Production Diaries: “Development”

Recently, we undertook the massive notion of creating our very first feature film. Having made seven short films, we felt we were ready to move on to making a full-length film. Long story short: we were not ready.

Before we go any further, this is not meant to belittle our team. We had some of the most incredible, hard-working, dedicated people on our team, and we still do. However, nothing we could have done, no amount of short films, no amount of studying, could have possibly prepared us for what was to come. There is no way of knowing just how deep the trench goes until you set foot inside. As so many filmmakers before have put it, "there is no better film school than making a feature film." They aren't wrong.

Instead of doing the usual blog posts detailing what lessons we've learned, however, it seems that it would be best to make this into a sort of chronological diary of sorts to compile the goings-on of pre-production, production set life, and post-production so that not only will some entertainment come out of our ventures, but perhaps some lessons can be gleaned as well. If you're a filmmaker who is desperately seeking answers to your questions, we're hoping this will be a good place to start. If you're a fan, then welcome aboard! We hope you'll find these tales regaling and intriguing.

How It Happened

Sometimes, things just fall into place as they should.

While I can't speak for the whole team, the rest of these tales will be told from my perspective as the director of this film. For starters, I had been working on a project for years and had been hoping to secure funding for it so we could move that one forward. It's a story that I'm very excited to be able to tell, especially given the location it requires (I love the desert), but the budget was always just out of our reach. After years of frustration as the project refused to leave Development Hell, I decided it might be best to flex my creativity a bit and see if I could write a script that could be filmed for pennies, comparatively speaking. Having no idea where to start, I began to sort through the catalog of our previous short films and scripts that had never seen the light of day to see if anything was useable. I kept coming back to our successful short film "Role Model" and the story it told. It always felt bigger than the short film, as it was originally penned as a television pilot script, and I began to mull over the idea of possibly turning it into a feature.

Sometimes, things just fall into place as they should. Call it God or coincidence (the latter of which I don't believe it was), sometimes things just all work out together so nicely, you are forced to pay attention. I had been mulling the idea of turning the short film into a feature, yet I hadn't told anyone I was doing so. It was merely an idea at this point. It was a few days later on a muggy July afternoon that a good friend of mine, Mark Holmes, contacted me to tell me he was wanting to break into producing and asked if I had any ideas for films besides the massive one out in the desert. I mentioned that I had been thinking about the idea of turning "Role Model" into a feature, and it was clear that he became very excited at the idea. Before he got off the phone, he instructed me to make a pitch packet of the idea and send it to him so he could begin pitching it to investors. Keep in mind that it was still an idea at this point, no script had been written. I immediately threw together a nice presentation based off the idea that I had while fleshing out a few more details such as certain plot points, characters, etc. and sent it off to Mark as soon as I could. And then I did the one thing I hate the most: I waited.

Looking back on this waiting period, I probably could have spent the time writing a draft of the script, but after years of disappointment and waiting for funding on other projects, I honestly thought that nothing would come of it. I figured that I sent it off and would not see or hear anything about it again for at least a month maybe more.

Now if we only had a script.

As it turns out, I would not have to wait that long. A testament to Mark's tenacity, about a week later, he called me back and not only told me we had an investor, but that this investor was interested in contributing one hundred percent of what we needed to make the film. I remember asking Mark at least once to repeat himself because I just could not believe what I was hearing. In true Mark fashion, he simply glazed right over the fact that these investors had green-lit the film and moved on to more pressing issues, such as the matter of the unwritten script, which the investors wanted as soon as possible. My mind was still reeling, and I barely remember any of Mark's questions after, only that I remember asking at least one more time before the conversation ended if they were seriously doing this. After years of toiling, it was finally go time. Now, if we only had a script.

After I got off the phone with Mark, I remember my emotions being so uncontainable that I simply began to run around the parking lot where I was, unable to think of anything else to do. As soon as I ran out of breath, I stopped and called my wife and my sister to tell them I was about to direct my first feature film. Once I got off the phone and returned to reality, everything finally sunk in. It was Friday, and the hours were waning fast. The investors wanted a script as soon as possible, preferably by Monday, so they could look it over and confidently back the project. No pressure. With no time to lose, I opened up my computer and pounded furiously at the keyboard as the story began to unfold.

Those three days are a blur in the past. I still don't know how I was able to turn out a working feature-length script in such a small amount of time, let alone something legible and readable, but it happened. I ended up deleting the very first draft of the script after only 40 pages in, as the story began to trail into nonsense. However it happened, I sent a working script to Mark on Monday for the investors to look over. And they loved it. It wasn't the prettiest script, it didn't have any of the meat and sinew of later drafts, but they saw the skeleton for the figure and were persuaded to continue. They asked when we thought we could shoot the film, and, in a moment of endorphin-enduced hubris, I told Mark that we could potentially begin production in September, which was now roughly two months away. The investors loved the initiative and were all the more thrilled to back the project. It was time to go into full pre-production mode and get this thing made. If we only knew what we were getting ourselves into.

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