This morning I flew to Los Angeles for the screening of Quarter To Life. I will only be in LA for a day - but man, I sure could use that day.

Let’s see, last week Steve Acevedo (the DP), myself, and Fagan Patterson (exec producer) went on a location scouting trip. While on the visit Steve took notes as to what lights, equipment, and what not he will need to accomplish the look he will be attempting to achieve for the film. We also had a conference call with the post lab we’ll be working with in order to discuss our workflow options. The lab, CineLab, is based out of Maine and the guy we talked with, Rob Houllahan, was very helpful. I talked with several post labs but CineLab cut us the best deal on a package for the film, processing and transfer. We are going to transfer the footage to DVCam with a keycode burn, then use that footage to do an off-line edit, from there export the Edit Decision List and then go back to the original negative for a on-line edit to HD for the master. Confused? I know I was and have been for the past four months trying to figure all this out but it is starting to make sense. There are literally dozens of post workflow options and the trick is deciding on a workflow that fits your budget while not comprimising the look you are attempting to achieve.

What else? My biggest headache as of the last two weeks has been insurance. If we can’t get insurance then the whole production is shot because we would not be able to rent equipment. For the past month I have been hassling the insurance company for a qoute and their initial concern was that our film has a lot of action - case in point we were a liability. Well, they finally sent me a qoute yesterday, which means they will insure us. Thank you baby Jesus. Now I can go ahead and rent our equipment. We will (most likely) be renting a grip truck from gear-rental based out of Austin, a Zeis 11-110 zoom lense from Panavision based out of Dallas, and our camera equipment will be coming from a commercial production company our DP works for in San Antonio.

I spent my Labor day weekend rewriting the script… which will be the last rewrite, minus a few changes that will more than likely come as a result of rehersals. When I return from my trip tomorrow I will begin calling the actors to discuss wardrobe, rehersals, and character developement. Talk to you then!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.