And so my recap of IMPULSE production continues. This will be a story about making an incredibly ambitious short, raising tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks, locking down a notable actor, and encountering and averting dozens of difficult circumstances throughout production. Again, I may weave in and out of journal format and present day reflection, so please bear with me.
September 2, 2009
Shot a teaser for IMPULSE last night... but I doubt we'll be using it. It was quite an impromptu decision, made in the wee hours after editing the newsroom sequence we had shot on Aug. 31. Our loyal friends - Shane Simmons, Travis Shepherd, and Justin Marxen - were our skeleton crew for the shoot. It felt very much like the production of our 2004 feature Her Summer, where we often shot scenes in the very early morning with a cast and crew of four. When all was said and done, I like the teaser but I'm not sure it's really worth a damn... or worth putting on the web. Only took a couple hours; not a big deal. Good exercise.
September 4, 2009
I returned to LA yesterday to continue West Coast prep and to attend my third John Williams concert at the Hollywood Bowl. There's nothing quite like listening to the movie scoring maestro himself conduct his own musical compositions. It's always an inspiring experience that I carry with me on whatever project I'm working on.September 10
We had to finally lock our shoot dates for November 7-12. I'm still worried that we're going to have a tough time finding crew. There's a couple features shooting in Iowa during November, and I think they'll be eating up a lot of the crew base.September 11, 2009
Bryan's been visiting LA this week, primarily so we can meet with a production company about another project. Unfortunately our time has been eaten up by prepping our pitch for this other project and we haven't been able to spend much time on IMPULSE. Not happy about that, but there's not much we can do except wish there were 36 hours in a day. At least Bryan's been able to finally meet (in person) our composer and DP. We had a good sit-down with both of them, where we went through some movie clips and music tracks that are touchstones for IMPULSE. We had a nice mix of Lynch (Blue Velvet), Fincher (The Game), and Scorsese (The Color of Money) along with the musical traces of Alan Silvestri and even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
September 15, 2009
We have a crew base now. This is quite a surprise: one of the Iowa features that was slated to shoot in November had to push their start date, which means we now have access to quite a few crew members... this will really, really help out our production.September 19, 2009
Yikes. The Iowa film incentive program has been suspended for alleged abuse. And the manager of the Iowa film office, Tom Wheeler, has been fired. Now IMPULSE won't be directly affected by this, since the budget is too low to qualify for the incentives, BUT I'm worried that we'll feel the trickle-down effects... we might have a tougher time finding the rest of our money. We've already made some good connections with area investors, but this tax credit collapse might weaken their interest in area filmmaking. This is nuts... now we might be the only film shooting in November, IF we can find the rest of our money.September 21, 2009
Starting to feel the pinch of all the unsettled details... money, locations, cast, crew, contracts. This whole process is a constant up-and-down... which means we should be getting some positive vibes coming our way shortly. Reality check: we're only 6 weeks from the shoot.September 28, 2009
I'm back in Iowa now without a return ticket to LA. The way I see it, I won't be flying back to LA until: 1) we've shot the entire film OR 2) we've failed to get the rest of our budget and I fly back to LA with nothing but a bad taste in my mouth. Good news is, we interviewed several people for the production designer position, and it looks like we might actually hire more than just one of them. Turns out, each candidate also specializes in other crafts (special effects, props, etc.), so we can fill out some of our other positions. Other than that, Travis Shepherd (location manager) and Bryan went on another scout and we've finally begun to get commitments and contracts back from property owners. It's nice to have someone else to knock on stranger's doors and ask them if we can film in their home. I always hated that awkward part of the job.September 29, 2009
Here's hoping we can convince Kristen Norwood - a former teacher of ours - to fill the love interest for Chris Masterson's character. Bryan & I had Kristen as an instructor for a nonverbal communications class at Iowa. She had seen Bride, liked it, and then we graduated and that was about that last time we were in touch. Two and a half years later, Bryan & I were racking our brains to find the very very very right actress to play the very very very important role of Ashley who appears in the very very very integral final scene. In fact, we weren't even sure we WANTED an actress... perhaps we could succeed with a Soderbergh-ian choice to cast a "non-actor", ala Bubble or The Girlfriend Experience. That's when we though of Kristen. We knew she had a done a couple of plays but, more than anything, she had the perfect look and (non) experience. So we got in touch... but it turned out she's working on her doctorate and has zero free-time, so she had to (politely) decline. But we couldn't take no for an answer. We (politely) pushed a little more and set up a meeting with her next week.
September 30, 2009
Oh, glorious movie music. Corey, our composer, sent over some early demos for the guitar theme, which Chris will need to play on set. I'm quite impressed and I think we've found our musical theme from this first batch. Lately I've felt so drained from pre-production, but it's funny how one mp3 can re-energize.
Last movie Scott watched: The Endless Summer (Bruce Brown)
