"good food" stills

almost done

directed a short in june called 'good food'. got a new cut this morning. almost there. i'm very excited about it. yes, errors were made and i exclusively made them. doesn't matter though. 'good food' was designed to allow me to screw some shit up. (note: like location scouting sound). the actors are great. i've seen it ten million times and they still make me laugh. more in the wks to come...

location scout 10.23.09

script calls for reception area in clinic and exam room. went to 1st possible location today. promising. expensive but promising. tbd whether or not i can swing it.

more here

not so fast

due to some scheduling complications looks like production now won't happen until 1st wknd of dec at the earliest. this could be a blessing in disguise so i can get everything together. sadly there are two rotating parts of my approach: the eager part which is all enthusiasm and the pondering side which can tend toward paralysis. need to find the middle naturally. part of this is my fault. i could have - should have - activated things more quickly in august but i drug my feet and now i'm up against the holiday corridor. not going to beat myself up about it - it'll happen when it happens - but the lesson is to jump in when you feel it. as mentioned in previous post, i'm doing everything myself currently so i am the only one being both too hard and too easy on myself w/ regard to timings.

more specifically, going to check location for shoot next fri at local hospital. they were able to get me a 'deal' by lowering their standard rate of 2500$ to under 1000$ which i appreciate but they could lop off a zero and i'd still barely be able to hit that. still going to check location out though. if it's amazing maybe i'll see what i can do...

preparation

things starting to solidify for "i'm your man": time-frame, DP, some cast. I still have to nail down location and cast for the male lead and a 2 female parts. as i'm doing everything myself there is an automatic time bloat that having, say, a producer and a casting person would mitigate. (here's to hoping those will materialize for the ensuing productions. they'll have to at some juncture). still, i'm feeling good about things, as they finally gain form. it's taken some time for me to feel confident about directing this one in particular, for a variety of reasons, but i'm out in front of it now.

exotica

formative movie for me. watched on endless loop 15 yrs ago and recently rewatched and discovered it all still works. i don't know if atom egoyan has matched it yet frankly. built almost like a collage - themes of grief, money, transformation repeat and ripple thru characters, each mirroring another - but it does not feel randomly assembled, quite the opposite. maybe grief is less so in don mckellar's character. we learn his father died recently but we don't see him being taken under like francis or even like eric, the dj whose lamenting is more about heartbreak than death. mostly. in any event, from the second the title started and the first piano of m. dyanna's score starts progressing i was transported. awesome