Film Project Update: Script Updates, SAG, Equipment and Schedules


Things are so busy at work, I haven't had much of a chance to blog. I want to get back to talking about things besides the film, but for now, here's another update.

Tom and I are still tweaking the script. We had a great session on Saturday where we closed up a plot hole that was bothering me.

SAG returned my call yesterday and there seems to be no problem getting an Experimental Film Agreement in place. This excites me a lot. All of a sudden this feels like a real film.

I got a quote for equipment rental. Fortunately weekend rental counts as one day so that's keeping the costs down. I'm going to shoot on the Panasonic DVX100A, which can do 24p. I briefly toyed with going HD but not only is that 8x the price, it adds a bunch of additional requirements and complications to post-production. If it had been released in time, I probably would have shot on a Canon XL-2 given that I have an XL-1 at home that I'm used to.

In researching cameras, I came across a great self-published book called "Shooting Digital" from Marcus van Bavel of DVFilm, a company that does DV-to-Film transfers. The book is specifically for people shooting with digital cameras that intend (or in my case, hope one day to need) to transfer to 35mm film.

This weekend I also got around to trying out the Sun Frog film scheduling software I've mentioned before. I have to say, it's a very nice tool. I'll write a more detailed review shortly but it certainly makes management of breakdown items and schedules as well as the generation of reports very easy. And it has a nice modern interface which alone makes it feel so much more professional.

The original post was in the categories: filmmaking alibi_phone_network but I'm still in the process of migrating categories over.