Nico (exec prod) and Lee Lusby (DP), Nico’s living room. Conferencing in Dean Mongan, director, in L.A.

This was our first formal preproduction meeting. Turns out we have more resources available than I thought. Dean will provide a Canon 5d, to supplement my own Canon 7d HDcam. Lee thinks he can also get a Red Epic ($40,000 camera, heh). It WOULD be nice to have THREE HD cams going all the time, but we’ll see. For one thing, I don’t have a third camera operator (and AC/focus puller) budgeted, nor will there be one, most likely. But it’s nice to know that option is available. Also, Lee offered to use his and Jarrod Wilson’s house as the shoot location for Hote/Lance’s room shoots. Which kills a LOT of birds, since those locations are the most throughout the movie, in terms of scene breakdown and total film time. Having their house (a nice, big, old residence in one of the older, nicer historical neighborhoods of Phoenix), also allows us the benefit of having Jarrod’s grip truck (complete with all lighting and gear) RIGHT THERE! Additionally, this will allow Lee to “sleep in, just throw on some rags and report to work in the next room.” haha.

Shifting gears a bit. Since the script is so dialog-heavy, it presents unique challenges. For example, the segment (page 64?):

…Hote stares for a long time at Franco realizing, among other things, that Franco, at one year old, can escape his baby crib and Hote can’t escape his hometown…
Cannot be filmed as it is written (internal dialog). So the three of us came up with this: We shoot Hote and Lola as they were, alone in the bedroom, then cut to baby Franco starting to climb up the bars on his crib; cut back to Hote and Lola about to get hot and heavy, then Franco reaching the top… (This will create suspense, to say the least, while the “lovers payoff” is also building up). Then we cut to Franco having made his “escape” and now in the bedroom with Hote and Lola. Then we can better show the eye-to-eye exchange between Franco and Hote.

Another idea came up: Franco could essentially represent Hote’s entrapment/potential freedom. The idea is to intersperse Franco here and there throughout Hote’s “adventures” (Franco would be in his head, a la, the Indian in the Doors movie, Caprica 6 in Battlestar Galactica, etc). I’m not sold on this idea, mostly because of the forseeable problems of having a toddler on set. Plus, there’s NO way this could be a SAG movie (if we do want to go for star power to get better distro), if we had a toddler doing that much.

But this is something Art, Dean and Lee and I should discuss. There are plenty of other ways to “punch” up the action and symbolism, but this is the most significant in terms of straying from the script. The artist in me DOES like the idea of “recurring, imaginary Franco’s” but we’d have to really flesh that out for at least two of us to be sold on it, in addition to us being able to pull it off at all!

Here’s something that I’ve never done, due to technical demands among other things: shooting a car driving. And there’s a lot of it in the script! Logistically, to do it right (and legally), we’d have to:

Close down a street (expensive)
Hire off-duty cops (not cheap either)
Populate that street with pre-1993 cars so that only they are visible, parked or driving in the shot
Insure the hell out of everything
But we discussed this for a while, and we can do it without closing down a street or hiring cops. They’ve each done this, guerilla-style, and got away with it. We’ll also be using a trailer to pull the cars, and where not feasible (like at night, where it won’t matter what’s around), we’d do the old “couple guys move lights past the car” trick. Ah, cheap tricks. But I DO know that trick is effective; you’d be surprised how many “big” movies pull shit like that, and the audience never knows the difference.

We left the meeting really energized. Lee’s going to put out APBs for casting, as will I. We hope to be shooting a trailer (most immediately for Kickstarter purposes) over this coming weekend (Dec 15-17?). We already know most of what’s going to be seen in the 1-2 minute trailer. Free and easy to shoot, too. And the end result should be pretty dramatic.

Once the trailer’s ready, we’ll start up a Kickstarter, and rawk out. Assuming we’d go 30 day run, it’ll be late Jan before we’re shooting. But I don’t think our mid-March end date is in any kind of jeopardy.

I’ve also got about 15 students of mine signed up to do different things, from extras to ACing, to helping with editing, etc. So there’s free help.

I still haven’t gotten a bill from Gila Sun for publishing the LLC. Nor have I rec’d the official certificate from AZ Commerce. I’ll call both entities tomorrow or Tues. I’ve got 150+ final exam essays to grade before Weds, heh. Not to mention all the other things I’ve got going on 😉

I’ll be in touch with the principles throughout the week, so we can figure out who’s doing what/when for the trailer shoot.

Another production report soon, probably Friday.

nico