NEW MOVIES

Trying to raise the money to make the next movie. Got the script. The cast is going to be no problem. Just need a bit of dough…

RECOIL

Just working on the Director’s cut. Will be ready very soon!

A NIGHT FOR DYING TIGERS

Working on getting it delivered to all the folks who are waiting for delivery.

VAMLET

Picture is damn near locked. Audio is pretty rough. Waiting for new RAM and software for the computer.

TEXT

Writing LOTS of new stuff, and I mean lots. It would be nice to take a little trip and finish off some scripts, but things are pretty busy around here.

OTHER STUFF

While we transition to a cleaner (non-wordpress) site, if anybody needs to buy DVDs of The Ennead, You, Me, Love, etc…please email Cinemanovel Films at:

cinemanovel (at) gmail (dot) com

Lesli Brownlee is ALISON in VAMLET

There are so many helpful blogs out there. I thought it might be nice to post a link to a good one every once in a while.

So, instead of the usual rantings and updates (although they follow)…

John August

Great tips and inspiration for screenwriters (working and aspiring).

WHAT IS NEW?

Writing, spec script went out. Fingers crossed.

Editing VAMLET, getting there…

Re-edit on THE RED ROOSTER, new music, shorter version. It’s a lot stronger now cut down from 84 to 74 minutes, and, with the Darling Music artists on the soundtrack, it actually feels more…grounded, somehow…the way the music of SOLARISTS works with the landscape is perfect.

Prep begins on RECOIL in two weeks!

Working on a bunch of new spec material.

CASEY, TIJANA, and DAN in “VAMLET”

Thursday/Friday were spent polishing four scripts.

NOW it’s full on editing VAMLET. I’d like to get a rough assembly finished by the end of the week. SO MUCH left to slog through.

Back to it!

WHAT IS THE MODEL?

I’ve written the best script I’ve ever written. It’s not an expensive film, logistically.

It’s ready to go into production this afternoon, but, there are a lot of obstacles to production. A lot of funding bodies and companies are structured to include protracted development. Development can be extremely helpful for a work-in-progress or a very early draft, however, when a script is ready for cast and camera, it’s not ideal.

So, I begin the quest for SERIOUS production partners. Equity investors and film finance companies.

Get some funding. Attach some great cast. Get the rest of the money. Shoot.

Seems simple enough.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas is that time of the year when everything stops, which is actually okay this year, I think. Normally I hate it, like weekends, and other holidays when nobody is working.

Now, with so much writing and editing to do, if Christmas has to happen (and it seems to happen every year around this time), I suppose it’s a good time for it.

A good marketing slogan, I think:

“Christmas, hey, sometimes it’s not terrible.”

So, a couple of phone meetings, a lot more pages, and then the world stops for a couple of weeks. And that’s okay. This year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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.

DAY TWENTY

We shot at Chloe Angus’s dress shop yesterday. VERY NICE location. Gaelle and I had our cameras set to different colour temps (the first time we didn’t look at our LCDs side by side before shooting). Still, the actually lighting in the shop was somewhere between Tungsten and Daylight (actually a bit closer to Tungsten). So, I may be able to blend the footage if performance dictates (although the HVX does not handle any colour correction particularly well at 720p). No big deal, it’s documentary style!

MY STYLE

Shooting in this style requires constant vigilance against the trappings and phrasing of traditional motion picture photography.

I don’t want to finish the scene and then “block the next scene” before lunch. This is anathema to creating something completely different and natural. This is also why I avoid using Final Draft to prepare these scripts. The “scriptment” feels different than the usual, and that helps ease the cast into a different approach…something just feels different…

THIS IS NOT THAT

I will, of course, continue to make films in a more traditional way as well. I love filmmaking and I have respect for the way professionals (Europeans in particular) make films.

But this is not that.

So, we avoid shooting out of sequence.

So, we avoid big crews.

So, we (try to) avoid long days (we try to keep every day between 2 and 8 hours MAX).

So, we use natural and practical lighting (a Chinese Lantern and a LOT of practical bulbs on standby for the occasional darkness in the eyes).

So, we avoid booms and use wireless mics (not quite as nice as a PROFESSIONAL Boom Op and Mixer, but the intimacy is worth the trade off when shooting this way).

So, we avoid wrapping cast and extras before the last scene (just in case inspiration hits or a story point gets added, or we need to reshoot an earlier angle).

So, we don’t “block” anything before I have a camera in my hand ready to roll, and ready to shoot the entire scene.

So, we don’t rehearse. I don’t want to see the scene played or the action blocked until I’m filming the scene (if we need to adjust the lighting, etc…then we’ll have to do it all again, but if we don’t need to make any technical adjustments, that FIRST MOMENT is captured on camera, and it feels different from each take that follows).

So, we try to avoid all of the trapping and phrasing and tropes that make a traditional set feel like a traditional set, and we try to create something unique and different, with energy and style and spark.

I think this is the most difficult part of the process, avoiding the usual.

Because I actually love the usual too!

But this is not that.

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!