Diary Entry One
It's less than a week until we start shooting The Flight of the Flamingo so I figured I'd kick-off a new production diary (the long awaited sequel to the original production diary).
I've spent much of this week casting and arranging a schedule with actors. One of the difficult things with the crowdfunding was that it was hard to get (or offer) firm commitments from actors whilst we were still unsure whether we'd meet our funding goal and be able to go ahead with the production. Now that we have the money, it's perfectly easy to get actors attached, it's just that with such short notice there are bound to be schedule clashes. STILL I've now cast 80% of the roles, including all the principal ones, and I reckon we've put together a pretty damn good cast. I'll update you more on the various actors and various characters in later production blogs.
Locations have proved my Achilles heel in the past and they are, once again, proving a little difficult. I'm having quite a lot more help this time round which is great and we've got a few different places locked down. That said: there are a few crucial locations I've yet to secure and it's really vital that I manage to get them sorted in the next few days so that we can focus on shooting as soon as that's started. I have the location for our opening day's shooting, which is great, but I've got to sort out a whole bunch of extras for that scene, so we'll have to see where that goes. Ideally I'd like to get about 20 people, but it's going to be a case of how many people (mainly my friends) we can get to turn up for free because paying out 28 sets of travel expenses in one day is going to be extremely pricey.
One of the last problems that I'm dealing with is a little script one. I've been aware (people right here pointed it out to me) that the ending is going to be polarising. A couple of actors have read the script and asked me if it's missing pages at the end, because they feel like something's unresolved. And a few other people have, hand's down, told me that I can't end it as bleakly as I have done. I'm going to take a look at that final scene. Obviously, I wrote an ending that I, personally, like but, if it doesn't work for other people, then I'm willing to change it. I have a feeling, however, that when we come to shoot that scene, the impact, as it's currently written, will be pretty intense. Who knows?
My chores for the next few days involve locking stuff down: cast and crew, locations, extras, props, costumes...etc. These are all the fiddly bits of production that I'd much rather delegate to someone else but, for the time being, I'm going to be overseeing them. I've developed a minor obsession with Google Documents spreadsheets, which are great when you can't be near the cast and crew every day. Hopefully that's going to give us a solid, flexible base from which to build a more detailed production schedule.
I have a few general questions to pose to readers of this diary: In addition to the sound recordist that we are paying for the shoot, someone has offered to be a sound assistant for free- does this seem like a really helpful role? How much do you recommend, for a 12 day shoot, shelling out for a MUA? I usually use students but I won't be able to get anyone to commit for that length of time on nothing but expenses. And are there any British actors between 45 and 70 (outside of the really, really famous ones) who you like? Maybe someone you've seen in an indie but haven't seen that much elsewhere.
Over and out.
It's less than a week until we start shooting The Flight of the Flamingo so I figured I'd kick-off a new production diary (the long awaited sequel to the original production diary).
I've spent much of this week casting and arranging a schedule with actors. One of the difficult things with the crowdfunding was that it was hard to get (or offer) firm commitments from actors whilst we were still unsure whether we'd meet our funding goal and be able to go ahead with the production. Now that we have the money, it's perfectly easy to get actors attached, it's just that with such short notice there are bound to be schedule clashes. STILL I've now cast 80% of the roles, including all the principal ones, and I reckon we've put together a pretty damn good cast. I'll update you more on the various actors and various characters in later production blogs.
Locations have proved my Achilles heel in the past and they are, once again, proving a little difficult. I'm having quite a lot more help this time round which is great and we've got a few different places locked down. That said: there are a few crucial locations I've yet to secure and it's really vital that I manage to get them sorted in the next few days so that we can focus on shooting as soon as that's started. I have the location for our opening day's shooting, which is great, but I've got to sort out a whole bunch of extras for that scene, so we'll have to see where that goes. Ideally I'd like to get about 20 people, but it's going to be a case of how many people (mainly my friends) we can get to turn up for free because paying out 28 sets of travel expenses in one day is going to be extremely pricey.
One of the last problems that I'm dealing with is a little script one. I've been aware (people right here pointed it out to me) that the ending is going to be polarising. A couple of actors have read the script and asked me if it's missing pages at the end, because they feel like something's unresolved. And a few other people have, hand's down, told me that I can't end it as bleakly as I have done. I'm going to take a look at that final scene. Obviously, I wrote an ending that I, personally, like but, if it doesn't work for other people, then I'm willing to change it. I have a feeling, however, that when we come to shoot that scene, the impact, as it's currently written, will be pretty intense. Who knows?
My chores for the next few days involve locking stuff down: cast and crew, locations, extras, props, costumes...etc. These are all the fiddly bits of production that I'd much rather delegate to someone else but, for the time being, I'm going to be overseeing them. I've developed a minor obsession with Google Documents spreadsheets, which are great when you can't be near the cast and crew every day. Hopefully that's going to give us a solid, flexible base from which to build a more detailed production schedule.
I have a few general questions to pose to readers of this diary: In addition to the sound recordist that we are paying for the shoot, someone has offered to be a sound assistant for free- does this seem like a really helpful role? How much do you recommend, for a 12 day shoot, shelling out for a MUA? I usually use students but I won't be able to get anyone to commit for that length of time on nothing but expenses. And are there any British actors between 45 and 70 (outside of the really, really famous ones) who you like? Maybe someone you've seen in an indie but haven't seen that much elsewhere.
Over and out.
