A little over two years ago, I joined the Bay Area-based film-making co-op Scary Cow. For me this represented finally taking action on a decades-long dream of being involved in movies. Producing the scripts I wrote on loose-leaf at age eight fizzled out around the key question of where I would get the camera from, and since then it never seemed, well, practical to pursue it. But the desire also never went away.
Chasing a childhood dream on the leeward side of thirty can be a dicey business, but Scary Cow has made it pretty damn fun. In the last two years I’ve had the opportunity to serve in numerous roles (writer, script supervisor, production assistant, Best Boy, actor, extra, props and costuming manager, you name it) on various short films. Along the way I’ve learned a lot and met a lot of great people, and now I’m finally in a position to do what I’ve wanted to do from the start: Write, direct and produce my own film.
Since we’re all about independent life and culture here, I thought I would share the journey with you along the way. Here’s the first installment of “Diary of an Independent Filmmaker”, and I’ll be updating it throughout the next few months.
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Week 0: About a year ago I wrote a short story called “Ave Maria” about the experience of an awkward, insecure guy who, having failed to meet a woman flirting with him in a bar in real time, decides to track her down using “Missed Connections”. This surprisingly works, but in the process he realizes she’s not who he thought she was, and what she’s looking for is not what he expected. It’s a bittersweet tale of realizing the limits of fantasy and coming to appreciate reality, with humor, mania and a light dusting of Catholic theology along the way. I’d always vividly seen it in my mind, so in early October, with the next project round of Scary Cow approaching, I wrote a screenplay version of it.
Week 1: The pitch session before the Scary Cow members on Sunday October 11th. Despite having written it down, practiced it beforehand, and only having two minutes of pitch to worry about, I feel like a complete blathering idiot delivering my pitch. Not minding the now fine sheen of sweat on my forehead, several people approach me after the pitch session and put their names on the sign-up sheet. Since everything was videotaped, I also have the opportunity to watch it afterward. I come across as surprisingly coherent and even possibly slightly charming and funny. Who knew?
Week 3: We have our first team meting on October 25th, two weeks after the pitch session. During these two weeks I’ve had a lot of back and forth e-mails with possible team members. In the process, a potential director of photography has already dropped out. Unnerving. Still more unnerving, despite the fact that I set the date based on the highest overlap of people’s availability, only two people show up. On the plus side, one of them agrees to be the new director of photography (and he has his own equipment!), and both of them have great input on possible locations and next steps. I’ve also had some great back and forth messages with our composer, who’s asking a lot of questions and already working on musical themes. This might fly.
Week 4: The possibly interested art director is possibly dead, because he’s completely AWOL from all communication. Almost nobody gets back to me with screenplay feedback by the date I requested. Nobody interacts with my interactive online document on possible locations. Am I all alone out here? This might not fly.
Week 5: During a weekend shoot on somebody else’s film project, I meet a student from the Peninsula who likes what she hears about my film and would be interested in being art director. Yaaay! I also take the second week of a two-week Directing Class that Scary Cow has offered. Key lessons learned: nothing will go right, pre-production is key, and craft services is the most important part of the production, because people will riot if lunch is not on time.
Week 6: On Sunday November 15th, I go to an open casting call that Scary Cow has arranged. Something like 60 actors audition over the space of 4 hours. If I needed kids or people over 50 I’d be set, but of course I don’t. There are a few promising prospects for my lead roles, though. On Wednesday the 18th, we have our second pre-production team meeting. Once again only a small cross-section of people can make it, but one of them is the Associate Director. He suggests putting all kinds of things in Google-docs so that we can work with them collaboratively on-line, helps take over some of the location scouting, and helps me tighten up the calendar. Based on the DP’s availability and other scheduling concerns, we’re going to aim to be shooting January 30th, February 7th, February 13th, and February 20th-21st. Now we just have to choose the actors, finalize the screenplay; get a firm lock on all the locations! I’m both encouraged and preemptively exhausted.
Week 7: Thanksgiving week, so my expectations are pretty low. I did follow up on a tip from our AD, though, and contact Shelton Studios at Pier 26 about renting space there for auditions. Looks like we’ll be holding auditions on December 12th and 13th. I’ll start contacting actors once I’m back from Thanksgiving. On to next…
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