some good press. On Tuesday this week, I’ll have a phone interview with a gentleman from the Dallas Morning News. He wants to feature our movie in his column “Shot in Texas”. I’m looking forward to speaking with him.

Many of you have asked about what comes next, so let me take a few minutes to share with you the next steps once we finish principal photography on Saturday.

After wrap, I’ll be taking a week or so to just relax and catch up on some sleep. Afterwards, I’ll jump right into editing. I’ll be doing all of my own editing on my own computer. For you techies out there, I’ll be using Apple’s Final Cut Pro to edit the film. I expect editing to take about 6 weeks, but since this is the most exciting part of this process for me, I’ll probably get it done in about half that time. After the edit is down, I will lock the edit. No more changes.

Once the edit is locked, I will then release it to our colorist to polish the look, color and tone of the film. Concurrently, our composer will start scoring the film. Also, our sound effects artist will begin the task of “sound design”. This is all of the sound effects that you don’t realize you hear in a film: footsteps, door closes, creaks, wind, button presses, gunshots, clicks, etc.. It’s what the industry calls foley. Once the color is done, the music is scored and the sound mixed, then the film will be ready to market. I expect this to happen in May or June. I hope to have a premiere here in the Dallas area once the film is finished.

There are a variety of ways to market the film. We will be targeting some of the key film festivals, like Sundance, Toronto, Cannes, Tribecca, and South by Southwest. If the film is accepted in one of these festivals, distribution will be much easier to get. If it’s not accepted, then we’ll begin pursuing traditional routes for distribution through a producer’s rep.

That’s it for now. I’m off to bed so I can wake up earlier Monday morning and make a movie!

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Gil Bailie

For those of you who’ve been waiting for the next update, I’m sorry. I had good intentions of sending out daily updates. But honestly, after day 2, I was getting home too late, and the thought of staying up late to blog was nauseating.

So now, I bring you the “Week 1 Update”. We have completed six days of shooting. The first couple of days were pretty good. We worked hard for about 11 hours. It was a good pace, but days 3, 4 and 5 were much more difficult, averaging about 13 hours per day.

To stay on schedule, we need to shoot about 5 pages a day. On Wednesday, our third day, we shot about 8 pages, and it was a very productive day. But, I was wiped out that night. Thursday and Friday was also pretty busy. We managed to shoot about 6 pages for each of those days. And Saturday was a bit slower.

All in all, it has been very productive. We’ve captured some great footage. I hope to have some stills up on the website soon.

But I must also say, today (Sunday) has truly been a day of rest for me. I spent the day doing nothing, and it feels good. As my first AD said, “These 3 weeks will be a marathon.” And boy they have!

I got home Friday night after shooting and got kind of sick for some reason. Chills and fever hit me all of sudden. Not sure what it was–maybe stress, or maybe a bug, but I feel much better and much stronger. I’m ready to start shooting tomorrow.

I spent about an hour today laying down a rough edit of our first week. The footage is looking really good. I’m excited about that. I did find a couple of things I’d like to reshoot, but I’ll have to speak to my DP and First AD on Monday.

It’s the close of Day 2, and I’m still loving my job!

We had a great day, today. It was long and cold, but very productive. We shot all outdoors with some special equipment, so it took us a bit longer to get through all of the shots. But overall, the shots were solid!

For those of you who missed the Fox News interview, you can view it online here:

Fox News features Production

You can also read the complete article here:

Fox News Article

Also, I have posted some pictures from our outdoor shoot today. You can view them on the Media section of our website, or click the link below.

Our Photo Gallery

It was a great Day 1!

The weather forced us to change our shooting schedule a bit, but not in a bad way. We still moved along at a good, quick pace. We covered about 5 and half pages on our first day!

Earlier in the morning, Fox News came by for an interview. They were running a piece on the latest Texas film incentives going into legislation this week.

I was very pleased with our first day. We should have dailies in about 24 hours thanks to Lucid Post. I hope to have some stills posted soon.

Cameras role at 8am tomorrow morning, and do you know what I’m thinking about?

I think about a woman sitting in her hostpital room about to give birth. She’s past her due date, and the doctor is going to induce in the morning. What’s going through her mind?

How bad will it hurt?
I wonder what she’ll look like?
How will this change my life?
Am I really ready for this?

In many ways, I feel like I’m having the same questions. We’re about to induce labor tomorrow morning–three weeks of labor. How bad will it hurt? I wonder what the film will look like–what will it grow into. How this will change our lives? Am I really ready for this?

But, even with those questions, there is an anticipation, an excitement, a joy that is coming. Just like a mother about to give birth, I feel this same type of laboring joy that is coming tomorrow morning. And, I’m ready.

Just give me the epidural.

As we draw closer to our shoot date, our dealings with SAG have been very good. I’ve heard horror stories, but our rep in Florida has been very helpful and has helped us move things along with great speed and efficiency.

Here are some of my SAG learnings over the course of our production:

1. There’s a lot of SAG paperwork and administrative stuff, but don’t be intimidated by it all. It’s a lot like buying a house. Know what your doing. Make sure you understand what you’re signing. And then get a pen with a lot of ink.

Thankfully, we have a SAG expert as part of our team, and she has been holding our hand all the way through the process. It’s been wonderful!

2. Stunts can be really expensive! There are three variations of the SAG Low Budget Agreement–Normal, Modified, and Ultra Low. As you move down for Normal to Ultra, your pay to SAG actors drops. So, for Ultra Low Budget SAG actors, your minimum is only $100 per day. But, for stunt coordinators, it still remains $722 per day. And, you can’t have a stunt performer without having a stunt coordinator. It adds up quickly, especially if you have multiple days with stunts. Just yesterday, we cut a really cool action sequence because it was too costly. This 10-second action sequence would have cost us thousands of dollars. So, it’s gone. Bummer.

I guess it’s a bit of an oxymoron to say I’m doing a SAG Ultra Low Budget action flick.

3. The bond! In your budgets, don’t forget about the SAG bond. SAG requires you to submit a list of SAG actors in your film, and then you pay a 40% bond (based on SAG actors salaries) to make sure you cover all of the Pension and Health benefits for the SAG actors. The problem is that you don’t see that money until after the shoot is done. So, plan for it!

4. Don’t be afraid of SAG. The contracts and requirements take a bit of time to learn, but it’s not bad. We’ve had some great opportunities to hire some incredible actors by going with SAG. Just yesterday, I spent half an hour on the phone with an actress out of NY that most of you would know. We chatted about the project and she was interested, but we couldn’t find a fit. She was very cordial and I look forward to speaking with her regarding my next film.

That’ll be all for today, students. Your homework will be due on Tuesday.

Earlier in the blog, I talked about a million decisions you have to make as producer/director. I was wrong–it’s about 4 million.

And the choices are not easy. It’s not like an easy choice between right and wrong; those are easy choices. The choices are between right and right. Good choice versus good choice.

You don’t choose the bad actor or the bad make up artist or the bad sound guy. Those choices are obvious. You pick good ones, great ones. And thankfully, the pool of experience and talent in this area is pretty is amazing. Lots to choose from.

Our entire crew is now on board, and I’m am very pleased with everyone. So much experience. So much wisdom. I sit in my office at times, listening to them doing what they do best, and I’m in awe. They are so good at what they do. It releases me to do what I am supposed to be doing–making the best movie possible.

But to do that, I have to make miliions of choices. Well, 4 million.

This week, we’re finalizing our cast. A few actors rose to the surface as the right chocies. Others were not so obvious. Does she have the look you want? Does he have the internal intensity you need? Will they accept direction or just go their own way? All these things are swirling in my head as I make these choices between right and right.

Or, maybe I should just flip a coin?