Typically, if you're moving at a decent clip, you should be able to knock out a 90 page script, on weekends only, in 3-5 months.
My latest took 2 years to shoot!
Stuff happens. In my case, I shot a few scenes and cut together a trailer, then spent 5 months trying to raise funding. I live in a tiny, poor, rural area, so there are few locally who can afford to invest. I had some outside contacts who were interested, then the economy imploded and everybody panicked and backed out.
Where I live it rains 9 months out of the year. By then summer had come, so I had a brief window in which to shoot. Several of my principal actors live in Portland, which is 2 hours away. I decided to go ahead and get as much as I could during the good weather, but due to people's schedule conflicts I was limited to a few weekends. Then the rains hit again and I went back to trying to raise funding. But the economy didn't get any better.
Meanwhile my male lead lost his job and his marriage fell apart, and his new job required him to work evenings and weekends, while his co-stars worked regular day jobs, so scheduling became even more difficult. The next summer rolled around and I'd saved enough money to continue shooting the rest of the exteriors, which we barely managed to do. I also had no crew by then because my local volunteers discovered out how much work it was and stopped showing up, and I couldn't afford to hire replacements out of Portland. I also had to let my production manager go because I could no longer afford to pay her salary.
About a quarter of the movie takes place in a tavern. Because of the time required and complexity of lighting and shooting those scenes, there was absolutely no way of shooting in an operating business. We had previously arranged to use a closed cafe space that was part of a hotel. They had already given us permission, as long as we carried liability (we did, of course). I was ready to move into the space and redress it as a tavern in order to pick up the remaining scenes, when the hotel called and informed me that their corporate owners had withdrawn their permission (we hadn't been told they needed to clear it with them). Insurance or no, they weren't even willing to discuss the matter.
Since the corporation didn't actually
own the space - just leased it - I contacted the actual property owner to see if he could pull any strings. He said he might be able to, but was at that point embroiled in a huge real estate deal which monopolized his time. Several more months went by while I waited to hear from him, meanwhile looking for another suitable location.
A co-worker happened to hear about my search and mentioned that a tavern in an even smaller town a few miles away had closed down. She didn't know why, for how long, or even who owned the place. I went and peeked through the windows. There were no signs explaining the closure, no contact number, no "for sale" sign, nothing. But the place looked ideal for my needs.
I managed to trace down the owner (via MySpace!). He said they'd closed down for the winter and would re-open in the spring. He had no problem with us shooting there, but his reopen date was only a month and a half away. My male lead, meanwhile, had gotten another job that freed him up on weekends again - that was the good news. The bad news was, my female lead from Portland had landed a paying role in another feature that was shooting
that very month, and her hair was a completely different color and style for the role. She would be free again in the spring, but the location was NG by then.
We shot around her, and I told her we'd shoot all of her stuff in one day if she could just get away that long. She agreed, and for once I got lucky and both leads had a day free at the same time! We purchased a wig to try and match her hair to previously shot scenes, and shot close-ups and green screen material so the other actors with whom she was supposed to appear could be cut in/matted in later. We managed to get everything we needed that required seeing her face, then I found a body double and put her in the wig and costume to shoot the remainder. We struck the tavern set the night before they re-opened for business.
Sorry for the length of this!!! This is the first time I've written all this out and got carried away.
Why, you may ask, would I continue with a project that was so obviously cursed? Cuz I'm a unique brand of stupid.
