Breezeway Rhythm

A taste of what my good friend and composer Taylor Peterson is working on for the score.

Locations

11 Days until we start shooting. 

Locations can sometimes prove to be tricky, depending on how ambitious it is.  Is it going to take place in a public setting with a lot of extras?  Do we need to get any permits for shooting?  Hire movie cops to handle traffic?  Shut down a street?  Shut down a store?  Do you have to compensate for the location?  I think when you're writing an indie film - or a student short in my case - you have to keep these factors in your mind when you're writing the script.  What is logistically reasonable that serves the story? 

The majority of my script takes place in 3 locations:

1. A house
2. A gym
3. A car

So where to start?  Well, the Texas Film Comission is a great resource for any filmmaker in Texas to ask for assistance in finding locations.  They have staff there whose job is to provide a list of potential locations for us to contact (upon request).  So I sent them my script and a few descriptions of the locations I needed.  In the meantime, I had my amazingly talented producers - Tim Tsai and Mindy Le - help me locate some potential candidates. 

The house:

I knew I wanted a small, one-story house that looked liked it had been around since the 70's.  Something very "aged" and minimal.  After browsing through a few options, one of our friends had a perfect little house that he was willing to let us shoot in.  

Exterior

Kitchen

Living Room

Bathroom

Ben's Room

Ceiling

The gym:
The gym proved to be a little more difficult to find.  Because they are businesses with regular customers, we knew we would have to work around their hours of operation.  We didn't have the budget to shut down a gym for a day or two.  And we'd still likely have to pay for one of their employees to stay after hours while we shoot.  So we started to look for smaller, personal gyms.

One of our potential options is a Crossfit gym such as this, which a friend of ours works at.  They are a class-based and personal training gym, which is great for us, because they're usually closed for long periods of the day.

Though I pictured a more traditional gym setting in the script, I realize I can't be too choosy with the amount of time and resources that I have.  However, we are still looking into some other options.

The car:
There is a scene in the car between our two main characters that lasts a few minutes.  We still haven't locked on in yet, though I do have a few friends that said they were willing to lend it to us for a day or two of shooting.  

I am excited, though, to be potentially shooting with a camera mount for the car.  More info on that to come later.

Some things I learned:

• Don't be afraid to walk door to door.  I have a friend in my class who walked up to a house he liked and talked to him about his movie.  He gave them a copy of his script, and they let him have full access to their property.  
• Use your film community's resources.  Most cities have film commissions (including Houston, Dallas, Austin) that have people there to help you find the locations you're looking for.  

Writing

24 Days until we start shooting.

Over the next few posts, I'll be catching up on a few different areas of pre-production that we've been working on up to this point, as well as continuing progress updates as we near principal photography. First off, the script!

I almost didn't plan on making a thesis film, as my main goals were related to the camera and photography areas in filmmaking.  Though after some gentle persuasion from some good friends of mine, I realized that I was about to graduate without a film I could call my own.  I wouldn't have a conclusive product of what I was capable of creating - to showcase what I can do through storytelling, emotion, cinematography, etc.  A culmination of everything I've learned the past few years at UT film into my thesis.  And so, I began writing.  

I wrote about 4 drafts on the same story (none with satisfaction) before I hit a wall.  A ton of feedback was given to me from a whole lot of people - maybe too many.  Drawing from some of my own experiences with weight battle and image obsession, I knew what story I wanted to tell.  But I was having difficulty with its structure, dialogue, and overall flow.  Luckily for me, I have some incredible friends - Evan Ho and Taylor Peterson - who were more than willing to co-write with me and inject some new ideas into the story.  As of now, we're on draft 6.2 and feeling extremely confident on the script.  Though, we are going to continue working on tweaking it until shooting begins.

Some things I learned:

• If you have an idea, write it down somewhere.  You WILL forget it tomorrow. 
• Write.  Then re-write.  Then re-write again.  There's always something you can do to make it better in the early drafts.
• Take in lots of feedback and don't reject any of it at first glance, no matter how ridiculous.