The beginning of production has been pushed into July, not sure on an exact date but I’ll keep you posted. We are waiting on investor agreements and attorneys and all that legalese jazz. The delay has been a good thing because it has given me more time to prepare, and the more time I have to spend on preproduction the smoother things will run during production.

I am still struggling with the stick figure story boards. The problem is that I am horrible at drawing… even stick figures. But the process is fun because drawing out the scenes helps me decide on pacing and transitions within and between scenes. I have fully storyboarded only one other project – the FMC project which is a short film I wrote/directed several years ago. the FMC project was a 10 page script and it took me a week to storyboard. The script for Cowboy Smoke is a 102 pages… so you can begin to understand the uphill battle I am fighting. I just have a hard time drawing… but, argue your limitations and they’re yours, so I’ll strive on and hopefully finish one day soon.

I am working on setting a time for casting within the next couple of weeks. It looks like we will be holding casting in Victoria, TX – which is the largest town in a thirty mile radius of where we will be shooting. I have to admit, I am not fond of the casting process. If I had my way I would cast the entire film without holding a single casting session. I have already cast about half of the characters with actors I have worked with in the past. The problem with casting calls is that you don’t have enough time and there are just so many people - you are dealing with a wide range of personalities and emotionally charged actors who all want to get the part. It’s exhausting… and some times embarrassing. During a casting session for Wesley Cash an actor, who through no fault of his own, just wasn’t right for the part. I told him thank you and we’d be in touch. We’ll… he started to cry and wouldn’t leave the room. The actor asked if he could read his lines again – I said sure… By now the actor was so upset he couldn’t read his lines, he stuttered his way through his part… which only made him cry more. After a while of me attempting to explain that he wasn’t right for the part (honestly – no fault of his own, he just didn’t look right), the actor stormed for the room.

NEXT!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 9:50 am and is filed under Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.