The clock is ticking…

Unfortunately once I again I don’t have much to report for the past week. Things were a bit hectic during the week, as a co-worker and I traveled up to NY city to attend a taping of The Daily Show. You can read all about my experiences here:

Leena is still trying to find our last lead actor, and I’ve increased my maximum age limit in the hopes that it opens up more possibilities. Hopefully we’ll be able to find someone in the next week or two. I’m going to try and get together with Rob Hercik this week to chat and go over the script, as last week’s attempt at a meeting fell through.
I’ve also been fiddling around with my copy of Pinnacle Studio 14 trying out some things to use for the teaser trailer. I’m going to talk to Mark Gradwell on Tuesday about some of the music he’ll be composing for the trailer and the movie. Right now I think it’d be cool to get at least a teaser trailer out there, something with some screen caps of the footage I have, some scary-ass music and the title of the movie…hey, it’s a start!
So there’s still plenty to do, and time is ticking away. Empty storyboard pages sit in my three-ring binder begging me to draw on them. When will I find the time and energy to continue on with this effort? Gosh, I need more Diet Mountain Dew… 🙂
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Hey, I never claimed I was an artist…

Storyboards

So there I was, searching for good storyboarding software the other night…I wanted something low-cost or free that would help me create my storyboards. Up until now I had been drawing them by hand on a storyboard template, which worked fine for One-Day Seminar. After finding a couple of things that kinda worked, I gave up on the idea. Then I remembered that Celtx (the program I use to write the script, keep track of everything, etc) has storyboard support built into it. The problem is, it requires an image or a sketch from their program. Then another thought popped into my head…hey, I have a scanner…

So a couple hours later, after hooking my old parallel scanner up to an old laptop of mine (my main computer has no parallel port), I was able to scan in my hand-drawn storyboards for the first scene, cut them up (using Paint.NET) and create a storyboard in Celtx. This is really cool because I get the benefit of drawing them myself, but then once they’re in Celtx, I can rearrange, annotate and print them to my hearts content. I think this is a really cool way to go, and based on what I’ve done so far, I’m excited to see the rest of the storyboards come together.
One of the neat things Celtx lets you do is play the storyboards back sorta like a movie. So check out this video I made (using Jing) of this playback…and while you’re watching, keep in mind the title of this blog entry 🙂
Actors
So unfortunately the actor Leena asked could not commit, so the search for the second lead actor continues. If all goes well I will meet with Rob this week to go over the script and possibly rehearse some scenes.
Is it March already?
So this month I’d really like to solidify the shoot dates, find that other lead actor and get some rehearsals in. Let’s hope it goes well!
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Another week…

Another week has passed and not much is going on. Leena is still working on the second lead role, and I have asked Mark Gradwell to start composing some music for a teaser trailer for the movie. I did manage to create a Twitter account though:

And my lame Facebook page:
Now, if I can just generate enough worthy content for all of these sites, that would be a great start 🙂
I really need to start story-boarding the rest of the movie…only have the first scene done up to this point.
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Here we go…

OK, so last week I promised myself that I would try to write a post (at least) every Sunday night with a progress update on Quick Shop…and wouldn’t you know it, my Internet connection was down last Sunday! 🙂 So here we are, a week later, and I’m trying to stick to my promise.

Quick Shop has been in pre-production for a while now, but we’re closer than ever to finally completing the cast and getting this project off the ground. As I said in my last post, there’s only one more spot to fill in the cast, so we’re almost there.
Cast & Crew
Here is the unofficial list of the cast and crew thus far:
Cast:
Jeannie Stith……….SLEEPING WOMAN
Grover Silcox……….COUNTER MAN
Rob Hercik………….TREVOR HILL
John Leary………….MAN IN BOOTS
TBD………………..HUNTER WILLIAMS

Crew:
Martin Binder……….Writer/Director/Producer
John Leary………….Writer
AnneMarie Cronk……..Director of Photography
Mark Gradwell……….Score
Leena Devlin………..Talent Scout

Denise Binder……….Talent Scout

New Web Site
I started working on a new web site for Quick Shop over the weekend. Nothing fancy, just a relatively plain template that I want to get updated with the cast and crew list, photos and videos, etc. You can check it out here…just don’t set your expectations too high.
Andre Farms
I took another trip out to Andre Farms in Oley, PA on February 4th to talk to Ted and Patty Kazmierczak, just to make sure they were still OK with us shooting there. Thankfully they are, and we just need to work out the dates and times of the shoot. Did I mention that they are really nice people and I really appreciate them letting us use their facility? If you’re ever in the area, stop by and grab yourself a pound of fresh ground buffalo meat. 🙂
Shooting Dates/Times
The plan at this point is to shoot the entire movie within two weekends. Why shoot on weekends? Well, the most obvious reason is that most of us work day jobs. The next best reason is that the rental house that I get the equipment from has a deal where you can pick up the equipment on Friday afternoon, and return it by Monday morning and only pay one day’s rental fee. At $150 a pop for all the equipment we need, it makes sense to shoot on weekends.
Now having said that, here’s a rough breakdown of each weekend:
Weekend 1:
  • Shoot opening bedroom scene (Location: possibly at my house)
  • Shoot outside for opening and closing scenes (Location: TBD)
  • Shoot scenes in the truck (Location: Darryl Moser’s garage)
  • Shoot some test footage at Andre Farms
Weekend 2:
  • Shoot all scenes at Andre Farms (Saturday and possibly Sunday night)
Of course that is all subject to change, but those are the main shooting points. I just need to figure out how to maximize the time we have the equipment…it doesn’t help that all the scenes take place at night…oh well.
Ideally I’d like the have the entire thing shot by July, possibly earlier. There are several horror-related film festivals in the area that have deadlines around August, so it’d be great to hit some of those. So maybe if all goes well the first weekend could be in April, and the second weekend in June? I don’t know…we’ll have to see how everything else goes I suppose.
Storyboards
I storyboarded the opening scene, but I still need to do the rest of the script. If you want to view the script, it can be found here. My storyboards are crude but were critical when I shot One-Day Seminar.
Rehearsals
Something I didn’t do with One-Day Seminar (which I somewhat regret) was have any kind of rehearsal or read-through. I’d like to change that this time around, and as soon as we fill that last opening, I’m going to schedule some time for the cast to get together and just do some runs through the script. You know, like they do on real movies… 😉
In Conclusion
I guess that’s about if for now. I will post again if there’s any updates during the week, otherwise expect another post next Sunday…until then.
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