Memoirs of a Gala | Bye-bye Temecula

September 28, 2011

Heather (DP), Tanya (Director), and Kristine (Producer)

Well, the Temecula Festival is now behind us. Our second screening was fun to attend (thanks Lynn Downey, Heather Dappolonia, and Chris Stiles for joining us). We also had a good time at the Awards Gala held at the Pechanga Resort and Casino.  No awards for “Blue," but we were honored just to attend. Congratulations to all those who won!

Cybill Shepherd presents the Lifetime Achievement Award to Peter Bogdonavich

Virginia Madsen

Connie Stevens

Overall, if I could sum up our experience at the festival in one word, it would be "educational." Yep . . .we learned a lot, especially in the area of marketing.  At this festival, as well as with many others, there were other screenings taking place at the same time as ours. There were features, documentaries, animations, and other shorts showing, and it was our job to persuade people to come to our screening verses the 3 or 4 other great possibilities.  Lets just say, marketing posters are a necessity, but a friendly face along with our postcard went a lot further.  I personally was more opt to go and see a film from someone I had met, verses playing the “eenie meenie minie moe” game with the film posters.  So, note to self, spend time and money on marketing!!!   


And now for some more words of wisdom from Tanya...

Hey hey, well yeah I think Kristine summed up the educational bit.  I guess what I took away from it was mostly the realization of what people forget.  It was fun, don’t get me wrong.  But I feel like there’s so much that people choose to forget when they’re here, or when they see stars on TV.  They forget that we drove ourselves here in an ordinary car, that the red carpet is just a different colored rug…that we’re staying with grandparents or at the Motel 6, or that most of us are unemployed when we finish our films.  They choose to forget that we’re just normal people and that it feels exactly the same on either side of the red rope.  Haha, I hope I didn't shake the glitter off, but I know that personally, I can run with an idea and completely get caught up in running past the finish line before remembering why I was running in the first place.

The magic was definitely fun to experience; I mean come on, seeing Cybill Shepherd and crazy awesomes like Peter Bogdonavich, Oren Peli, Pete Anthony and Russ Regan?  (And meeting Booboo Stewart, a rising teen-star that was in the Twilight films.) Fantastic, lol.

But it was actually nice to come back and remind ourselves of what our goal was, and that's getting "Blue" to the people who have experienced cancer. The climb has been hard and floundering on our own, but quite magical indeed =)

With that, we look ahead to what's next!

We're now officially allowed to say that we've been accepted into the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis!!  

Come join us =)

Screening times:

10/16/2011 Sunday  16:15:00 AMC Castleton Square 14, Theater 8

10/18/2011 Tuesday 14:00:00 AMC Showplace 17, Theater 10

10/19/2011 Wednesday 18:00:00 AMC Showplace 17, Theater 11

Tickets Available at http://www.trulymovingpictures.org/heartland-film-festival/tickets/

1st Screening Done and Gone

September 16, 2011

Hey guys, Kristine here.  Today was an exciting day for us.  For starters, our third musketeer, Heather, joined us all the way from TN (where she is currently going to school).  Shortly after reuniting with Heather, we got to meet Lynn Downey in person for the first time (woot woot).  She was the one who wrote the original short-story of “Blue."  Hugs, mixed with excited nerves, accompanied us as we made our way to our first screening of “Blue."  I will admit, we all had the jitters.  It is often nerve wracking to show to an audience a film that you have poured so much time and energy into.  It’s honestly like putting yourself up on the big screen; how people perceive your movie is often times how they perceive you.  And so there we were, Blu-ray quality and all.

Out of our block of shorts, Blue was the first one to show. As soon as we saw our opening image….AHHH! We giggled, we cringed, and we listened. I think the biggest thing we learned was that our film looks so different on a big screen verses on a lap top. What was once intended to be a medium shot looked like a close-up…wow, things to note for the future.  But overall, I think people liked it. Thank you Temecula for this experience.  All your hard work is greatly appreciated. 

Festivals for Newbies: Lesson #1 - Postcards

September 16, 2011

Since being here (garnering a whole, one day of experience), we've actually learned a lot. Take for instance, the postcard. These things are golden when talking to people, especially other filmmakers; everyone has them in reach to hand out.  And we noticed that all the postcards we'd gotten yesterday were the films we made sure we saw today. Just because we saw a card and met a face. When we met a face that left their cards at the hotel...meh.

SO. Lesson learned, we're very grateful to have ours (fantastically designed by Kristopher Haughton...seriously, nearly everyone we've handed them to has commented on how good it looks.  Big ups Kris!).

However, there's always room for improvement.  For instance, we have one-sided postcards. We ran out of time and slapped our [awesome] poster-design on them, not really taking into account the other information that's slightly crucial for those picking up your card from a table. Like what it's about. Or when it's playing. Yay for double-sided postcards!

We've noticed a couple common and effective flip-sides. It's a perfect space for a short synopsis or one-liner. Plenty of space for all those laurels and bragging rights. And it's a great space to park all the social media icons/sites/addresses. The main difference we saw was how they did the screening times.

One found out the screening times and printed it right on. Nicely done and sleek, but could potentially miss out on some mass printing deals.

Another was slightly more tactical and printed a box for a label to be stuck on. As the festivals (or screening times) change, they can easily change too.

Aaaand then there's us. Burning the midnight oil.

Print double-sided.  =)

Californ-i-aaa and TVIFF | Opening Night!

September 15, 2011

Can you find us?  =)

Tanya here! Welp, yesterday started out eaarrllly.  I touched down in L.A. (listening to “Back in Black”…that slow-mo-walking, soundtrack-in-your-head…don’t deny it; you have a song like that). I met up with Kristine here in L.A. and we were off. 

Last night was Opening Night for the Temecula Valley Film & Music fest! It was quite the experience, lol, we’re definitely newbies.  We got there, got our credentials and badges and then registered for the red carpet.  They gave us a card that said “Blue” on it, so a lady could go ahead of us and show the press who was coming.  Then they had us fill out a card with our names and where we were from so the announcer would know what to say. 

It was in line (waiting to be assigned a vintage car that would take us to the red carpet) where we were a bit humbled and found out just how new we were to this whole shindig.  The guys in front of us were about our age, had already won some awards and had been picked up to make their short into a feature.  The ones behind us already had a plethora of laurels too.  But it was fun to laugh and visit; crazy characters they are =P.  We were finally assigned to be in a shiny black ’76 Camaro, driven by the sweetest lady. Haha, she asked if we wanted a picture and I wasn’t about to turn that one down.

We finally pulled up to the red carpet, a guy in an Air Force uniform opened our door, and we stepped out to what we didn’t think was going to be much at all.  Then when we saw flashes going off, press and people.  Lol, is it hacky that I had my camera?  And that I was rolling video the entire time? 

Um..Screenshots from the hip-shot Red Carpet Experience =P

We were ushered through various press-interviews along the way, and probably the most meaningful part of my night was meeting a young man who had seen Blue and asked us to say a little something to the Facebook Fans.  We had to move on, but I’m hoping to find him later; I’d like to know his personal connection with cancer if he has one.

We were ushered into the Theater lobby, met some awesome filmmakers over refreshments.  Then we screened the Opening Night feature, called “Losing Control.”  It has actually been granted theatrical release, so that’s cool.  The director (a woman, chuyeah!) and some of the cast were there too =).  We met her briefly at the after-party.

The Jazz band that kept us company while we waited for the Opening Screening of "Losing Control"

Xenia featured on NBC's "The Voice" performed for the opening!

The Director, cast and some crew from "Losing Control"

By that time, my East-coast watch was a quarter past dead so we skipped out early and came back to Kristine’s grandma’s house to crash.  We’re headed out to see some screenings now, so peace! More to come =)

Lady Filmmakers Film Fest in Beverly Hills!

September 12, 2011

I was on my way out the door tonight when I got a call from Kristine; we'd gotten into another film-festival!  It's a more local one called The Lady Filmmakers Film Festival.  It will be held in the Writers' Guild Theatre in Beverly Hills this October, the fun part being that it overlaps with another film-festival (can't say yet which one!).


Still, Kristine might be able to make it over there to represent us while I rep the screenings at the other one. Then, when I head out to shoot a wedding that weekend (before the festivities, unfortunately), Heather and Kristine will tag-team and finish it off.  Complicated, but doable =)  


We're just trying to get this out to people who need to see it, and it's so amazing to see and meet the people touched by the film.  To hear their stories is just as rewarding as making it.


Onward!


-T

Temecula in less than a week!

September 8, 2011


So we're not going to lie...we're a little excited.  This is the first film festival that all three of us (Tanya, Kristine and Heather) are going to be together for, and we're prepared to have a blast.  We were told that on Opening Night, all the musicians/filmmakers are going to be assigned a vintage car to be ridden in for the mini-parade to the Red Carpet.  <<  that alone we're freaking out about.  Then we have screenings and workshops throughout the weekend, and the Black-Tie Awards Gala the last night we're there. Haha, how green would I be if I took my DSLR camera?  We'll already stick out like sore thumbs because we're younger (found that out on Media Day)...we'll just wear it like a boss I guess.

It may not even be that big of a deal, but it's still going to be a lot of fun.  We figured out because of our other festival rejections that deals like these shouldn't be our focus.  So we're prepared to have fun, but the real work is ahead of us.

We're trying to partner with the American Cancer Society and maybe even the Ronald McDonald House so we can raise money to pay for the film (our sad little pool is quickly draining), and then past that, put it towards a cancer patient =D  We want to eventually try distribution and somewhat of a publishing deal where we can put together a book of cancer stories and package it together.  Proceeds of that will go towards that cancer patient, who we have yet to choose.  It's all in the dreaming phase right now, haha.

Since this has never really been done before at our school, it's all VERY new to us, but we're pressing on and trusting that God has already taken this way further than we ever dreamed, so He must have us headed somewhere besides a tin can.

So Temecula will be fun and a blast...but the real fun is still ahead =P

Sailing,

-T

Temecula Valley Screening Times

September 2, 2011


Come chill with us at the Temecula Valley International Film & Music Fest!    Should you want to come earlier, think about checking out the Red Carpet for Opening Night!  Here are the screening times:

• Friday September 16 at 3:00pm
  Saturday September 17 at 5:00pm
  
  Both showings will be at the UltraStar Cinemas @ Tower Plaza Shopping Center in Temecula.
  
  Festival Theater Venue: 27531 Ynez Road, Temecula, Ca 92591
  
  Please see website www.tviff.com for tickets.
• 
  

  

  Temecula Valley International Film & Music Festival

  www.tviff.com
  

  Celebrating Film, Music, Fashion and the Arts in Temecula

  
  

We got accepted into the Temecula Valley International Film Fest!!

August 19, 2011


It is funny how life works. One day we get a rejection notice, and the very next day get accepted into a different film festival. Lol…wow! Of course we were excited.  Besides just attending the film festival, we were invited to a media day at Temecula Valley in California. The media day is purely a day to promote our film before the festival actually takes place. Stay tuned for more information on the festival screening times.

Dreams meet reality: Our first film festival rejection

August 18, 2011

I was in Portland Oregon visiting Tanya for some business meetings, when we received our first word back from film festivals. We were sitting down, chatting after a long day when Tanya, who was checking her email at the same time, suddenly went quiet. I was joking around with her that we needed a break from “Blue” and that she’d better not be working on it. Her face was blank. “Hold on” she said as she stared at her computer screen and clicked around on her mouse. There was a moment of silence until the words, “we didn’t get in” shattered the peaceful evening.

“What?” I ran over to check for myself, and sure enough, we didn’t get into our first film festival. It was a student film festival, and we had high hopes of getting into it. We went over the list of accepted films over and over, double-checking to make sure our film wasn’t misplaced or we just missed it somewhere. But our dread turned into reality, we were not among the semi-finalists for the festival.

Now don’t get me wrong, we went into this festival run knowing that we would be accepted to only a small percentage of what we submitted to. But lets face it, the first rejection still stings. Tanya and I took the next several minutes talking about film, expectations, God, and success.  We concluded that while awards from festivals are nice, impacting lives with our film will overall be more rewarding. God has already placed this film into the hands of some amazing people who want to see this film take flight. So, then there is no need in a time like this to feel down or defeated over a rejection. Now is the time to rejoice and know that this film was meant to bring hope to people, and that is exactly where the film is headed.

-Kristine

To-Do List

July 17, 2011


So, life is a little bit over whelming right now. I have a list with over 18 current film festivals and counting, sitting in an open excel file that just haunts me everyday. After spending late nights working on submitting just a couple... Tanya and Heather hang on because we have a long way to go.

This is all new territory for us. We have never had a festival strategy plan with this magnitude before. From figuring out how to use “Without a Box”, to rendering out a decent quality export of our film, to figuring out how to get our film onto an HDcam tape to play at select festivals; I’d say we are in over our heads. I have been reading “Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide” only to find out that we have a million other important things to add to our already exhausting “to-do” list.

Facebook can be handy in solving output problems with a simple screen-shot...

It is times like these that I need to sit back and remember who is in charge of this project: God.  Our film is already a miracle in progress, and I doubt He is through with it yet. He has already given us an amazing support team, which includes our film professors Zach Gray and David George.  They have been available on the phone and have replied to exasperated Facebook posts during our desperate need of help in which we thank them immensely for. I would also like to thank everyone else who has been supporting us through this journey. This adventure is far from being over, but through faith we will pull through. Thank God for giving us the endurance of an energizer bunny and the power of heaven to pull this off.

-Kristine

Lookin' right 'n soundin' nice...

June 26, 2011


The journey continues in the fight to finish :-P  (For those who are wondering, YES, we entered into film festivals before it was finished.)  I was in Chattanooga for a weekend and knocked out a couple birds: color correction and recording vocals for the final song.


I dropped by Bryan Fowler's place to check out the looks he'd come up with for color.  He's got a pretty sweet set-up in his house:

Not only is he a killer steadicam op and a very talented 

colorist, but he's a hilarious friend and great company 

for all that time spent making the film look its best.

BLOWN away.  I was just expecting to correct the dark/blown out shots, and this guy went all out.  Not only does the color look great, but here is where we also connected to the original HD files.  So the quality is a lot better as well.  Here are a couple before/after shots:

Continuing on with the movie magic, I left Bryan's for Jesse Pollom's.  He's our vocalist for the final song, and we'd set up a time for me to meet up at his house.  I love these days! Where you're creative with what you're given (or not given).  A recording booth, for one, was something we were not given, but Jesse had a studio set up in his room, and his closet served as the recording booth.  

Lol, this is where the real magic happens; not the posh processing houses or recording studios you'd think, but in the situations where you're innovative to the point of no one knowing the difference anyway.

Jesse bravely endured my perfectionistic tweaking, and we finished with clean vocals in a new key.   With that, we shipped it all off to Marteen from Now!Media Productions, who is doing our final mix and master for the soundtrack.

That's it for now!

-T

SONScreen Awards!!

April 13, 2011


This past weekend was amazing, getting to see some old friends from the film program, making new ones, and being able to hang out with them all.


We walked away with two wins, the Best in Fest award, and the Audience Choice award.  Also awarded was an expenses-paid trip to Indianapolis to attend a fundraising conference.  Woohoo for a stay in the JW Mariott!!  Haha, we'll hopefully learn a lot too.


We had a lot of great opportunities this weekend...having our film critiqued by three professionals in the industry (great session) was great, but one thing that stood out to us was meeting other professionals that have stuck with their faith.  We've heard the stories when it comes to compromising values in this realm of business and it was refreshing to see people stand for something good and know that we can do the same.  Truly inspirational.


One quote in particular that stood out to me was by DeVon Franklin (Vice President of Productions at Columbia Pictures...oversaw some makings of some awesome films like Pursuit of Happyness, Karate Kid and others).  He said something along the lines of, "God will not plant a dream inside you and not give you a way of achieving it. In addition, He'll make it so you can achieve it without compromising the person He called you to be in the first place."


All in all, a great weekend!

When we got there, we had to render out a recent version of the film for the screening...at this point, we hadn't slept for about 3 days...

After the screenings, all the filmmakers would go up for a Q&A session

After we won, lol.  I hope we never take ourselves too seriously for this.  Good stuff.

Best Picture at Broadstreet!!!

April 10, 2011


Kristine and I were just finishing up at SONScreen's first night of screenings when we got a text from our third counterpart back in TN (Heather).  Broad Street Film Fest was going on Thursday night (April 7), and we won!  This is very exciting for us, and there was much celebration, even if it is a smaller and local film festival.


It's encouraging to get positive feedback about something we've put so much into.  It may sound weird, but since we are so connected to the making of it, we've unable to detach ourselves from the flaws and see it for its true colors. It's still hard, but we are finally getting to the point where we can say, "Okay, I think we might have something good here."


Hey guys, Kristine speaking here. As Tanya was mentioning above, we are very excited to see positive feedback for our film. We are finally entering into the distribution stage of our journey with this project, and Broad Street Film Festival was our first festival to kick off our year long festival run. Tanya, Heather, and I are stoked, and eager to see how this film blossoms. Even with all this excitement, we must never forget to humbly thank the ultimate creator of this project, and that is God. Without Him, we would be nowhere. Without Him, our senior project would have ended up being about "a guy just making a sandwich" (lol...inside joke).  So, Thank you God for your inspiration and steady guidance with this film.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane

April 7, 2011


Welp, it's 2 a.m. and T-minus 1 hour and we'll be on our way to good ol' Los Angeles.  We fly out at 6-ish.  Today was spent in all manners of fury and flurry...We all stayed parked at our respective computers for the entire day.  Heather on color-correction and conform, Kristine on Titles and end-title pictures/credits, and me with some basic sound-design and music.  That was the huge one, but we got a good rough out, working in-between Jesse in Murfreesboro, TN (He'll actually be doing vocals!  But he's 2 hours away...) and Danny out in California.


So at the end of the day, we have:


A sound-file
A color-corrected version of the film
Titles/credits


Doesn't seem like a lot for all the junk we went through, eh?  


We just realized that something isn't linked with the source footage for the color-corrected clips, soooo, the plan is that Heather gets up early and works with Zach in getting out a high-res video and putting it on DropBox, where we'll get it and piece it all together in the airport on our laptops, haha.


Onto the excitement!  Lol, gotta pack now....toodles!


-T

Picture Lock

April 4, 2011


Woohoo for picture-lock!  This is basically when the editing is done...all the clips are sliced in the right place and there's nothing you want to change anymore.  Ya know I've heard of this from directors, that it's never really truly done.  But I'm seriously really satisfied with the cut.  Lol, we'll see if I still like it in a month, but before I get the chance to change my mind, I'm headed back in the lab to work on sound-design!  Just put the session together last night.


Lots on the agenda today:  VO recording for the mom (the wonderful Giselle Hasel), music recording with Matt Chancey and his producer from MTSU, Jesse.  Heather is working with our fearless professor, Zach, to work on the color correction, title, and VFX (Video effects).  Effects range from painting out a light in the background or punching in on a shot, then tracking it so you see what you're supposed to.  Basically all the stuff we're working on now is the stuff where, if we work on it hard and do a good job, you'll never notice it, haha.


Meh, gotta study for a test tonight, BUT, alllll tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday will be intensively spent on finishing sound before we leave early Thursday morning for Simi Valley, CA.  Wish us luck!


-T

SONScreen Whaaaaat?? (and other updates)

March 24, 2011


We have officially been accepted into the SONScreen Film Festival, being held in Simi Valley, CA April 7-9, 2011.  Excitement! Kristine and I will be going out there for it...lots of plans to have fun :)


But really, this is more of a pre-screening in our minds.  We have much of the road to travel yet, in terms of the nitty-gritty polishing; picture-lock, color correction, sound-design, VFX, music touching-up, and recording of the final song to name a few.  So until that all happens, it'll be nice to get some feedback from these festival viewers, and listen to what people have to say as we make our final tweaks and wrap it up for some bigger festival submissions.  We've also entered it into a local festival, The Broadstreet Film Festival.  Unfortunately, that happens to be during the same weekend.  Hopefully Heather will be able to be pull that one.


In some other exciting news, the ending song has been written and Matt Chancey has agreed to sing it for us!  He has such an awesome, uber-cool raspy voice that I love, and I think it'll add nicely to that closing scene.  We're trying to get his producer from MTSU to record/mix his vocals and make it sound really legit.  Add the mastered music, and *BING* Magical :)


We are also going to be shooting our pick-up tomorrow.  A pick-up is a scene that is shot during post-production, after an edit has been put together and it becomes apparent what holes need to be filled, etc.  Sooo, Heather has painted the pieces of dry-wall to match our set (that is now inhabited, and thus unusable), and we're getting Whit back up here for a few critical moments.  Quick scene (though tricky...we'll see if it plays).


And as far as the vidblogs, lol, they're coming, don't worry.  Other things are selfishly hogging our time and we're trying our best, lol.  Until next time!


-T

VO, Yo

March 9, 2011


It's amazing what Voice Over can do!  Over the last couple nights, we had Julenne come back and record some dialogue for the beginning and end; it makes it a lot more cohesive and understandable.  Of course you run the risk of making it too on-the-nose, but we spent some careful time choosing our words to make sure that wouldn't happen.  Hopefully we succeeded!  Lol, seems great to us.


It was great working with Julenne especially, because she was able to contribute her experience with the chemo/emotions to help us gauge whether we were on point or not.

Sunscreen 'n SONScreen

February 20, 2011


We're back from Spring Break!  The first half of the semester, we've been pushing pretty hard so we can get a decent edit into SONScreen Film Festival. I think we've got something here!  It's finally starting to come together and make some sense.  After piecing it together, you see all the holes you need to patch (or the parts you need CUT....can be painful *sad face*).  But you also see how it gets stronger and stronger.


We've been working long distance with Danny Cooper, our music-extraordinaire.  He popped something out for this early Festival and we'll continue working with him in getting the score twanging heart strings where it needs to, 'n jazz like that.  It's sounding AMAZING so far though!  Reeeaallly adds to it, and helps it be a cohesive unit.

We've got a location!

November 2010


Hey Guys! Kristine here, I am going to fill you in on the craziness of finding our major location for the production of our film. Our script calls for two locations; a house where our main character, Jess,  and then another house where here parents live. Jess’s house was where we filmed the majority of our story. Now, it should be easy to find a house to film in, right? WRONG… you need to understand that when you need a location to film a movie at, you are going to need it for at least blocks of hours at a time. In our case, we needed to use the house for the whole week of filming. To film also requires a lot of equipment and people and a lot of equipment and people means that you need a lot of space.  So, we were looking at using a house for a week and occupying most of it.  We quickly ran into another conflict while searching for our location: we needed a house that would also let us paint the walls of one of the bedrooms, blue (this was an important story element in our film).  Needless to say, a lot of people we asked to use their house turned us down as soon as the words, “blue paint” came out (I of course don’t blame them).

Time continued to tick by and we were having no luck. It was three weeks till our scheduled shooting date, and a location needed to be found soon so we could have a decent amount of prep time with the location. Looking at using a foreclosed home owned by a bank was our next option. So, one day I put on my business suit and headed out to pitch our movie idea and situation to the local banks. Most of the banks were very interested in our project, but couldn’t help us out more then a simple, “Good luck with everything and sorry we couldn’t help”. A couple banks gave us some hope, but over time, liability issues made it a no.

Now desperation sets in. We continued to pray to God about our situation and for our project. We knew that God had already helped us find a story, and thus helping us find a location was not a task too big for Him.  And sure enough, exactly a week before our first day of production, two location options opened up, both empty houses that were willing to let us paint.  We chose the best possible location that would fit the needs of our film, and thus the intense week of preparation began. Shot lists were being created, which mapped out how we wanted to shoot our film, and with which angles and lenses.  A few of us spent painting the room we were going to use (we had to paint it white because it was originally a tan color and we needed a white wall to paint our blue color in the film).  Then we gathered furnishing for the home and made an empty house looked lived in. Finally, the very next day, we started shooting.  

All I can say is that timing for our location was perfect! 

The best part is, with our amazing location, we were allowed to keep our equipment set up at the location all week as well as sleep there to watch over everything. This allowed us to just come to set and start shooting.  Not having to load, transport and unload all of our equipment literally saved the day and allowed us to stay on-schedule.  What a week of “camping out” on our set Tanya, Heather, and I had!

 

We've got a story!

November 2010

Tanya here. I've just gotta say that the way this story has worked out, it's nothing short of incredible and miraculous.

Starting at the beginning, which was Spring of 2010, we entered into Senior Project I. We were to settle on a story and start pre-production, which would include script-writing, pre-vis/storyboards, locations, actors and funding. Knowing that we wanted to do a meaningful film, we were willing to spend the time on story, with full faith that God would give us the right one. Well spring came and went and all we had was the first-draft of a script...

...enter Fall 2010 and Senior Project II (Production phase) and that script ended up getting thrown out. We felt that it wasn't quite the story we were looking for, so we went back to the drawing board...with a hint of desperation. Ideas flew, got barely hammered out, and knocked flat, all the while knowing that we had to shoot in less than 3 months. While we should've been scouting locations, we were scribbling story arcs on my mirror, trying to come up with a story.

 

Back to God, we couldn't figure out what the problem was. Here we were, quite literally praying flat-faced on the floor in desperation, and we still didn't have a story. We knew that God wouldn't just throw willing filmmakers away, so we KNEW our project would take an act of God. But He seriously didn't seem to have any interest whatsoever. Cue stress.

Senior Project meetings were more and more depressing; even our adviser was having some legit doubts. He couldn't understand it either, as we can be quite irritatingly particular when it comes to overachieving. If I remember correctly, "Major disaster at this point" was at the top of his notes. Let's bring back that act of God.

We decided to outsource and produce a script that was already developed, and we started on the hunt. When THAT didn't bear fruit, I remember lamenting to my fellow filmmaker, Melody George. She mentioned that her roommate from L.A. wrote short stories and before you knew it, on September 27, Blue, among others written by Lynn Downey were in my inbox. We chose Blue over another script on September 29.

It was still in the form of a short-story, and October 4 (Five weeks from shooting) it was sent to Scott Fogg who translated it to a 22-page script like lightning by October 8. After a 2nd draft, I took it from there and 6 drafts later, there was a 12-page script by November 7 (With priceless advice from Scott, Thomas Wentworth and Andrew Strong).

Keep in mind that our first day of Principle Photography was scheduled to start on November 12, five days later. Don't worry, in those 4 weeks of script-rewriting, we had what we needed to start on actors, locations and the rest of pre-production.

The work of a semester and a half literally snapped into place in a month. Story is just one of the things that worked out. Lol, we haven't even told you about actors and locations yet.

Life, meet Act of God.