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.

No comments:

Post a Comment