Wrapping Time

Tomorrow we wrap our shoot. It's finally here. We stayed up until 4:00am last night (or this morning) making this thing. We shot for roughly 20 hours.

What this whole process has made me realize is that understanding what you are writing is so key to the production side of things. You need to know in pretty good detail of what you want it to look like when you write it, and especially if you're writing it with someone else.

There have been a few occasions throughout this shoot where one of us or the other assumed the other knew exactly what they wanted for a particular shot, only to learn that it was just something that was written just to fill in the blanks. We then had to take extra time figuring out what the best approach would be.

Now, normally, we wouldn't write, shoot, and edit a 20-minute film in 3 weeks, but Halloween placed us under some serious time constraints. What I'm trying to say here is that we would have taken three weeks or more to go through the entire script, reading each scene and figuring out the exact look we wanted for every single shot, storyboarding as we went. We gave up that luxury, however, and threw ourselves in head-first to this huge undertaking.

It's been a huge learning experience-most recently being that nobody is happy to be shooting at 3:00am- but it's been worth it. It may not have been the wisest idea to jump from our three page comfort zone to a 17-page oblivion, but it doesn't matter now. We've nearly finished, and I've learned a whole lot.

End scene.

No Money, Mo Problems...

So we're about a week away from filming and things have taken some interesting turns.

My script is being revised but we just found out that some of our actors will not be available for half of our scheduled shooting time. Its a serious downer because I wrote the characters the way I did because I had already chosen the actors to play them. I know that's not a normal thing, and many legitimate writers don't get that opportunity, but I have been that fortunate.

It has been really difficult to deal with because now we are facing a very near deadline and still have big changes to make. I'm afraid now that the characters won't be nearly as funny as they were originally written and I'll probably have to rewrite them altogether.

My wife and I are trying to think of some alternative solutions, but nothing is coming to mind. We can't shoot any later than the 17th because we have to be ready to premiere on the 30th. 13 days for post-production is almost cutting it too close.

Another issue arose because of the way it was written. I wrote it to be shot at my cabin, which is a great location, except for the fact that it will most likely be covered in snow and there is no electricity. We would have to light all the candles and lanterns and have them burning for several hours. That's dumb for several reasons.

Now we're in a mad dash to find a new location that we can quickly alter to fit our story and give motive to our main character for using said location.

All that aside, I am still excited for all of this and I think it will be fun trying to work out these kinks and still meet our deadline.