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….