What a tumultuous couple of weeks!
The short film I’ve been re-writing and prepping was finally coming together. I even made a thorough video about how I started pre-production, which just dropped on the channel today.
I scheduled a meeting with my first choice DP. I wanted to recruit him to not only shoot and color this film, but hopefully even help produce it.
The gears were finally moving on this project that my writing partner and I had been talking about for YEARS.
And then… the sponsor let me know that they had to bow out – for the next few months at least. Nothing to do with the project itself, just business and timing issues.
Now what?
I wasn’t totally surprised, I had a feeling this project might fall apart. It just happened way sooner than I expected. Without the funding and support from the sponsor, this already difficult and expensive project just got WAY more difficult and expensive.
I was feeling really down for a couple of days, and basically gave up on the idea of putting this film together anytime soon.
But I still had the meeting with the DP scheduled, and I figured, I may as well pitch him on it. Maybe we can revive the film later, and it would be great to have some more team members on deck.
It’s… ALIVE! ⚡️
Long story short, the meeting went so well that not only did he jump on board as the DP & colorist, but he was excited to partner on producing it as well. He had some great ideas, and with his help, we’ve decided to keep pushing on the film, albeit on a longer timeline.
Instead of late September, we’re now aiming for a March shoot. This gives us more time to creatively prepare, solve the many production challenges, and (hopefully) raise quite a bit of financing.
In just this few days there’s already been new progress on the film, and we have our first weekly production call scheduled for Monday.
So despite the emotional rollercoaster, I’m now more excited than ever to make this thing.
Step into the Producer’s Seat
And this will truly be a one-of-a-kind production because I’m going to share everything with you guys at every step of the way – both here and on the YouTube channel.
I’m even sharing a copy of the script so you can follow along with all the challenges we’ll be facing as we bring it to life 👇
To be honest, it feels weird to publicly share a work-in-progress script, but I think it’ll be a great learning experience for other filmmakers to put yourself in our shoes, see how the story changes (and why), and find out how we approach the more difficult aspects of this film.
So I encourage you to watch the first of many videos documenting the making of this film, and jump into the producer’s seat with me. Along the way you’ll learn how to start pre-production for your own films!
Favorites this week:
🍿 Movie: The River Wild (Netflix)
I knew nothing about this 1994 thriller, but Meryl Streep + Kevin Bacon + John C Reilly? How can you lose? Plus the beautiful river setting looked like great reference material for my short, so I gave this a shot.
When I saw Robert Elswit in the opening credits (DP of There Will be Blood, Nightcrawler, Boogie Nights, etc), I got excited. As expected, it looked excellent.
The story wasn’t terribly unique, but everything was competently done and the leads are just so fun to watch, they carried it easily.
Apparently it got a remake last year with Adam Brody, can’t vouch for that one…
💬 Quote: Speaking of Robert Elswit, here’s some relevant wisdom from him:
My advice is to read scripts – lots and lots of scripts – and try to understand what it is that directors actually do. It’s also important to learn why choices are made by directors and DPs and how usually, but not always, those choices grow out of their ideas about the script. Sometimes they just do things a certain way because people like to do things a certain way. (…) Not usually a good thing, but it’s important to understand the difference.
That’s it for this week.
Let’s make some movies.
-Kent
🎓 Film School for the Real World
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