Week Two

A few pics from the second week of principal photography on The Advocate.

 

The First Week

Sachin Mehta as defense attorney Ray Shekar.

Five days in, the production of my feature is proving to be a roller coaster ride. We have an amazing crew who saved my ass on a very tough day. I'm also fortunate enough to work with a great cast led by Sachin Mehta and Kristina Klebe.

Kristina Klebe (Halloween, Chillerama) as Allyson Daugherty in The Advocate.

 Next week, the ride continues.

Counting Down

After months of prep, principal photography on The Advocate is scheduled to start just days from now. We have a great cast and crew who have graciously signed on to be part of the adventure, so now it's on me to bring it home. I will surely have more to write about all aspects of this project—not to mention the time to do it—once it's actually shot, so check back, and I'll let you know how it went.

Locating Locations

Okay, time for an update: I continue to juggle the many aspects of pre-pre-production on The Advocate, hoping to be able to set a shoot date soon. I met with several really talented actors during our casting sessions—so talented that they helped me shape my concept of the characters and, in some cases, sent me back to the keyboard for some further fleshing out. Though I haven’t made my final decisions for the main roles, I feel great about the choices we have right now.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been turning my attention to finding the locations for our film. Given our limited budget, I always felt that securing the right sites will be one of the bigger challenges for us. There seems to be two schools of thought on finding locations in LA: the one weary of the jacked up site fees of the jaded residents of “movie town” who have long burned out on film crews taking over their streets, and the other side who maintains that there is always a spot in the city that could meet your needs; it’s only a matter of time to find it. Looks like I’m about to learn which side is right.

Casting Begins on The Advocate

It's been a busy month, rewriting and doing other prep-work for our feature. But the train is moving right along; I’ve been pouring through headshots and demo reels for the past couple of weeks, and now, we’re finally ready to go forward with the casting phase. This is always a fascinating part of the process, seeing and hearing the words come alive in different variations during the auditions. Our first session is later on this week and we’ve got some great candidates so I’ll definitely have my work cut out for me.

Hope to be back with more news soon(ish).

Holding my Script to the Fire

No, not to burn it, though that is a tempting proposition at times.

I’m just in rewrite frenzy again. I’ve been developing this story for 18 months. It’s been shaped over various drafts and rounds of feedback, but it has not yet passed through the ultimate test: the pre-production process. And now, as we’re beginning to put the pieces of the actual movie together, the script I was so happy with a month ago is presenting me with some new challenges as it starts its journey from a semi abstract telling of a story, to an exact blueprint of a film production. Of course this is a good problem to have so I’m not complaining, just typing away—until the next round of notes comes in, and the one after that.

As the old saying goes: “The script is never finished. Only the film.”

The Best Test Short I've Seen

Camera "test shorts" have been an interesting youtube trend over the past two years. With new digital recording products being released seemingly every two months, filmmakers have been eager to take these toys for a test drive, and in the process this new sub-genre of indy cinema was born.  I've seen my fair share of them lately as we're looking into various visual tools for The Project, and last week I came across this particular test piece on Vimeo, done by John Brawley, comparing various film and digital formats under available light.

Out of the scores of similar shorts, the brilliance of this particular one is that he doesn't tell you which format is which until the very end, hence allowing your eyes to pick up the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle differences on their own. For this little conceit, I nominate this for 'Best Test Short' of 2011.

Brawley tested—not in this order—35mm,  RED MX, Arri Alexa, 16mm, Sony F3, Cannon HDSLR with some interesting results. His Vimeo page and blog has more details as well, well worth the read.

Available Light Shoot - The Results from John Brawley on Vimeo.

Switching Gears

To say I’ve been infrequent about my blogging would be an understatement. However, I had my reasons. I set up this site over a year and a half ago, when I started developing a new, low budget feature project. During that time—amidst writing that script, musing abut politics and shooting our practice short—it was my hope that one day I could use this blog to chronicle the process of actually making said feature. Did that time finally arrive? Well, it’s still too early to tell, but I feel I’m in a position to switch into gear on the project.

The gears have actually been turning for a while now; over the past six months I’ve partnered with my friend Sachin Mehta to form Astraea Films LLC,  with the goal of making this project happen. As things are now starting to pick up speed, and we set out for this adventure in the coming weeks and months, I will also set out to give a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this indie thriller here on the blog.

Check back for updates about our progress, a look at the cast and crew, and other fun stuff.