The production meeting last night went exceptionally well. Everyone bought into the idea of the script and was happy (more or less) with their assigned roles, so now we have a full micro-budget film crew.

We’ve agreed to get together on the 21st/22nd May for a weekend for a ‘technical rehearsal’ weekend. The main idea being that, whilst three of us have on-set experience, there’s still a few newbies (myself included) that will need to find their feet reasonably quickly.

If things go well and we can arrange it, we might even get a couple of Jess/Alice scenes shot. Chris (Gaffer), Nic (DoP) and I will probably have a few get togethers before then to discuss look and feel etc, perhaps even shoot some of the marsh scenes (such as the reporter on the marsh) and Jess driving to Rye.

We sorted a good few more of the location, prop and logistical problems, it’s just a case now of hard work to tie everything together.

So said the guru of independent film making in the UK, Chris Jones, to a group of about forty or so of us who turned up at the Metropole Galleries to listen to him this afternoon.

It was a very inspirational talk he gave, but also a very honest one. I’m sure more than a few people walked away from there having had rude awakenings. He made no apologies for this and from the get go warned us all of the cynicism that we as film makers face.

And he had a point. In fact he had plenty of points and they were all very valuable. The main ones were:

1 ) Get off your arse and make the damn thing – if you lead, others will follow.
2 ) Don’t expect anyone to go and see your film. Apathy and cynicism with haunt you wherever you go, learn to ignore it.
3 ) Don’t give a monkeys what people think about you or your film – they may be right, they may be wrong, but ultimately it’s irrelevant what they think.
4 ) The Film industry is a playground for the rich, don’t make inroads without a backup plan, especially if you have a family and mortgage.
5 ) The industry will screw you over unless you have a very good business head on you. The people who make most money from your film are the distributers, and Chris said he’s only ever met one with any integrity.
6 ) Make sure you have a market worthy product with a good title that follows the rules of the genre.
7 ) Don’t get precious over your film, learn to let it go once it’s in the hands of the sales and marketing people and move on

There was plenty more like this, all really good stuff. If you don’t have any of his books already – Get It.

Tomorrow is the first SToA meeting, and I’m well excited about it. I’ve been very busy over the past week planning and preparing for it, working out what we need to discuss.

I’ve also been busy getting my head around the finer art of sound recording. I bid for a nice microphone on eBay, but lost it at the last moment. Poo. Think I’ll give my friend Bill in the States a call tomorrow – see if he can help out on that front…

Have arranged a SToA kick off meeting for next Monday at eight.

Also have hopefully secured the first of the locations, by asking the site director here at work if we can use an office for some of the scenes. He agreed in principle, pending further details from myself about how we were going to go about it and who was involved and that we could assure him the company would in no way be referenced. Might have to do a bit of creative framing on some of the shots but all should be well. Have spoken to the guy whose office we’d like to use and he’s happy.

Bought How to Make Your Movie completely on the off chance the other day, and found it to be very good so far… I’ll do a full review once I worked my way through it.

As ever I seem to be taking two steps forward and one back at the moment. Still waiting to hear on three locations. The project plan is now complete, and the actor I wanted to target for one of the main parts won a BAFTA last night (hopefully he’ll still want to help out a lowly project like this, although I’ve still yet to contact his agent – I’ve been putting it off until I had the script finalised, and the headed notepaper and business cards printed).

I need to really get things steaming along now, so I’m gonna arrange some meetings with various folks. I think I’ve taken it as far as I can on my own, now I need help.

Somewhat irritatingly, the server this runs on seems to have got a bit confused with its cgi-bin, so I’ve decided to get back to my roots and use a PHP powered blog system.

I’d already tried WordPress and wasn’t overly impressed, so I thought I’d try Serendipity or S9Y and they seem to want to call it.

I’m quite impressed…

And, if you’re really desperate, you can post comments now as well… Splendid!

I’ve finally finished reading Judith Weston’s first book, ‘Directing Actors’. Boy, what a gem that book is.

Now I’m starting on her secong book, the Director’s Intuition. She claims to have not repeated anything from the first book, and it’s twice as thick! I might finish it by Christmas…

Still, the first book has really given me confidence about working with actors. I’ve already been trying a few ideas out just talking to people like Vickie at work (who may well play the main lead in SToA).

All top stuff.

I’ve just been looking through the Talent Circle e-mail bulletin and found a useful link to the Manhatten Film Festival.

The submission deadline is the 31st July, which gives us approximately three months to make and edit SToA and get it off to the States.

Probably a bit of an unrealistic deadline, but one thing I’ve learnt from being in a band is we write and play our best when there’s a mother of all gigs looming up. The same should apply here, so I’ll put a bit of pressure on myself, else I’ll still be writing this blog in ten years time and still won’t have made a thing.

I’m dusting down the old MS Project and polishing up those project management skills I spent so long learning a few years ago…