Pre-production Diary: The Final Countdown!!!
Posted by Jeremiah on June 7th, 2007 @ 12:02 AM | Comments (0)

So I haven’t posted anything for a few weeks. Why?

Because making a feature is HARD WORK! These past few weeks, I haven’t had much sleep or much free time at all. I usually get up at 7AM and have meetings all day, driving all over creation.

For example, today - I had to be at a photo shoot in Conyers. We were taking pictures of a pastor and his wife. The photo is on screen for about 30 seconds. I had to cast the pastor’s wife and that took up an hour or so of phone calls and emails. Then add to that the amount of time it took to drive from Buford to Conyers, do the shoot, and then drive back. We’re talking about 4 hours of my time.

After that, I had to drive to Atlanta to purchase make-up for the Make-up/FX guy to use. Then I went by his studio and he taught me and my mom (who is helping with the make-up) how to make one of our characters look a few hours dead. That was a lot of fun. Matt Green is phenomenally talented.

When I got home, I had about 10 emails to respond to. I looked over a set of storyboards that we asked our friend, Eddie Pittman to draw. He did a scene that takes place in a boat. The storyboards are AMAZING. Eddie is also really talented. (He used to work for Disney Feature Animation in Orlando.)

Then I had to prepare for a costuming meeting we are having tomorrow with two of our leads. Since we don’t have a specific costume person, the weight falls on me. But you know, if I didn’t have little things to occupy my time, I’d probably be freaking out right now.

So it’s almost midnight and I have to be in Lawrenceville tomorrow at 9am for the costume meeting. Luckily, we have a free afternoon tomorrow to finish up a rewrite before we begin production on Monday.

I was watching The Karate Kid while finishing up my work this evening. It’s amazing how little setups they get for each scene. That’s comforting. We have a great deal scheduled in our shot list but if we don’t get to all of them, we can still make a good movie. Josh and I definitely don’t subscribe to the MTV style of quick cuts. We’re more straight-forward “80’s” style filmmakers.

Those are the kinds of films we want to make anyway. The Goonies is another example of that kind of film. Tell the story. Fancy angles make people say “ooh, that’s pretty” but if they say that, then the angle has taken away from the story. The story is king. Everything else comes second.

So it’s Wednesday and we begin production on Monday.  Things are working out well.  We got all but one role cast.  All but one location secured.  We’ve raised the amount of money we set out to raise and then a little more.  That’s what I was saying about providence.  It seems to always work out.

I’ll say it again.  God must love movies.