Putting It Together...Yadda Yadda
The film is coming along well. I put the final scenes together last week and was able to watch a rough cut from beginning to end. It’s running a few seconds under twenty minutes. I hope to get the running time down to about nineteen. It’s difficult to cut anything because it took such a massive effort to get it all on film. But, as they say in the biz, you have to be willing to kill your babies.
Speaking of the “massive effort”, I said I’d tell you about preproduction in the last post, so here it is...
The script for Down in the Mouth was written over two days in 2003. It was rewritten and polished while I was working on the Broadway Show Never Gonna Dance (I had a lot of time to myself backstage). My plan was always to do it right -- a full crew, a nice lighting package, the whole nine yards. One thing I learned though is that you can’t make a movie alone. I had no support group. What’s more, I had little cash. Though I’d made a lot of phone calls and spoken to a lot of people about helping me, I knew without money I wasn’t gonna get anywhere. I had to put the thing on the shelf, but it was always nagging in the back of my mind.
As fate would have it, in 2005 my wife and I decided it may be time to sell our house. We’d done a lot of work improving it, which increased it’s value (and the expense in owning it) considerably. It was time to move on. Our house sold for more than we dreamed it would and we suddenly found ourselves with cash enough to realize some of our personal goals. This movie was mine...and I have an incredible wife who said, “go for it.” So, “Great” I thought, “I’m gonna go for it!” So, how do you get something like this started? I found some good leads on the internet, but I quickly realized if this thing was going to really happen I needed someone else involved and excited about it too. That way the load could be shared. It’s hard being the only catalyst on something as complex as a movie shoot. I mean, there’s nothing there until you create it. It’s like chasing rainbows. That’s when I hooked up with Cynthia...
Cynthia Heim and I met a number of years ago when we both worked on the National Tour of Show Boat! of all places. We ran into each other in New York City one rainy afternoon and I noticed she was reading a book about screenwriting. I told her my idea and she said, “I’m in.” It seemed like a perfect match...she’d never produced a film and I’d never directed one. It was like the first day of school. Lots of dreams, but no idea how to achieve them. First thing we did was set the date to start filming -- July 28th. It’s always been my experience that if you set a date for something, whether you know what you’re doing or not, that date will come and you’ll find a way. And now I had a “cohort”.
Everything fell in line quick. We had about three months to get everything set up. I found our DP, Christopher Webb, off the internet. He brought in a core of gaffers and camera assistants that he’d worked with in the past, plus a ton of lighting instruments. I was referred to Ken Larson, our production designer, by a friend of a friend who said he’d been doing film in Los Angeles but had relocated to NY. He built the giant swinging uvula in about two days. That was when I knew there was no turning back. Nothing else you can do with a giant uvula except photograph it (well...maybe someone out there could think of something else to do with it, but if you can, it’s probably best to keep it to yourself). Casting happened about six days before shooting began. Talk about the last minute -- but it was a very lucky last minute because that’s where I met most of my cast.
Speaking of the “massive effort”, I said I’d tell you about preproduction in the last post, so here it is...
The script for Down in the Mouth was written over two days in 2003. It was rewritten and polished while I was working on the Broadway Show Never Gonna Dance (I had a lot of time to myself backstage). My plan was always to do it right -- a full crew, a nice lighting package, the whole nine yards. One thing I learned though is that you can’t make a movie alone. I had no support group. What’s more, I had little cash. Though I’d made a lot of phone calls and spoken to a lot of people about helping me, I knew without money I wasn’t gonna get anywhere. I had to put the thing on the shelf, but it was always nagging in the back of my mind.
As fate would have it, in 2005 my wife and I decided it may be time to sell our house. We’d done a lot of work improving it, which increased it’s value (and the expense in owning it) considerably. It was time to move on. Our house sold for more than we dreamed it would and we suddenly found ourselves with cash enough to realize some of our personal goals. This movie was mine...and I have an incredible wife who said, “go for it.” So, “Great” I thought, “I’m gonna go for it!” So, how do you get something like this started? I found some good leads on the internet, but I quickly realized if this thing was going to really happen I needed someone else involved and excited about it too. That way the load could be shared. It’s hard being the only catalyst on something as complex as a movie shoot. I mean, there’s nothing there until you create it. It’s like chasing rainbows. That’s when I hooked up with Cynthia...
Cynthia Heim and I met a number of years ago when we both worked on the National Tour of Show Boat! of all places. We ran into each other in New York City one rainy afternoon and I noticed she was reading a book about screenwriting. I told her my idea and she said, “I’m in.” It seemed like a perfect match...she’d never produced a film and I’d never directed one. It was like the first day of school. Lots of dreams, but no idea how to achieve them. First thing we did was set the date to start filming -- July 28th. It’s always been my experience that if you set a date for something, whether you know what you’re doing or not, that date will come and you’ll find a way. And now I had a “cohort”.
Everything fell in line quick. We had about three months to get everything set up. I found our DP, Christopher Webb, off the internet. He brought in a core of gaffers and camera assistants that he’d worked with in the past, plus a ton of lighting instruments. I was referred to Ken Larson, our production designer, by a friend of a friend who said he’d been doing film in Los Angeles but had relocated to NY. He built the giant swinging uvula in about two days. That was when I knew there was no turning back. Nothing else you can do with a giant uvula except photograph it (well...maybe someone out there could think of something else to do with it, but if you can, it’s probably best to keep it to yourself). Casting happened about six days before shooting began. Talk about the last minute -- but it was a very lucky last minute because that’s where I met most of my cast.
posted by Kirby Ward at 7:45 PM
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