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Coheed and CambriaHey there, blog. It's been a while, hasn't it? With principle photography finished on
Hard to be Me I'm back in it and need to get my writing juices rocking again. I've got two ideas for feature length screenplays bouncing around in my brain that I want to work with other people on, and my resume has been flying around all over the place as I look for something to keep me busy aside from my day job. I think it might be time for a bulleted update on my life in general:
Hard to Be Me: Like I said, we wrapped principle photography on Saturday. We still have some pick up shots to get in a week and a half, but they aren't anything that I wouldn't have normally left in the hands of a second unit (if we had one). All the same they need to get done and look good, so there is that. The post production schedule is set and I am hoping to have a trailer or promo clip to show to you all by the end of August. Production stills and some other fun stuff may come earlier.
The production has become a cardinal experience for me in many ways. It was my first production to go from no budget or student film to ultra low budget. I worked with some true professionals that have some great credits to their names, awesome actors whose credits include big name films and the luxury of being just a director (and not also Producer). It was also the longest production I've been a part of too, helping me bridge the gap between feature length and short. Overall, it is a great "next step" in my professional experience and I am extremely grateful to be a part of it all and to have all the faith that was placed in me by everyone else on set.
Overall I see massive potential in the footage and I am cautiously optimistic that this becomes more than just a great experience and a good bullet point on the resume. I've treated this shoot like it could be my last; I realized that if all I do is think about "the next one" that there may never be a next one. And especially a "next one" that's just as good as the current one. I think too many people in this industry get obsessed with how their current project can be leveraged into something on the horizon; I made sure to pour myself into this shoot.
Screenwriting: As I mentioned I have two feature lengths in mind that I want to fast track to the top of my list. To me
Inheriting the Mushroom Kingdom is too derivative and like so many other pictures,
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth is too unlikely to help me at this point in my career and
Sidd is too artsy. In an attempt to be both marketable and unique, I really brain stormed for a while and have two concepts, one of which I wrote a treatment for, the other I'm still in the concept stage.
I've recruited my brother in law,
Jason Kopplin, for the latter. He wrote a fantastic script for the failed Stop That Nun sitcom
Confab and is generally a skilled writer whose experiences and taste vary enough from mine to add new dimension, but are close enough that we can still work together. It's high concept, with the thesis coming before the story. It's always scary to work that way, as the story should be the primary mover. But I trust us to make the story the center piece while keeping the thesis intact.
For the former I'm still up in the air on if I should fly solo or bring someone else on to. It's definitely marketable, and in the new "guy flick" genre of Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith. A romantic comedy that is done for the male audience rather than the female one. This appears to be my strong suit if past works like
Microcosm are any indication.
My other idea for a feature length is a bit zany, but I may go through with it. I was thinking of inviting three complete strangers to hang out with me over their lunch break once a week and we would try to hammer out a feature length. Just put some ads out on craigslist and some listservs and see who bites and what we could do. I've really come to the conclusion that this area is just inspiring and is bubbling over with talent. We should find a way to get it together.
All of these would probably be screenplay competition fodder or saved for possible future pitch sessions.
A New Short: As I begin to plug in to the film making community out here and start meeting more people, my thoughts turn toward making another short. I have seriously considered a proof of concept short, that is a short of something that could easily be adapted to feature length, or a scene or two from a feature length to show what I had in mind. There's a work that I'm strongly leaning toward adapting and unlike Coheed and Cambria, I feel I could actually get this work in the hands of the creator and get a straight yes or no from him. But money is tight and I doubt I could find much underwriting without anything to my name (for now). Still, I may write the script up and research it properly. That's the first step, then worrying.
Of course,
The Protester, still sits on my harddrive aftere Stop That Nun failed to produce it. So there is that option as well.
Regardless, it would be on the DVX100a, unless another camera came at the same price point on to the set. I did really enjoy using the EX1 and the 35mm lens adapters for
Hard to be Me, but the price tag is too much for me right now. And maybe that just means a short is not in the cards for me at all right now. However, working with prime lenses was not that fun for me. As a French New Wave junky, a jerky zoom on sticks is sometimes exactly what the doctor ordered. Something on film would be amazing, but now I'm really getting ahead of myself.
Piles of Resumes: I've sent out my resume to a lot of calls for directors, editors and writers in hopes of something sticking for other people's projects. So far I've had limited success on that front, one interview for which I declined the job, but hopefully more is coming as people get to my e-mail in the pile they've no doubt received.
So I'm not as busy as I would like any more, but I must admit that having this weekend off is quite liberating. Knowing that I don't have to be on set is a huge relief and the feeling of accomplishment from putting a project largely in the can can't be beat.
- Coheed and Cambria
