On Saturday I had a meeting with Myles Miner and Ryan Hill to start some more focused development on the Safe House web series (see the Projects page).

We had already shot most of episode 01, and production went well, but we needed to come up with a cohesive story for the six episodes we plan to shoot this fall. Here are some reasons this is important:

1. Shot lists are good. Since I’m also the AD for this project, I need to know how much we have to shoot every day so I can actually get everything done on schedule. This doesn’t work when you just waltz into each shoot day without a clear idea how many shots you have to get and how difficult they are.

2. Pre-production is better when you only do it once. The script for episode 01 changed several times right before we shot it, so that much of the pre-production work had to be done multiple times. When you’re shooting on a tight schedule with no budget and limited access to talent, you can only get away with this for so long.

3. The best stories are ones you don’t make up as you go along. After we shot episode 01 it turned out that it was really episode 02. This is fine, as we were able to outline the other episodes to fit around it, but you can imagine the kind of wreck the story would be if we did this sort of thing every time.

The meeting went very well, and I really like the story outline we have now. Myles is going to go off and write it, and I’m sure it will evolve and grow as he does, but it was a great start that gives some structure to our planning.

We also talked through some issues of tone, style and character, which helped Ryan get a feel for exactly what he was getting himself into. Since he’s relatively new to acting, I think starting to take ownership in this meeting will build some confidence in his own ability to pull this off.

On a more “meta”, career-oriented note, I continue to learn about all the different ways making movies (or web series) is awesome.

(Along with about 25 other people)

If you’re someone who follows this blog (what’s up, Jeff?) but doesn’t follow The Murder! A Love Story site (nearly everyone), you might not be aware of it, but in the time since I last posted the film went from being “in pre-production” to being “in post-production”, and it brought along its own set of arguably unnecessary quotation marks.

Either way, I’m now editing the feature film I wrote and directed.

OK, actually I’m syncing audio for the film. Which isn’t quite editing.

And I’m not really doing that right now. I’m organizing a film festival. Which starts tomorrow.

So NEXT WEEK I’ll be working away like mad on turning video clips into an actual movie, but right now I’m finalizing film festival programming, planning Q&A questions to ask filmmakers, going to the venue to set up equipment, and hoping really hard that people actually come to this thing so we can do it again next year, only better. And with more money.

But enough about me. Look at this preview of the new Dark Science by Dresden Codak!

Ten minutes ago I launched a Kickstarter project for Murder! A Love Story.

For those who’ve never checked out Kickstarter, here’s how it works: You decide to back a project by pledging money to it. If the project reaches its pledging goal, hurray! The project receives your money and moves forward. The project also gives you a pre-decided reward, based on the amount you pledged. If the project doesn’t reach its goal, it gets no money at all. That’s right: you’re out a whopping $0.

So please consider supporting Murder! A Love Story on Kickstarter. All of our budget is going to hard costs like food and equipment and travel; we promise we won’t spend your money frivolously.

And if you want to go the extra mile for us, spread the word! We need all the help we can get.

Thanks! Hopefully you’ll hear soon about our success in raising the funds to complete the film.

Yesterday I shot a teaser trailer for my film, and it reminded me that production never goes how you expect.

We had four “scenes” to get. Three of them were single shots. One was about 10 shots, but they were all of the same thing and handheld, so they were easy. Easiest part of the day, actually.

First shot: an overhead pan, camera looking directly at the floor. I’ve done this before sans jib using a technique I won’t describe because you’d really just have to see a picture to get it. But it doesn’t matter, because this time, it didn’t work.

Apparently turning 30 makes you old and shaky or something, because I could not get a smooth shot. We ended up just taking a still shot from farther away, which we’ll pan in editing using keyframes.

Second shot: dolly of a still life. I actually knew this would be tricky, because I don’t have a dolly. I have a rolling mechanic’s stool I borrowed from a friend, on which I managed to mount the camera, but that’s not the same thing.

For one thing, dollies have tracks. Tracks keep you rolling straight. Rolling straight keeps your very carefully- and shallowly-focused shot from going out of focus.

I think you know where I’m going.

The solution was what I knew it would be: run the shot 20 or so times until it comes out right. So I’m pretty sure I got something usable.

The third shot is an effects shot, and since I’m not going to be rotoscoping anything on my schedule, the camera was locked. And it’s a shot of a wall. So that was easy.

The scene with 10 shots was great. Knocked it out in 20 minutes. Watch footage, wrap set, go home.

We’ll see how it comes out in post.

P.S. Special thanks to Chris and Evie Jones for the loan of their Nikon D7000, on which we shot all this footage.

No, not the depressing movie about the pregnant girl. The character quality (definition #3 is the one I mean).

Today I had coffee with a producer-friend so he could ruthlessly slash the proposed budget for Murder! and tear apart the synopsis I’d written for the one-sheet.

And I let him.

Back when I was but a young wart hog I probably would have bridled and argued and resisted change. Thankfully, subsequent years of critiques from my good friends and fellow writers have softened me.

So I took his notes (where by “take his notes” I mean that I typed out verbatim what he suggested). And you know what? The synopsis was better for it.

So don’t be precious with your words. Or art. Or whatever it is you do as your creative outlet. Do you want to be better and more successful as an artist, or do you just want praise?

Pre-production, as it turns out, is all about time management and task-prioritizing.

Here is a rough list of things I have to do right now, in no particular order:

1. Send several emails
2. Fill out insurance applications
3. Build a website for the film
4. Post things on the website
5. Record a video podcast. Every week.
6. Draw stick-figure storyboards for the entire film.
7. Do an inventory of the gear we have at our disposal
8. Get bios and photographs of the crew
9. Write sides to hand out at auditions
10. Make the production schedule
11. Read two books on directing actors
12. Watch several movies for inspiration
13. This blog post
14. About 20 more things I can’t remember right now.

Figuring out which of those things to spend my time on is probably the biggest challenge. Nearly all of them are easy to do, or at least close. That’s not the problem.

Cheap, fast or good. You can have any two of those three.

I’m trying to leave out “fast,” but even that is turning out to be hard.

I had a phone call today with the Director of Special Events at Grace College, my alma mater, which owns a hotel I’m hoping to use to shoot my first feature this year.

He wants to meet with me next week to go over my proposed schedule with a view to seeing whether he can accommodate me. He wants to see it in detail, by room, because he frequently rents the space piecemeal, so he needs to know exactly which days I need which rooms.

Thing is … I don’t have a schedule.

See, the whole movie takes place in this location. I figured I would lock the location first, then make the schedule for how I use the location. Silly me; that’s not how things work.

So I have to do a script breakdown this week. For any non-entertainment-biz visitors, this is a document that tells you all the different resources you need to produce a particular script—props, locations, talent, costumes, etc.—and which days you need those things.

I’ve never done one of these. So that’s fun.

They have software to do this for you. And I love software. So I downloaded Celtx, which is a free scriptwriting/pre-production software application. I’ve never used it to write because I was lucky enough to start screenwriting when I could still use a student discount to purchase Final Draft, but Final Draft doesn’t do all the same things.

So here goes. I hope I don’t butcher it horribly.

P.S. I feel like I’ve finally come up with a good title for this script, so I’m going to share it here, and it is: Murder! A Love Story. I hope you like it.

This past Friday The Saint Regis Club hosted our first ever Indiana Film Showcase. I organized this event, so Thursday and Friday were busy, sleepless days.

We were showing three films in a row, all by Indiana-based filmmakers. Since you should check them all out, they were:

Finding Xanadu: The Life and Films of Samuel W. Truss by Benjamin Lancaster

Ghost Stories 4 by Dan T. Hall

Trippin’ by Devi Snively

A good time was had by all. Or most. We even had some people attend who were actually involved in the making of these films, and they were gracious enough to do short Q&As with us after the screenings.

This was in important event to me and The Saint Regis Club because we’re also planning on organizing a full-fledged, multi-day Film Festival with two capital Fs later this year. This was a microcosm of that, so it was good to see what the challenges and requirements would be. And among other things, I learned two primary lessons:

Lesson one: advertising. What I did for the Showcase failed miserably. Literally not a single person came because of advertising; it was all word of mouth. So I’ll have to regroup and rethink my strategies.

Lesson two: doing everything myself. Don’t. I felt like I was going to die from exhaustion, and this was just a short, one-day event.

But my next step is a grant application, due later this month. That I can do by myself.

Firstly, congratulations to my friend Greg, whose new short film, Wicked, received all its funding and then some. Hopefully he’ll finish it soon so we can all enjoy watching it.

But back to me. I’m finally done with my three weeks of training during the day and can start to have a normal sleep schedule. Meanwhile, I realized that those three weeks of relative non-productivity have set me behind where I was hoping to be with one of my projects, the Saint Regis Indiana Film Showcase.

Tonight at work I wrote a press release, and tomorrow morning I’m going to be on the phone with all the local newspapers and radio stations attempting to promote the films we’ll be showing the first week in March.

All are by Indiana filmmakers, but I can’t come out and say what they are yet because I’m still a day (and hopefully no more) away from finalizing the program.

Then I have to design posters and figure out where to hang them. There should hopefully be other advertising as well, but I’m not sure how that’s going to look yet.

I really miss those three weeks.

I’m finally starting to become productive again after the holidays. I won’t even go into all the various demands on my time that have kept me from making progress recently, but I’m starting to gain ground once more.

For one thing, my buddy Shawn is back in town after a month-long absence, so we’re getting together this weekend to work on our web series. Not sure where he is with the writing of his half of the episodes, but let’s hope … done.

On the other side of the page (as it were), the date of the Saint Regis Indiana Film Celebration (or whatever we end up calling it) is fast approaching, and I’ve finally managed to solicit more than one film to be in it. Even as I write this (hopefully), screener DVDs are making their way through the mail system to me. I’m hoping to have watched several more Indiana-based films by the end of next week and be very close to locking the program for the event.

This will mean it’s time to start publicity for the event, and not a second too early. I haven’t quite figured out how we’re going to advertise, but I’m going to start by calling the local paper to see if they want to do a story. This may involve writing a press release, which I haven’t done in a while, but I’m hoping they’ll bite on the concept of an interview with me and Dave Gustafson.

I really want this event to go well, as I think that would give us more confidence in planning our much more extensive (and frightening) film festival in September.

And for other reasons upon which I will not elaborate at present.

More as it happens.