CASEY and BROOKLYN (Casey Manderson & Kristine Cofsky)

A couple more shooting days left on the film. Whew.

As soon as it stops raining I can get out and hunt for a well lit baseball diamond, soccer field or running track (for night shoot). Looking forward to shooting that scene!

Also looking forward to getting into some serious writing (of course there’s the matter of editing this current film as well).

The good old HVX200 has been steady, but some part of one wireless mic or transmitter is sketchy, and continues to give us grief. This just means more takes for sound.

The mountain of footage continues to amaze me. So much to wade through.

Hoping to see at least a few films at VIFF. Perhaps soon!

The newest script is ready. Hopefully we’ll be shooting that one in the summer. Fingers crossed.

It’s taken me three days to go through two camera’s worth of footage and select the usable clips for ONE scene. One two minute (at the most) scene. I still haven’t made a single edit, just taking the usable parts and putting them onto a timeline. It’s 47minutes long (but this is double because most of the shots are TWO cameras) and now I need to cut those 47 (94) minutes into less than 2 minutes of magic.

It’s a scene with Kate and Kristine in Brooklyn’s Apartment.

Crazy times.

A NIGHT FOR DYING TIGERS Vancouver premiere is tomorrow at 9:15pm, Granville 7 theatre. Get your tickets now at viff.org.

I have no idea what to call this new film.

Back home in Vancouver.

It’s nice to be back home with Kelly and the doggies.

It will also be nice to get the new film in the can! Finally!

Wow. It feels like it’s been a long shoot. Shooting out of sequence has been really tough, but with no money (and so many characters) there’s no other way.

VANCOUVER FILM FESTIVAL - Premiere

A NIGHT FOR DYING TIGERS premieres this Monday (Oct 4th).

Still so much to do with A Night for Dying Tigers AND When Life Was Good (which premieres on Super Channel on October 7th). Details HERE

Calgary was fantastic. I’m really looking forward to VIFF so I can check out some great films and see some great friends.

After the festival madness it will be nonstop editing and writing until June 2011 with at least one other film ready to shoot in Summer (I’m really looking forward to shooting that one).

NATURE’S TRIPOD

BIG day today. Thanks to everybody who came out and played. It was a lot of fun. Rob Carpenter went above and beyond, but that’s pretty standard for RC. Thanks Rob!

Tomorrow is another monumental day. I should be opening the “scriptment” to see what’s coming, but I’m loading and logging footage.

The stuff from yesterday is funny. Holy shit. Dan Richardson is back in Andrew Norman form with a vengeance.

Everybody is committed to this thing in a big way, and it shows.

We’re on DAY EIGHTEEN. If we had any money, this would probably be the last day of shooting, but, because we’re paying for everything on credit cards and credit lines with no real outside assistance, it’s DAY EIGHTEEN of TWENTY-NINE!

I’ve never been this broke, in the world, in the history of my life, but I had this idea and it needed to be shot immediately. It was the right call. This becomes more and more apparent with easy passing day.

Thanks to Glen Schaefer for the great article in Sunday’s Province!

Tomorrow it’s Andrew, Sven, and Casey, and then…the party.

Making a film this way is similar to the process of writing fiction or songs. There’s also a certain element of theatre at play, but the big difference is, rather than “one night only,” we’re capturing that energy for playback (over and over) at 24 frames per second. I’m approaching this film, as I did WHEN LIFE WAS GOOD, in a naturalistic documentary style. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s comedy or drama, I imagine I will always be interested in this style of filmmaking.

I still love long elegant cinemascopic takes and wides, and I’m sure the next film will be different, but, for now, making a film this way, with these great people, is the best medicine.

My friend Rob (Leickner) and I were convinced that a somewhat (or largely) improvised filmmaking method might be freeing and possible (WELL before I made WHEN LIFE WAS GOOD in 2007). I find that working from a very detailed scriptment filled with a lot of dialogue and situational stuff (as well as the plot elements) offers much more freedom than a more skeletal outline (ala WHEN LIFE WAS GOOD). With this new film, I’m able to go farther “off the grid,” because the grid is so much stronger.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Here we go.

Now we’re making a movie (within a movie).

Here is a shot from DAY ONE. No spoilers from DAY SEVEN!

KRISTINE COFSKY is BROOKLYN (again) in Life is Still Good