Play this as you read, it will become relevant later...
This time next week we will be filming! This is both incredibly exciting and rather terrifying!! I should probably do something useful instead of writing this, but I'm a couple of weeks behind on updates. Loads has happened! None of it is particularly exciting but if I keep adding exclamation marks it will perhaps seem more thrilling than it is!!
I did a shot list!!! That was fun!!!!
Last time I spent ages on the shot list. You can read about it here (and if you think 'wow, that film sounds amazing!' you can see it right now by signing up to the mailing list at www.jennyringo.com). I drew a rough storyboard first. I then used that storyboard to take pictures of Pete, Charlotte, Andrea and a dress with a bear hat representing the actors (which was, to be honest, a fun day). I then transcribed that photo storyboard into an extensive shot list.
Which ended up being pretty useless.
Sure, it was good to have an idea of what I wanted going in, but I'd listed too many setups to realistically fit into a day and when we got into it none of the shots ended up looking anything like the shots in the storyboard. In fact I don't think I referred to the storyboard once.
This is probably filmmaking blasphemy, but as a director I'm not as interested as I probably should be in the visuals. I want things to look good, of course, but the most important thing to me is that the viewer can see what's going on. Mostly I care about what the actors are doing and that the story is being told well, which I suppose comes from being a writer.
There are a couple of moments where we could do something a bit more interesting with the camerawork and I've tried to make provisions for these moments, but considering how tight a schedule we're already on I'm wary of causing even further delays. I helped out on a short once in which a jib shot took a whole day to set up - from 10am until 6pm. Oh look, it's here!
It's a good shot and was worth doing on that occasion. But this time our biggest expense is the location so we have to finish shooting there on the days we've got it - we can't really afford to run over. Plus we're borrowing all the equipment from friends and can't yet guarantee what we'll have available on which days. So right now my shot list is fairly conservative and dull. Yet I've still managed to write a few hundred words about it.
You've probably run out of song now too. Play this one. I will explain soon, I promise.
Next we sorted out the shooting schedule. Actually, Andrea sorted out the shooting schedule. I occasionally nodded and said encouraging things like 'sure, that sounds fine'.
We also sorted out our last major location which I'm really happy with. Now I just need an exterior. I had a vision of exactly what the outside of the Cabaret from Hell would look like and for some reason I thought we'd find it on Brighton seafront. After making Brother Pete accompany me on a freezing walk along the whole of Brighton seafront I can now confirm it isn't there. So that's my lunchbreak mission for the whole of next week.
A few weeks ago I mentioned I was still trying to find a band to play a major part in the film. We found one!!! Hollywood Assassins are now the house band in the Cabaret from Hell, until Jenny Ringo shows up anyway (intriguing plot hint!). We also got to see them play on Tuesday night and they are awesome, as you will have heard by now. Plus they're really enthusiastic and lovely which helps and I'm really happy to have them onboard. Check out their Facebook page here!
That's it for now! Tomorrow we're rehearsing the script assuming the weather allows it, so I should probably figure out how that's going to work! I'll try to post another update before we start shooting, wihich is like really soon!!!
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