NOVEMBER 2 2015 DAY 15/81

Woke up early today and started getting the audition notices out. I e-mailed everyone personally and so far I had a good response. I’ve booked 45 of the 90 auditions today alone. That bodes well.

Finally sorted out the Insurance this morning. It’s nice because it will cover my sound gear. That way  FSCS and the production doesn’t have to take on the whole bill. I’ll have my other company, No Trustpassing, cover it’s share pro-rated for the rest of the year.

Having finalized the insurance allowed us to book out first location. We locked down the studio in Maple Ridge. Nikki laid out the details of the rental agreement and we sorted out the deposit. What a huge weight off my shoulders. By going into the studio I probably just saved myself two-weeks worth of man hours that would have been dedicated to dealing with landlords and strata rules and on and on.

As the bookings came in I sat by the computer and started working on a ninth draft of the script. Now is when the time begins to really analyse the script scene by scene. Look specifically at each characters objectives. Ask yourself, is it crystal clear what the goals are of each character? Sometimes I find because I know what Thomas’ goals are, his dialogue becomes vague. It’s lazy writing. In this draft I’m taking my time with the plot points and making sure that everything the characters say is driving the story forward.  These are the fun drafts now. Soon we’ll have actors to share it with and we’ll hear it out loud and work it and tweak it with them. Soon the script won’t be mine anymore . It’s gonna sweet.

Today I’m thankful for The Leftovers

NOVEMBER 1 2015 DAY 14/81

Another quick turnaround. Slept for about 5 hours then got down to Sunday morning chores. No time to waste, the extra hour gained turning back the clock came in handy as I went through every submission and prepared an audition calendar for next weekend. The plan is to see thirty people per day which will work out to about 90 or so over the three days. There were just over 200 submissions which meant I had to get that number down by more than half.

I started with what I call, ‘superficial casting’ – scanning the actors head-shots and excluding those that don’t fit my vision. I keep an extremely open mind at this point and only scratch those that are in no way shape or form even close to the character I see in my head. After that I go through them all again, this time examining their resumes to see what experience they have working in film. The ones who’ve been cast in many productions usually intrigue me – it means someone else has seen something in them and they’ve spent time in front of the camera. Often you’ll find actors with a ton of theatre experience but no films to their credit. This can be problematic for several reasons. One, theatre actors tend to be more melodramatic and that doesn’t read well on film. Secondly, film actors who’ve spent time on set are practiced in hitting marks, playing to the light, and nailing a performance over and over, take after take. Keeping your cool under hot lights and a crew of people standing over you takes practice. It’s like expecting a good roller-hockey player to be a good ice-hockey player though they may have never even skated before.

It took me most of the day but I narrowed down my list in preparation of tomorrows mail out. I think we have some really strong candidates so it will be interesting to see what kind of response we get.

Today I’m thankful for that extra hour.

OCTOBER 31 2015 DAY 13/81

Pierre and I got to it bright and early and headed out to Maple Ridge to see the studio. We weren’t disappointed. It’s a large space with many functional sets that suit our film. The owner, John, was very reasonable and accommodating. You can tell he’s a big supporter of the indie film community here in Vancouver. In fact, what their doing at Maple Ridge Studios is fantastic. It’s just what the lower mainland needs for films from micro-budget to $1,000,000, and it’s situated just on the edge of the regional area district which allows producers to recoup a higher tax credit. All in all it looks like we could film up to 8 days there which would be more than half the film. In many ways I prefer shooting in a studio over a location – you have greater control over the environment. You can hang lights as you please and if the room is to small just move a wall back a few feet, which you can never do shooting inside someones house.

After that we came back into town and I took the rest of the afternoon off. I’ve been going pretty hard for the last little while so it was nice to step back. I went for a long run and tried to focus on the external world for a moment. You go back and forth from the world of the film to the world of making the film that there is hardly a moment to stop and breathe. And what better night to take off than Halloween?

Char and I got all spooked up and headed out into the night on our bikes. We met up with some chums and headed over to the Parade of Lost Souls which was amazing as always. Afterwards we hit up Mo and Erin’s Rocky Horror themed house party which turned into a gigantic dance fest. At one point I was dancing with Gumby and Mrs. Mia Wallace at the same time. We rode around on our bikes and stayed up til 4 in the morning having a blast because, well, there’s more to life than filmmaking.

Today I’m thankful for all the lost souls.

OCTOBER 30TH 2015 Day 12/81

Today Pierre and spent some more time researching locations. We went down to Ironworks studio in Railtown. It’s alright. Has a nice studio in the back that would work well for Roni’s apartment but it’s right beside the train tracks so we’d be dealing with the noise from that. There are also time restraints filming there – have to be done at 10pm which is kind of a waste. If you’re paying the kind of money they want to rent it out you should be able to have access 24 hours. So that was a no go.

After that we started doing some research online, came across a film studio in Maple Ridge that recently opened. I called them up and we’re gonna head out there in the morning. It seems like it might be a good fit for some scenes – from their FB page it looks like they have a pretty sweet interrogation room set  so that would be cool.

Once Pierre left I did a rough breakdown of the script. I wanted to know depending on what scenes the studio might accommodate, how many days would we need to be there for? With a 15 day shoot and an 83 page script that puts us at roughly 6 pages per day. I made a list of scenes that I think we might be able to shoot there and tallied up their page count. It came out to 45 pages which would be 8 days.

Out of curiosity I took a look at our other scenes. Thomas’ apartment is 12 pages and the University is 10. That would mean we’d be shooting 67 of 83 pages at just three locations. Since I’m Producing the film it would be a huge weight off my mind to not have to deal with so many other locations. At the same time it also means we’ll have to put more effort into set-dec and production design. It will be worth it though to be able to design it all. We can add minute details  – things like personal items on the shelves and books about Iron, really create the world these people live in by starting with a blank canvas – build it up brick by brick.

Today I’m thankful for Thai Food.

October 29th 2015 Day 11/81

Today I began researching caterers for the show. There are many different ways to go about feeding the crew. We could hire one caterer which would probably easiest. Another option is to order directly from a specific restaurant each day – have someone from the crew pick it up. Or we can find a film catering company that would be with us for the entire shoot. I kind of like that idea because they could take care of craft services too. I spoke with one guy who’s willing to do just that and he figured we could feed people for about $7.00/Day. That would be very reasonable and would fit well within our budget. As long as it’s good, of course.

I was also in touch with a composer about scoring the film. He had seen our post on the Vancouver Actors Guide and sent a link to his webpage. I was really impressed with his website and demo reel. I’ve been thinking about how the music for the film should sound. I like the idea of having one solid piece that we could make one or two variations of to use at different moments of tension throughout the film. I also like the idea of a refrain. The HBO show The Leftovers makes good use of a piano refrain. It’s always well placed and suits the mood of the show. I want something that feels like it’s moving the film forward.

I also updated the blog so that all of these diary entries are online now. That was a fair amount of work setting it up but now that it’s done, all I have to do is make one journal entry per day, upload it, and voila! I’ve this running commentary that ponders whether foregoing the big three social media apps for this simple blog will make any difference in how many people see the film. My instinct says no.

Today I’m thankful for Plumbers.

October 28th 2015 Day 10/81

So the day finally arrived where I’m officially working on the Iron Sixth and I didn’t let it go to waste.

The first thing I did was call the WCB and update our rate class. After that I filed our applications with the UBCP to film under their Ultra Low Budget Program. This allows us to hire Union actors for a minimum of $100/Day.

I spoke to Dave at Front Row about Production Insurance. That should be pretty straightforward. Once we have that in place we can start approaching Locations more seriously. Pierre and I are going to check out Ironworks Studio on Friday. It’s the same place that we shot the Xavier Rudd promo last week. I think it has potential for some scenes. One drawback is the trains zip right by there so you’re sort of stuck with the same conundrum as the hotel in New West. Anyway – it fits within our budget so we’re gonna go take a peek.

Finally had an opportunity to sit down with our First AD, Anthony Epp. It was a good meeting. He had read the script and liked it. I was able to express my philosophy behind the production of the film and he was down with it. Sometimes people can get it in their head that there is only one way to make a movie – if we had disagreed fundamentally about that then there was no point moving forward. But he was cool. Anthony realises it’s a low budget shoot. We talked about the possibility of bringing on a Production Manager at some point too but we’ll discuss that down the road. All in all a productive first day.

Today I’m thankful for my scanner. Seriously.

October 27th 2015 Day 9/81

I had to wake up at 4:50am this morning to be on set for 6. You’d think I would have been dreading it but I leapt out of bed with a spring in my step. Today was my last day of work before I officially break to take on The Iron Sixth full time. I have two days booked in November and I’m going to keep doing the one off commercial shoots, but I won’t be taking on any other big projects until February. I’m stoked to say the least. I was telling some of the crew that it felt like the last day of school.

The day went as planed. We followed the welder around again and got some b-roll of the shipyard. After that it was Miller Time. I came home and got right to work re-organizing my workspace. I packed all my sound gear away and set up shop such that I can have the computer I do all my film related work on right beside the computer I use for all my bookkeeping. That took up most of the night and then I replied to more people responding to the casting call. It’s well over 150 now!

Today I’m thankful for Cmnd+C and Cmnd+V

October 26th 2015 Day 8/81

Worked on set today for a commercial gig. We were filming at Seaspan on the North Shore. They’re a large shipbuilding company. We were doing a ,’day in the life of…’ piece, so we followed an apprentice welder around for the day. It was pretty cool. They’re currently building a new research vessel for the Navy and we got to walk up onto the hull where he was working. At one point the camera team strapped a go-pro to one of the 15ton cranes and raised it high in the air, moving it back and forth over the subject. Pretty cool.

We’ve done well with the response to the casting call. So far we’ve had over 100 submissions in the first two days. It seems like a nice mix of experienced film actors and theatre people as well as some folks just getting their feet wet. I’ve sent a personal reply to each of them thanking them for their submission and letting them know when they can expect to hear from us. It will be interesting going through the casting process with so many actors to choose from. On my last short film the lead character had molested a young man and very few people wanted to audition for the role. We were really lucky Michael was good because I think we only saw two or three other people.

Today I’m thankful that being a sound guy is a thing.

October 25th 2015 Day 7/81

I had the day to myself so I sat down and thought out some ideas for the social media campaign. I made a list and you can imagine what it looked like:

Facebook Page

Twitter Page

Instagram Page

On and on and I started thinking to myself why am I doing this – who is all this for? I’ve run social media campaigns on the side before and I can tell you they take up a hell of a lot of time. I thought, ‘you know, maybe if something good comes of the film and it’s actually deserving of a FB page – then we’ll create one.’ It’s funny to me that I consider FB, Twitter and Instagram as traditional forms of marketing. It’s all barely ten years old.

Regardless, I need some kind of social media link in order to create an IMDb page – mmmm, the ironing is delicious –  and it occurred to me that maybe I should create a blog from the production journal I’d been keeping. That instead of all those, ‘traditional methods’, I could send a link out to the blog every week and that way people who were genuinely interested could read about how the film is going.

So that idea bloomed and that’s the direction we’re going now. No FB page. No Twitter. No, ‘Insta’. Frankly I couldn’t be happier – this will keep things nice and simple and will be a lot less work.

I was supposed to meet up with Anthony Epp tonight but I have a 6:45am call time so we pushed it back to Wednesday. Looking forward to hearing what he has to say about the script.

Today I’m thankful for having two alarm clocks – just in case…

October 24th 2015 Day 6/81

Pierre and I went location scouting today. Opened my eyes to a few things. First we started out in Fort Langley. I wanted to see what it was about because of the increased tax incentive to film there. Tax credits on labour rise significantly the further out of the Vancouver area you’re shooting. The basic credit is 35%. So for example, if you have $10,000 in labour expenses you can expect to get $3,500 of that back. Shoot out of Vancouver, in a place like Fort Langley, the credit rises to 47.5% – that’s almost half your wages coming back to you.

It was interesting. Beautiful little town. I thought what if the film were to take place here instead of the city. It could be a sleepy little University town. In the end though it was a no go. First, as Pierre pointed out – most noir films take place in the city. In classic noir the city is a character in and of itself. Which I completely agreed with. Secondly, I had reset my odometer when we left and it was exactly 50km away which means 100km round trip. If you’re paying you’re a crew a reduced wage to begin with you can’t then ask them to drive that far each day without reimbursing them for fuel. Whatever money we’d save with the tax credit we’d be shelling out for gas – maybe more. We had a beer and nachos through so all was not lost.

Next up was the Arundel Mansions in New Westminster. It’s an old hotel that they rent out for filming. They have a bunch of units set up and a cafe downstairs. It was nice – would definitely suit our needs for certain scenes but it was far too expensive. They want $2,300 per day and there is hardly any parking. Also, it’s right beside the sky-train so you’d be dealing with the noise from that all the time.

So we went 0 for 2 on our first location scout. That’s cool. Have to start somewhere and it gives us a better idea of what we should be focusing on.

After I dropped Pierre off I came home and worked on the casting call. I set up some ads on the Vancouver Actors Guide and Craigslist. I’ve used them both before to varying results so we’ll see what kind of response we get. I tried to be a little creative with the character descriptions so hopefully that gets people intrigued.

Today I’m thankful that I don’t have to drive to Fort Langley and back every day.