The Final 3 Scripts Are Done

April is coming to a close, and the need to start prepping for our May-June shoots is growing. I’m moving this weekend, so I won’t be able to do much for a few days, likely the first week.
The 3 scripts we’re going with for May-June are called “Can,” “Drugs,” and “Dressing Room.” We both feel these are the strongest scripts out of the 12 I wrote. The other 9 go back into the trunk for now.
“Can” is mostly physical, not much dialog, and should be a lot of fun to make. A very simple story with clear character motivations, and the only prep involved is the acquisition of some props. There are no other actors, only one location, so it’ll be a less-than-one-day shoot, to be sure.
“Drugs” is the most elaborate, and it will require us to find a choreographer, which is new to us. There are 3 other characters, so we’ll have to do some casting, and there are some props to prepare. We’ll likely need to shoot it in June as it’ll need the most prep time to get ready.
“Dressing Room” (a working title given our preference for one-word titles) will likely be shot in my apartment given that most of the action takes place in a dressing room. Some exteriors and other locations are involved, but there is only one role to cast, and I have most of the props in my collection.
“Can” and “Drugs” are pretty much ready, although I never lock a script until after we’ve shot it. We’ve always shot the same way: the first few takes we stick to the script pretty closely (maybe changing a line if it doesn’t work), then do a few alternate, improvised takes just in case we come up with something better. And we do run into the problems that plague all who try to capture moving pictures: problems with locations (unexpected background noise for dialogue scenes, construction, accidents, etc.), actors not showing up (emergencies, miscommunication, etc.), lines that made sense and read well earlier not making sense or reading poorly on shooting day, etc., etc. So we’ve rewritten before and between takes. I try to remember to go back to my computer and lock the original shooting script and do a transcription of the finished short, just to see how much we “drifted” during production and post-production. Again, if something works better than what’s there, there’s no sense in staying with what’s written.
Between packing boxes, I went through all 3 scripts to start working out the directing beats. Where does the scene change? Where does the emotion of the scene change? Where do the characters change their emotions and when do those emotions blow up? Action-Reaction. I’ve ignored all that sage advice from writing teachers, books, etc., and I think I’ve paid for it with mediocre results in the past. Hopefully, by doing my homework, I’ll be much better prepared for the next 3 shorts, and, hopefully, these shorts will turn out much better than previous efforts.
“Dressing Room” is close to being finished, but it needs a new ending. The current one feels flat, but I can’t think of anything new. Mullet’s doing a read of all 3 scripts this week, so maybe he’ll come up with something better. I’ve used a similar ending in "Can," and I’d like to avoid using it twice on the same DVD. Maybe I won’t be able to avoid it –it is a classic comedy ending.
I call it the Laurel & Hardy ending, because, quite often, Ollie would chase Stan into the distance as the camera irised into black, but it’s used in a lot of other comedy, too. It dates back to the chase movies of the Keystone Kops and the earliest silent comedies. It got regular use on Gilligan’s Island and other TV classics I watched as a child. Today, it’s not as prevalent, but if I were to think for a bit, I’m sure I could come up with a few that work that way. It’s much stronger than some other often-used endings. So why am I trying to avoid a classic ending?
In 2 of these 3 scripts, Mullet is chased away by Miller. With Laurel & Hardy, Ollie is the dominant one, and Stan is really passive towards Ollie (most of the time). In our duo, it's not a pure Joey-and-Auguste relationship (or double-Auguste like L&H). Miller is in charge, but he's not completely in charge and Mullet is not afraid to attack him for any transgressions. Mullet is impulsive and aggressive at times, so the odds of him running away from Ed are not good. The odds of Miller running away from Mullet are about the same, and the most common result is hand-to-hand combat rather than running. So, for me as the writer, I don’t want to see Mullet run away from Miller very often –it’s not how the character would respond very often. Maybe in the larger scheme of 6-7 shorts on the DVD, it’ll make sense to have 2 end with the L&H ending, but I’d rather limit it to one.
I end “Dressing Room” with the L&H chase, but I can’t end with a fight –the audience wants to see how the fight ends and what the consequences are. I can’t think of any good comedy fading out on a fight. Maybe if it were set up as a punchline, like it was the 3rd fight as a result of some action (like the old Susquehanna Hat routine from vaudeville), but I haven’t written “Dressing Room” to have a payoff like that one.
Maybe I’ll try it out and see how it works….

Now an update on the producing side of things.
I’ve sent e-mails out to some potential directors, and I’ve heard from one who may be interested in shooting Can for us. If he agrees to do it, we’ll be really lucky to have him help out as he is an accomplished filmmaker and comedian known across Canada.
I haven’t heard from the other two people, but I don’t expect quick responses for e-mails asking for free labour. We have another person as tentative crew who has helped us in the past, but we won’t contact him until we have the schedule figured out.
The rest of our crew will likely come from Craigslist, which can give you a lot of responses but not much action. I may have to post an ad on the bulletin board at Ryerson U in the film dept to get some experienced hands.
Our next step is to find a choreographer for “Drugs.” We’ll try the friends and friends of friends route, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll post an ad on Craigslist. We’ve already got the 2 other roles in “Drugs” tentatively cast through Mullet’s involvement in Theatresports, so we should have enough time to interview choreographers, rehearse with the cast, and then shoot it.
Now, it’s back to the boxes…. God, I hate moving!

I can’t believe it’s almost been a month since my last rambling missive. How time flies when life steps in with a few crises….

Well, bad news came last week. The letter from the San Diego International Comic-Con arrived at Mullet’s place, telling us not that we are going back to Small Press but that we were on the waiting list.

Our decision, then, was to decide what to do next –to proceed as usual in case the waiting list is shorter than we imagine and we’re invited back, or to assume that we’re not going back this year? We’re proceeding both ways, actually, after consulting with our comic book artist, Kam and looking at our options for both the DVD and the comic.

What are we going to do? We’re going to proceed with the DVD and with issue #2 of the comic book, keeping the same deadlines, just in case. But we are altering our plan for the DVD slightly, too, given that we have, potentially, a year to prepare them.

Instead of 4-5 shorts as originally planned, I’m going ahead with just 3 for May-June production. This means just 3 Saturdays of shooting (Sundays being the rain dates), so it’s not a large commitment that will require a lot of commitment from cast and crew, interfere with Mullet’s work on the comic, and avoid shooting on those hot days in June and July. I’ll also have enough time for post in case we do end up going to San Diego. In the fall, after it cools down enough to run around in makeup and polyester costumes, we’ll shoot 3 more shorts, giving us the winter for any missing interior shots, post-production, and DVD production.

So, if we go to San Diego for 2007, we’ll have a DVD with 3 new shorts, plus a 2003 short called Stalls, and then, in 2008, a second version of the DVD with the next 3 shorts added to the existing disk. Plus, we’ll have a second version of both DVDs, with the electronic press kit stuff for the industry types we hope to meet.

If we don’t go to San Diego in 2007, there won’t be a DVD until this time in 2008, but it’ll be packed with 6 new shorts, Stalled, and whatever other goodies I can dig out of the archives (that aren’t too painful to include), plus the EPK version.

We’d also put low-res versions of the shorts on our website and sell the current version of the DVD there as well.



Meanwhile, I haven’t had much time with the screenplays in the last month. A family crisis, impending move to a new apartment, and a busy period at work all contributed to this lack of writing time or energy (I have played a lot of video games and watched a lot of TV, though). This week, I’m planning on revisiting the scripts, to edit them down to a five-minute-or-so running time, fix the usual problems (structure, exposition, better jokes, character arcs, etc., etc.), and hopefully have a fresh batch of second drafts for Mullet to read.

Our routine lately has been for me to give him the scripts and then take his notes (he’s only reading them each time, once just to determine what his first impression is) and re-read them myself. I’ve incorporated most of his suggestions, plus my own ideas, each time –we’ve done this at least once for each script, twice for a few of them.

We’ve already picked the first short to go, called Can (our shorts have one-word working titles because the full name will have “Miller & Mullet in”). of the remaining 11 scripts, there are some leading contenders for the remaining 2 production slots.

I’ve also started to send the emails out to past crew to let them know our plans in case we can get more free labour out of them. I’m hoping to find 2 directors to take over 2 of the shorts, leaving me with just one to direct myself. I like the idea of having a different director for different shorts, just to keep things from becoming too similar.

The one thing that I realize I didn’t appreciate enough until I took a producing class at Ryerson is how much time and energy producing takes for indie productions like ours. Even when you’re writing, performing, directing, or editing, you’re still the producer, and there’s always something to be done. That’s the moral of today’s lesson, I suppose….