The Crossroads

Hello World,
I find myself at a crossroads so I thought I would start this blog so you can follow my progress and see how things turn out in my personal and professional lives.

So here is the situation of Blugill, filmmaker. No it isn't my real name and yes I know it doesn't have an "e" in it but that is intentional, maybe someday I'll get to that story.

About a year ago I became friends with a man named Chris, he had a script ready to shoot and I had the equipment. He set up the auditions and we had a very good cast of local actors. We shot his movie and we even had a rough cut "premiere" of the movie. It was a lot of fun! I don't believe I worked harder on a project and had as much fun! So I decided then that I was going to give it my best to be able to be a filmmaker full time!

So when you live in a small Oklahoma town it is very difficult to find like minded people. Believe me it is very tough to get a project off the ground. I just canceled my first project last night in fact. Yeah, that is one of the reasons for my need to vent right now and pour some things out to you. So I have this idea to do a episodic comedy that would be shot about every two weeks. It would be similar to Clerks but take place in an Internet Cafe called The Hard Drive Cafe, cute right? Yeah that is what I thought too! The episodes would be small enough that they could be shot in about 2 hours so I wouldn't demand a lot of my actors or their time. Well time passes, I have scripts ready to go, I make up fliers for the auditions and put them up all over town and finally the day for the auditions comes AND.......No one shows up. No one except for my friend John who was in Chris's movie and someone I have become pretty good friends with. So do I get down? Yeah for a little bit. Then I decide "screw it" I'm going to do it anyway! Yeah without a cast I can still figure out some way to make it work. So I start hitting people up in person to become a part of this project. I fill out the cast and then lose my main character.

Alright another set back but not a problem. I ask around and find another actor who would be interested in being in the project except he works every other Saturday. Not a problem! I think it will work now! Well now it is November, the Holiday season is coming up and my lead actress is about to go back to New York to school. Another set back. At this point I believe that a feature film project would be better to work on.

I believe that I can shoot a feature film in less than one day! Yes you read correctly! ONE DAY!
Yes it will be shot with a Canon XL1s and not with film but still it will be about 75-80 minutes long and will be good! Well better than the small indie film fest darlings that have done well this year like Open Water and Saw which was just stupid! I enjoyed Open Water though, the girl in that was hot! Worth watching for her alone!

Let me go back a little bit, the Oklahoma Film Commission sponsored the Dov Simens seminar in OKC. Instead of the normal 400 dollar fee it was a mere 50 bucks! It was a very eye opening experience that I would recommend to any filmmaker....er....Producer out there. His best suggestion for no budget filmmakers out there such as myself was to get a great script in one location, add drama and tension and shake well. I came up with a pretty good single location idea where everything is stacked against the characters. Six main characters stuck in a bad location with no hope of getting out soon.

Now with the help of Chris and a few others I have told this idea to (who like the idea a lot) I believe I will be able to get enough people to shoot in this feature film! I honestly don't think the location will be that big of a deal. I plan on hiring a Gaslight producer to run my rehearsals. I think that what I am going to do is this, rehearse my actors for about 1-2 weeks so that they have this DOWN COLD! Once that is done we will go to the location and shoot this at one time. The majority of it takes place in one fairly small place and well pretty mcuh be self edited except for the beginning scenes. Simple right?

Well the ultimate plan is this:
1. Get the script written (looking for a writer now)
2. Cast and rehearse.
3. Shoot, edit, and finish.
4. Start looking at the film fests that are available when this is completed. Dov says you should only give your premiere to those fests that the acquisition executives attend, Sundance, Telluride, Toronto, Tribeca, etc.
5. Hopefully it is a bigger hit with the audience than Saw was to me! I make a great distribution deal, get my name promoted and sign a 3 picture deal. Yeah the Robert Rodriguez dream!

So what is the status now? I have put out my request for a writer on two Oklahoma Yahoo group film lists. Have had two replies and have sent my treatment to them (yes it is registered with the WGA per Dov's suggestions so I am protected) and have yet to hear back from them.

If there is no writer up to the challenge then I will give it a try myself, I'm not the best writer but I'm not THAT bad.