Workshopping the current draft

I am very excited because I have a chance to play the current version for a group of people who know nothing about the story. I am working this summer at a place where everyone is involved in film or photography. It is obvious that the instructors and students in the workshops are creative, but in fact everyone is. The TAs and interns and staff all needed portfolios in order to get hired. So they have started doing artist lectures for the seasonal staff. Anyone who wants to share their work can get a block of time on Wednesday evenings. I expect it will be a very good group for providing critique.

Scene 2

In fact, my good news for this post is more than an image from scene 2. I reached a big milestone this past week. I have finished my first rough cut. It's Very Rough, but then that's the point. I heard someone say once that your first draft is always a success because its only requirement is to exist. Now I have about 6 weeks to get from rough cut to fine cut. That's achievable. I have my hunk of marble now and I just have to chip and polish until my David emerges. 

Scene 1

I have, in fact, been making progress on the editing. Not enough to give you a teaser. Honestly, that's not likely until the fall. But I am getting a good sense of what this film looks like and I love it so much I want to share.

I will periodically give you stills from the scenes I am working on. Sometimes with thoughts.

Killer airs on WMHT

In other news, my earlier film Killer had its broadcast premiere last night on the PBS station in the town I grew up in. It was quite a wonderful moment for me. This is the station I gave my allowance to so that they would keep showing Doctor Who, and now "Donations from viewers like you" are bringing you my work. It feels like such a huge milestone.

Here are the episode and the bonus features.

Post Production early update

I'll be honest, the early stages of post production are not exactly exciting. There is not much to tell you, and nothing at all to show you. It starts with making backups and then extra backups of everything. Then there is watching and listening to every individual piece of media to be able to tag it with scene and take numbers, and in the case of audio whose mic we're listening to. Then there is the process of merging all the disparate video and audio clips into single files. All of that is nothing but tedious. Happily it's all finished now. The next step is logging all the clips. Finding where every line gets said and which performances are my favorites. It's miles more interesting, but still won't give me much to show yet.

Stay tuned though. As I get to editing scenes I'll pull out stills to show you. The camera team gave us some fantastic images. And by the end of summer there should be a teaser/trailer to look at.

Shoot Day 8: That's a wrap

I feel like I want to take this team and go shoot a feature. Well, after a few days of sleeping. 8 days without a break was unsustainable over the long haul. But I'll tell you, we had it down. We had a pretty full day to begin with, then half a scene from the rain out day. Then a handful of little things that I woke up in the middle of the night remembering we ought to get. We were originally scheduled to wrap by 10:30 and and be heading home by 11, but everyone agreed, as it was the last night we would power through until we got what we needed. There was a distinct possibility that would mean wrapping at 1am. We were having group hugs and eating birthday cake by midnight. Day 8 was practically flawless.

Now all that's left is returning all the gear, tracking down receipts and making sure everyone has been paid back for out of pocket expenses during pre-production, and maybe making a third back up of all the footage.

And sleep. Lots of sleep.

Shoot Day 7: Big scenes and make up scenes

We had only scheduled 2 scenes for day 7, the two biggest, most emotional scenes of the film. I wanted to be able to take our time and get it right. So even though we also wanted to squeeze in the scene that got rained out the night before I tried very hard not to rush. As a result we ran a bit long, and only managed to get the master shot of the rained out scene. That's better than nothing. Now we know exactly where camera and lights should be, and what coverage we need. Still, we're going to need another long night because it's not like Day 8 was scheduled to be an easy day. We have a dog, and kids, and we've been going to 8 straight days so everyone is tired. On the other hand, it's our last day, we've done such great work so far everyone is well motivated to end strong.

And that big emotional scene we did last night? I can't wait for you to see it.