The Juices Are Flowing

I spent another night the other night keeping myself up thinking about GOS. It seems that nights when I'm not quite ready to sleep, I lie in bed and just think about all of the little pieces that make up this project. It's weird because it almost seems to be the clearest to me then...right "between dreaming and awake." Cheesy, I know. But it's strange how late knight thoughts tend to seem so different and surreal maybe. It sucks in the case of a movie project because it basically just gets me excited and it makes it harder to sleep.

It seems to have paid of these last few days as I've been really productive. I took myself to lunch at Superior today as I seem to be the only person I know that still loves that place. I brought my notepad and did some outlining of the new plot.

I've come to realize that writing has nothing to do with planning. Brainstorming sessions, plot oulines, character outlines, they don't work like writing professors tell you they do. You don't literally take from that material when you finally sit down and write. For me, at least, I don't put all my notes in front of me and try and figure out the scenes like math problems. All the "pre-writing" I do or even the real writing I do in early drafts, it all just serves to get me thinking about it. I don't write down ideas for records or to refer to later. Most sheets of ideas I have I never look back on. They're just a way to get my mind focused on thinking about the story so when I do sit down and type up the script I have a database of ideas that have been worked through in my head that I uncontiously reference or build from. It's like anything else where you just need practice. The more I write GOS the better it'll be...that doesn't mean the more I edit it. Because I'm not editing. I'm just writing it again and it's different and better.

I'm happy where the story is going right now. Though I was happy when I was writing the first draft which I don't like anymore. And it's overwhelming to think about how many more times I may do this before shooting. I don't want to make myself stop at any point, but given how much I've changed the story between Draft 1 and 2, if I start really planning a production based on any draft I may be wasting effort.

So at some point I'm going to have to pin myself to one draft and work it out so I can start pre-production for it.

I also listened to the "Making Of" commentaries last night as well as Ben's soundtrack. It all got me really excited about making a movie again. I don't know if it's just hearing about making a movie in general that got me excited or if it's more about hearing about me making a movie about my experiences making movies that got me excited about what I do. But I love Ben's score and how I will always associate it with my love for making movies and it just gets me pumped for production when I listen to it.

I really can't wait to see this project through.

Slowly, but Surely

Draft 2, is coming along well. I'm only 20 pages in, but I decided to start over from scratch rather than reworking what I had already commited to in Draft 1. So hopefully by just having the exercise of Draft 1 under my belt, I bring the best of it over while creating new material that better caters to the story I'm trying to craft.

But I really like how it's going so far. It's more confident than the first draft. I think I'm starting to get comfortable with the characters and their environment and it's making it easier to write.

I'm keeping busy too. At any given time I'm working on at least 2 websites if not 3 or 4. And Paranormalz is really about to take off and I'm devoting a lot of time to it.

Oh, and Shane has started engineering the spaceship, which is a fun process to go through this time around because I have a much more specific and sensical design and I have someone who knows what he's doing figure out the logistics of building it. We'll apparently be able to build it in 5 different sections so that we show it's progression throughout the movie.

Settling In

I now have my own place in Shreveport for the next two years. I've moved into my "office" complete with a dry erase "idea" board to make it seem professional, though right now it has a big sketch of Humpty Dumpty on it.

This week will mark the first time I feel like I have all the time in the world to dedicate to writing. My schedule is cleared and it's just me and my computer.

Hopefully that means I'll get draft 2 of GOS done.

But I have yet another project in the pipeline. A web series called "Paranormalz" created by my good friend, Keith. I'm helping produce it as well as designing the website and doing the post production work...and maybe at some point acting. It's an ongoing thing, but we'll probably only be doing roughly an episode a month so it shouldn't be too distracting.

You can check out the website at: www.paranormalz.com

We're shooting the first episode in two and a half weeks.

Not much more news on the GOS front. Still waiting on the RED. Still waiting for newer tech and better prices before I build my new editing rig. Though I just bought a new monitor.

I don't have a lot to talk about in the post so I guess I'll stop here.

School's Out Forever

Yeah. I graduated almost a week ago now. It was kinda bogus because I don't get my degree for another 3 weeks. The registrar can't even give me a proof of graduation to show my apartment people so I can get out of my lease for another two weeks. But I'm leaving Tuesday anyway.

I'm so caught up in moving and trying to get settled back in Shreveport that I haven't had much time to focus on GOS. Hopefully once I get there I won't have the continuous distractions I've had lately.

The good news is that we have a substantial budget. I've got $13,000 saved up so far. That's almost 3 times the budget of my last film, and I'm still 8 months from production.

I saw this quote on a friend's facebook status and it sums up exactly what I think directing is about:

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I don't even know who that person is, but I like the way he thinks.

Despite being busy I have at least crafted a new outline for the next draft of GOS which is a decent departure from the first draft. I've made the relationships between the three main characters a lot closer and therefore hopefully more intense and dramatic.

That fairytale warm-up from my last post is also gaining momentum and may become problematic in scale in terms of interrupting pre-production for GOS. Either way I'm very excited about both and I can't wait to start making movies again. I've got a lot of pent up filmmaking energy right now.

Full-time Filmmaker

In 9 days, I will have graduated college and will then officially be a full-time filmmaker for at least the next year. This is the most exciting thing ever.

I don't think I've even touched the GOS script since my last post. Finals are distracting. I've got many new ideas though.

Moviesauce even has a new short based on a fairty tale poem that might serve as a warm up in the fall with the new equiment I'm getting for GOS.

I'm very curious about how much money I'm going to be starting with. I have 3k right now, and I'm wondering how much I might be accumulating for graduation. On one hand people get cars and trips to Europe for graduation so it could be a substantial amount, but on the other, when people just give you money I feel like they're less inclined to give as much as they might spend on a trip.

I know we're still way off from making the movie, but the closer it gets, the more the reality of the whole thing sets in. You start thinking about what all you have to do for such a big project and you feel lazy until you start getting it done.

It starts

It technically started a while ago. If you want to get really technical, it started around fall of 2005. That's when I started developing the idea for the first short film "Getting Outer Space", which I shot in the summer of 2006. It's viewable here (under films): www.evanfalbaum.com

Now it's April, three years later. I've been working on adapting the short into a feature length screenplay since the fall. I've been working on it for at least 6 months already.

I've assembled a partial cast and crew, though at this point I'm just trying to get through the final stretch of my education. I'll hopefully be graduating in 5 weeks and then it's full steam ahead on this film.

I don't plan to shoot until roughly January of 2010 so I've got quite a while to work everything out, and I intend to use that time fully.

One of the first things aside from continuing to refine the script is going to be to get a website up where I can maybe transfer these blog posts to as well as host other stuff that documents the process of making this movie. I want the production to be fairly transparent and being that it will be an extremely important project for me, I want to document everything pretty well. In case I can't shoot a proper "making of", I want to have this production diary.

But if you're looking for insights into the script or anything, you won't be getting them. I don't want to sacrifice the integrity of the film by saying too much. I just want the way I do it to be remembered.

I'd like to help build interest in the project too by posting frequent updates and insights into what we're doing and hopefully that will help to build somewhat of a fanbase of people that maybe feel like they too have some sort of stake in the project. I'd like to do a web series or something that documents it as well. Who knows what will happen at this point. That's the fun of the first post. I can look back and laugh at how clueless I was on day one...even though this isn't really day one.

But in a year from now hopefully I'll have a completed film that is something I really proud of. And that's when I'll look back through these posts.

I'm rambling now. At this point I don't think it's important to update more than once a week if that so don't get too anxious if there is in fact anybody reading this at this point.