4th Mar 2009
It's March?!
Rather amazingly, it’s the first week of March (where do the weeks go?) so it’s probably time for a short update.
The next draft of the script has been delayed by a couple of weeks while Ross wrestles with the one major structural change he has to make. I won’t go into detail but it seriously impacts on the character arc of one of the main characters, so it’s not to be rushed.
The preliminary budget has been produced and unsurprisingly, it needs trimming in a few areas. Working out where to trim it is rather tricky though and expert advice is being sought. Hopefully it’ll be in better shape in a few weeks. We’ve decided to produce two budgets, one for shooting on digital (Red One) and one for shooting on 16mm. It’s far more likely that we’ll shoot on digital but the 16mm budget allows us to see where potential costs could be incurred or saved.
The final (hopefully) draft of the investment pack is being looked over this week so should be finalised next week and then sent out to potential investors in the following weeks. There’ll be some updates on the blog on it’s progress and success. It’s going to be interesting seeing the response it gets because it’ll be the first time that the film idea is put out to members of the public. It’ll also be interesting to see how people respond to the request for investment in the current financial climate. I’m not sure it’ll be a hinderance, as interest rates are so low, savings and property aren’t really particularly good options at the moment.
We should also have a dedicated film website up and running in the next few weeks. The blog will be readable from there, as will cast and crew information, the background of the film and stills (when we’ve taken them). I’ll post the link when it’s live.
Finally, the poster has been completed and will be accompanying initial film documentation. It can be viewed below.
20th Jan 2009
It's been a while...
For a number of reasons, we haven’t updated the blog for a while. On my part, I think it’s due to a lack of interesting information to impart. A minor battle I’m having with myself is over whether I should mention more personal and less relevant information in my blog posts, to make it a more rounded film-related blog, rather than a specific one about our film-making efforts. Do people really want to know that I saw Slumdog Millionaire last week and what my thoughts on it were? (I loved it, incidentally). I’m not so sure so I’ll continue to grapple with it in the mean time.
As for The Misadventurers, the second draft of the script was delivered in December and I can happily announce that it was a significant improvement over the (already good) previous draft. The narrative is becoming more focussed, the characters are more rounded and the dialogue is warmer and funnier. There’s still a long way to go but it has come on leaps and bounds.
We sent out the draft investment pack to a few people to get some feedback and the feedback we received was very positive. There were a number of useful suggestions, so we’re incorporating them into the document at the moment.
For all promotional material, we decided to have a preliminary poster produced. We think it’ll help give investors and people who read about the project a better idea of the feel and atmosphere of the film and it will also make any promotional material instantly striking. The poster can be seen below. We’re going to make a few changes to it but this is pretty close to the finished product.
Thanks to the very talented Chris Summerlin at The Speeding Train for the design.
20th Oct 2008
It’s been a while since Ross or I last posted. This isn’t to say that we haven’t been busy working on the project. I think it’s fair to say that work on the script is taking a lot longer than we’d planned. This isn’t a major issue as we’ll take as long as it requires to get the script right. It is the most important aspect at this moment in time and both Ross and myself are determined not to rush it.
We had a very invigorating meeting with a potential executive producer on Wednesday. It was exciting and inspiring but really rammed home that we have to get the script spot on before we proceed with anything else. The main upshot of this is that the Film Council application is delayed once again. I’m not particularly concerned about that as I think it’s not of huge consequence whether we receive the backing of the Film Council’s development fund.
It’s been over a month since we got back from France and aside from being a hugely enjoyable week away, it was also extremely useful and illuminating. It’s an obvious point but the trip brought home, to me anyway, exactly how large France is. Journeys we thought would take less than an hour would often take twice that and these are important factors when co-ordinating a low budget film-shoot. The country is beautiful though and wherever we decide to shoot, it will make a wonderful backdrop to our protagonists journey.
There’s some important decisions to make over the next couple of weeks, regarding the script and how we want the characters journeys to be resolved. I won’t go into detail here but the decisions we make now will have huge knock-on effects with a myriad of decisions further down the line. For this reason alone, it is important to get them right, however long it takes.
