Sunday, August 28, 2011

STARPOINT VIDEOS

It's coming together quite well. Meeting with most of my cast next Saturday and gearing up for a September 17th shoot. Talked to two people this weekend about taking the parts of the WOMAN IN LOVE and the FARMER. The hard part is still just scheduling everything together. I've been planning on what the next project is going to be and hope to use as many of the same people as possible. Everyone, including myself, is relieved to find out it takes place in a mid-sized midwestern city just a few years in the future. No swords, armor, or complicated locations. We could shoot it anywhere in Iowa City and wear street clothes.

NOVEMBER GIRL WEEK 9

Finally! Hit one of those spots where I had an idea but couldn't get it to work right. I kept rewriting a scene and fumbling around. The day I finally decided that my instincts were wrong and the scene didn't belong there it suddenly came to me how to fix it. Odd how the creative juices flow some days.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

STARPOINT VIDEOS

I've been really worried about the set. It takes place inside a fortune teller's tent and I was worried that it wasn't going to work. I wanted a real tent but they are outrageously expensive and even renting one was going to be more than I could afford. There was also the problem of getting a tent that we could put up in doors without having to pound it into the ground. Suzy and I were talking and came up with the idea of just hanging bed sheets. I found a queen size set that was the right color and gave it a test run yesterday. It looked great! We put these large plastic plants behind the sheet, put a light on them, then put a fan on the plants. It was a diffused light and it gave the shadow of wing blowing through threes juts outside. It worked wonders. I'll have to get a few extra sheets and weather them a bit but it'll work.
The only date available in September to shoot is the 17th but I still have a few more people to hear from before I can settle on that. I don't know if Per will be able to make that day. The actress playing the fortune teller hasn't been heard of for some time so I don't know if she's still interested and will be available. Will have to consider rescheduling depending on what they say.
I talked to Tim at PATV about taking care of the sound and he was interested. He is also talking to a composer who might be able to help with the music. Ideally the music will be something very simple, a few themes for the fortune teller and for Gallif.
After that I worked with Josh on the effects and he's very excited about it. We also talked about giving it play on PATV when it's finished and distributing it to other public access stations. I'm also going to look in to possible local festivals.
It's getting big and I'm very excited about it.

NOVEMBER GIRL WEEK 8

A much better week. It's picking up speed and feeling better.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

NOVEMBER GIRL WEEK 7

Much better week than the last few. It took a while to get up to speed. i wrote a few pages but they weren't feeling right so I went back and reread everything I'd already done, through out what I'd written recently, then started over again.
I'm doing something different that I've never done before for this book. I'm actually writing a synopsis of characters and places November meets as the story goes. I've never done that. I did all of Starpoint with some general ideas of where the story was going to go and that was it. Welcome to Nowhere was the same way. This one certainly is going to be different than anything I've written before. So much so that I want to keep a synopsis of the story just in case I end up coming back to this place or characters. I really have no idea where this is going.
Sometimes I love this part of writing.

NOVEMBER GIRL WEEK 6

Well, the heat's finally breaking so I can think better and be more creative than the past few weeks. I tried writing a bit but it took me a while to get back into the mind frame.