The lunch date with Ken, Ben and Den(is) went well. Ken had some excellent suggestions for improvements to the script which I’ve rewritten ths evening. It wasn’t hard as his main suggestion changed almost the entire script, yet all I’ve had to do is delete about ten lines of dialogue and change one. Incredible.
I really liked the way Ken completely got the script, the idea that the tension between the two characters (a father and son) should be in the silences betwixt the dialogue (and hence the reason I hung out for Ben to try to pursuade Ken to do it as I felt he would be able to pull off the emotional intensity I want from the father character).
We discussed length of shoot. Denis and I had assumed two days, but Ken pointed out that if we wanted to get lots of subtle eye work, plus choreograph a game of Backgammon, it would probably take three.
Ben and Denis seem to be good for a shoot sometime around the 4th-6th April, which isn’t long away (zoiks! two weeks in fact). Ben will be confirming Ken’s availability tomorrow.
One bonus from the new improved version of the story is that we can use my house as the main location now. I was thinking that it looked too modern with too many contemporary trappings to be an old persons’ home, but after we discussed Ken’s ideas for his character, I realised that he would more likely be living in a house like ours than the drab one I had originaly envisioned.
So I need to get my skates on now and finish (well start) the script analysis and storyboards. I also have a list of tasks a mile long to sort out in the next few days.