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Really should have gone to the FITP wine thing (especially because my desire for liquor is only eclipsed by my lack of desire to walk to the liquor store) at least so that I could harass everyone in the AD department, but I’m exhausted, depressed, and also I couldn’t find anyone to drive me. Plus I just now noticed that  I’d have had to RSVP, which I didn’t do, and it sounds fancy and I don’t like it when fancy things happen.

I’ve decided that since I don’t have to worry about Indiefone anymore I also wouldn’t have to worry about the time constraints, and I’m hoping to make it a little longer inshAllah. Also a lot weirder. I tried in these first versions of the script to make a small, conventional film that would be easy to shoot, but since the project is a total disaster already I might as well dream big!  (This is what optimism in Slavs looks like.) I also want a budget, at least enough to be able to pay a small salary to people and to buy a portable generator.Here is the crowdfunding site thing. Paypal coming soon.

Being on this project is one step away from becoming a contagious disease. Jonathan wasn’t feeling well today, I told him that we can do his scenes on Wednesday and Thursday, which works out fine because we would have had everything of his done on Wednesday anyway.

Mateusz is insecure about taking over Jozhik’s role, but it might not be necessary depending on how fast Joseph is going to heal. I went to visit Jozhik so I could pic up the microphone and he looked well. I’m going to have to do ADR for at least the scene we shot today – we didn’t have the extension cord for the mic we thought we did and sound editing would be a mess with the church bells going off and the fountain and the 4000 Yale students making noise – so production will stretch a while anyway. I at least want to get Jonathan’s work done – we’re filming his scenes entirely in golden hour, mostly because of his schedule , and if we put it off even a week we’d be stuck in darkness by the time we could get rolling – and I didn’t want to have to reschedule the people with smaller roles, especially because they’re very busy with their careers. So we will soldier on. It’ll be much easier if I can at least get Mina’s setups done at the interior on Thursday, but I’m hoping I can coax Jozhik into just doing the parts where he sits there and talks.

Setting up the camera and shooting was bliss, everything else is a nightmare. Not that it’s hard, it’s just I don’t have an AD or a script super or anything this project. The industry in Connecticut is quite busy because a few other things are shooting around this time. I’m having to mentally organize everything by myself when I really should be having all my mental energies focused on the actors and the image (which is the thing that I am good at). Was exhausted by the time I got home, went straight to bed. Had nightmares all night long about working on a film set and having C-stands and tripods that tilted for no apparent reason, and unexplained dolly moves nobody mentioned to me before sticking me behind one, and in general the kind of dreams that only people who are grips have.

Niecy and Victoria got along really well, I’m hoping that everyone else will be able to get along quickly too.

Tomorrow should be a rainy mess even though we’re doing entirely exteriors, which I decided won’t impact the desired mood of the scenes so I’m making everyone go out there anyway. I’m hoping to be able to find a – I don’t know what to call, a thing that keeps things hot – so I’ll at least be able to have hot chocolate on set for everyone. It will be fun to light at least.

Also, Gary Ploski who I worked with a few times before is in the papers mashAllah. It looks like he’s going to Cannes, I think with one of the shorts we did with him. Good job Gary.

Today was the day for working out what I want the color palette to be. I thought of the locations I have in mind, how the backgrounds would look, and looked a bit at some of the photographs of them I have, and played around with some cool things I found on the internet until I decided on something like this:

The interesting thing about it is that there are both warm and cool greys involved. I made a pile of clothes that have about the right colors and shades (I’ll go through them later and see that some obviously aren’t appropriate, especially in different lighting, but for now they’re all right).

One key scene at the beach I want to film with something that pops. I looked at the location photos and thought that I’d like to put the lead in like a seafoam green – I’m a little concerned that I don’t have anything yet that looks quite right. There also isn’t much by the way of the pinker tones, an aspect of the palette that I really like. I don’t want it to be all greys and browns onscreen. I’ll be having the talent bring in some of their own clothes (this helps them be more comfortable too, a good wardrobe for them is important) and maybe a Goodwill run will be possible.

I’m a little annoyed at how drab that looks. The brighter, richer colors are all on the bottom of the pile.

I talked to the composer a little. After reading the script he commented that since it was a drama orchestral music might be most appropriate – I’m not a very musical person, so I just told them it was in their hands and they can experiment and do whatever they like, but orchestral is fine. I just suggested that I had wanted something subtle and unobtrusive, but with a lot of depth and complexity if you listen closely, which would reflect the characters themselves and they way they think and act. I told him, about the depth and deepness of sound, I don’t know if you want to take it very literally – like use cellos where you would have used violins, use horns where you could have used strings. I’m leaving it up to them so I don’t know what they’re coming up with, but the composer was pleased and said he likes the way I think. They say they’ll have something to work with by Friday. (That’s fast!)
Jozhik isn’t sure about one of the locations all of a sudden – I wish a little bit that he had mentioned something earlier, but it’s not a big problem, everybody has a story where they lost a location at the last minute. Eight days before principal photography is doing pretty well. I’m going to see if we can maybe film in our friend Vasya’s apartment instead, inshAllah. It would probably look more cool.

Picking out the microphone now. We’re on a budget, but I hope to get something that sounds good.

Rehearsals are this Thursday and I still haven’t heard back from all the cast members on whether or not they’re in. I hope I have everybody’s email right. (Honestly, I think some of them are just hiding from me. Especially you, Jonathan.)

Must gather PAs immediately. Also next time I’m hiring an AD. Scheduling is not my strong suit.

Having nothing better do to (I won’t be able to start doing anything substantial until early next week when we start in on locations and the actors) I’ve decided to sit around criticizing my screenplay.

You can read it here.

This is the first short I’m directing and I wanted to make a small film, something low key and more conventional, without as many difficult emotions or images. I thought it would be a little easier but I worry a lot about doing something with a lot of subtlelty – any idiot could probably film high drama but it seems like subtlety is hard.

The first image or feeling I got out of the film was that under some circumstances I think using hard drugs can be a defiant act, a refusal of the suffering that other people are inflicting on you, accepting the reality where you’re a member of the underclass and a victim. I think the screenplay drifted away from that – that would have a rougher, more visceral film and maybe would have been better suited for a young man.

Now it’s more an examination of prostitution (one conversation was taken about verbatim from a John who tried picking me up – you’ll know it when you see it) and Johns and drug addicts and pushers … One thing that always interested me just visually is that drug addicts tend to have an incredible vulnerability, an openness, on their face, like tenderness, pleading. Some – but not all, maybe not even most – Johns do too. You have these people who oscillate around Mina desperately trying to touch a wellspring of empathy and compassion in her – but because of class differences, the general impossibility of opening up so deeply to a stranger, they have to do it by using her, harming her – but her defiance is that she keeps that buried deep inside of her and uses them back in order to get to that place. There’s a core of anger buried very deep inside her character. In the original germ of this screenplay it would have been allowed to come out. It would have been about real drugs, heroin and cocaine, or at least they would have been used at some point during the screenplay. (I thought of her selling her future to feed a heroin addiction, but I thought that was muddy and that get motivation and the idea of the screenplay would not be clear.)

I’m naturally an intense, open person, so that might have been better suited for my personality … I’m going to be relying a lot on the talents, natures, and moods of other people so that it doesn’t fall flat on it’s face.

I talked some with Joseph, who I wrote his part for, about appearing shirtless in the film so that we could see his surgical scars (especially his most recent one from surgery to install a permanent colostomy bag). I thought it would give great insight into his character – why a grad student is living an isolated life at home with his parents, why he takes Mina to his old prep school to talk about the past (when he was presumably healthy), why he would be interested in accessing these potential futures or alternate realties to begin with – especially, why he feels cavalier about carrying on with Mina in a businesslike relationship instead of the future with her it’s implied that he saw. He has a core of disability, helplessness, and ruin. Sometimes people who have these long periods of physical sickness become completely helpless and impotent, like animals or infants, their life starts to become very surreal, almost fictional … His character is a person who has been warped by the degrading, dehumanizing enormity of complete and constant pain. Joseph’s comfortable with it, mashAllah, but thinks it would overly complicate the screenplay and his character. I’ll have to talk it over.