Right of the bat, I want to say that I usually don’t blog or post notes, unless it’s for people to see, but not in the pretentious way like Twitter where every 20 minutes I can update my status for people to see, but rather to inform people about things, bring up interesting videos, or just rant for people to have opinions or create discussion about a topic. Now having said that, I want to go back to a previous post about the film Trick R Treat:
In a previous post I expressed my anger that after a year the film had not been released yet (the original release date was 2007) and only having seen the trailer on the dvd of 300, I was excited which quickly turned into disappointment when they pushed back the film indefinitely. Anyways long story short, it is finally being released on dvd this October. (Finally!)
Okay now on to the title. If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for DVD commentary’s, listening to the cast or director talk about how they made a movie, finding out behind the scenes information etc. Now since I don’t really have any time to do a dvd audio commentary or something, I’m just gonna talk about how Fear Itself was made, some of the problems in shooting a film in 7 hours, things I wanted to do that I couldn’t, etc. Hopefully I haven’t put so much detail you won’t be really really bored. So first things first:
Background
Okay, Summer 2008, around the same day The Dark Knight came out, I went over to my friend Mike Moores place to see TDK with him and some other friends. Hanging out, I threw an idea for a script I wanted to do for my film production class which I was accepted to a week before. A huge part of that class is to write a script, pitch it and if it gets voted by the class, you can make it. So I threw Mike some ideas, he threw me back some ideas to make the story work, make it scary, and I got to writing. Now fast forward to November, I submit my script, and the prof thought it was decent. I kept rewriting and rewriting it, making it better to the point where I wanted to make it, and I thought it as good (not great, but there I’m still really proud of it, there’s moments in there which I really liked, really gave the characters space to develop, made the exposition in a way which was fun and kept suspense going without having the audience be bored of being thrown story information, a cool ending). Fast forward to about a week and a half before my pitch was due, I went to the Brock library because that’s where my original script took place almost throughout. However talking to them, they ultimately decided not to let me film there. Now in a panic, I had to furiously rewrite my original idea, so over some beers with Lacey at Issacs (the University bar) we threw ideas at each other to make a new script, which my main idea was shooting everywhere else but the library.
Now, the reason why I asked the Brock Library if I could film there was I wanted to make a trailer to pitch to the class, something juicy to get people excited, and also to prove to myself that I can film what I wanted to show with the tone I wanted. So I booked the camera a week in advance, and since I was forced to rewrite my script, I suddenly was forced to make a trailer out of a script I had to rewrite. So with a friend of mine Sam acting, and Spencer acting/cameraing (yes that is a word...at least now it is) and shot a bunch of crazy ideas of shots I wanted but no dialogue because I hadn’t written any yet. So I got the new script and the trailer done, edited, and the pitch went well but it didn’t get voted to be made, but I was still determined to make it after Spencer was done his film which got the most votes, GUNFIGHT. The good news about not getting my script accepted was helping make Gunfight allowed me a crash course to see filmmaking get done, as well as being able to cast after seeing how a lot of the actors performed in that film, and let me pick and choose what roles which actor would work for what wanted. Now I told Sam that she was going to be the main character because she was around since I shot the trailer, I’ve talked to her about it, she has probably the most knowledge of my film up to that point. However with exams (I didn’t want to shoot any film until GUNFIGHT was done) , she was too busy and with her blessing, I recast her with Victoria, whom I’ve known for about half a year now, and she really wanted to be an actress, and at this point I really didn’t have much to lose. I couldn’t shoot until GUNFIGHT was done, so I could only shoot during exams where everyone was available, so on a Wednesday night, the film would be shot. Now, 2 things: 1) Since I could only shoot during exams, that meant that I couldn’t film at some places until exams were over, which meant I had to plan out where I would shoot when so I could film everything else before I shot those places where exams were being held around. 2) Because of essays and exams, I didn’t have much time to plan my shots out, and although I had very specific ideas of shots I wanted in some scenes, other scenes I had nothing, which meant I had to improvise a lot on the spot.
Onto Production in the next note....
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