Ok, technically nothing much as come together yet, but I'm tired and needed a title for this post.
This was an interesting week. Between my day job, freelance work, and insomnia I began thinking this film thing was a crazy dream. But now I'm back... well the freelance work is still hanging over me, but that's nothing new.
I've gone through the script several times now. I wanted to make sure that I can actually film everything, have it look at least pretty good, and not damage my deranged "power-crazed demagogue" mystique. I think we're mostly safe. Mostly.
I'm going to request a few changes to the script (Girl-Morgan can expect that email this weekend). There are exactly four points of requested change that I have. The thing is that they're mostly so silly that I feel a little dumb asking that they be made. Seriously... "floorboard" needs to be "baseboard." Urm... do I need to bother her with this crap?
Things get changed in shooting all the time, we all know that (or should). I think the point right now, for me, is that I'm now going to be rounding up the rest of the people to get them to commit to the project. If I expect someone to commit I want to be able to get them their lines, and what to expect in the character up front as best I can. I figure that comes in the form of the script.
I love the plot and the dialog and the flow. I think girl-Morgan got what I was after pretty quickly. Reading her numbered points from earlier today (scroll down, they're there) tells me that she gets exactly what I'm after for this thing.
We agreed in some fundamentals. There is nothing "chosen one" about the people who are affected in the story. There is no destiny drawing the people together. Thing A causes thing B to happen, just like in real life. I think that "destiny" is a lazy story writing device most of the time and while we have no budget, I see no reason to be lazy. (I'm well aware that some of my favorite story tellers use destiny as a device. They're better than I am, so they can get away with it.)
The layout of the apartment building is different than it is in the script, but that's part of movie magic. Right? It's all in the angle you shoot it at. If you don't turn the camera around no one will kno
w that the spooky room isn't across the hall from the laundry room. Easy enough to do. There is one case where I just can't do what's in the script without getting another location for the added shots. Since I was growing gray hair just securing this location, I'm not so sure that I want to try and get another. So, there's another of my four requested changes.
I think my next job is going to be taking my five different colored highlighters and highlighting everywhere that there is a new character in yellow (including extras), a prop in pink (including furniture and set dressings), a location in green, costumes in blue, and special lighting or effects in orange.
Then I can take the new, brightly colored script and make my lists. From my lists I have my shopping lists. I'll have a shopping list of characters I need actors for. I'll have a shopping list of props. I'll have a shopping list of sets, and effects.
With the set and character lists I'll combine them and come up with a rough shoot schedule. The rough shoot schedule wont have any actual dates on it. I's more about being practical. It's about what things we can shoot in the same day. If a person only appears in two scenes and both scenes happen in the same place, it makes sense to shoot those scenes one after the other. It frees up the person so you don't need to ask them to come back, and it frees up that location. I need to be particularly careful with how much filming I do at a time in the common areas of the building. I have promised that I wouldn't bother the regular tenants of the building so I can't be shooting more stuff in the hallway every time they turn around. Luckily the most troubling that the hallway scenes will be is a towel fight, and the occasional pounding on the door.
My assistant producer and I are hoping to shoot primary footage in January. It's after the holidays so people are more likely to have free time.
I'm on track.
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1 comment:
Changes? Changes? Is this the part where I throw the script across the room and yell something about how it's bloody perfect exactly how it is and how you're ruining my artistic vision with your talk of baseboards?
Your plan of attack sounds very sane and reasonable. I'm not at all sure why the residents would object to towel-fights in their hallways, but whatever. People can be so fussy.
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