It's my first real thread, very exciting.
I just finished my first film as producer/director and it was a remarkable experience. It took a year and a half, everyone involved had day jobs (except the actors) and we had zero budget. I could go on and on and on and on and on...
...well, you get the picture. But I'd love to hear other people's war stories, success stories, tragedies, etc.
In the course of those 18 months, various crew did the following: refinanced a house to buy a camera and software, had two foreclosure notices on a property once coming within three days of actual repossession, lived without water for a month, suffered three broken relationships, nearly burned down an historic theater while shooting, had a film shoot interrupted by a cop on a Segway who though a fake wedding in a public area without a permit was real (didn't he see the tennis shoes on the priest? Thank god he missed the puppet peeing in the punch bowl; I think that would have given it away.)
We also had two hard drive failures, one motherboard failure, one indoor shoot in a great location with the day-for-night turned on resulting in horribly dark footage, delayed shooting several times because the lead actor kept getting paid gigs (good for him, what can you do when someone is donating their talent?) had an actress on our first day of shooting refuse to move until someone rescued an abandoned puppy that later became the director's on-again, off-again girlfriend's dog who later chewed up his son's Christmas toy, cast three different people in a part in one week, lost wardrobe, forgot wardrobe, lost a tape of adr.
We also plugged into a great pool of local talent who were more than willing to work with two unknowns on faith in a good script, got great performances, learned to capture, edit, green screen, make a dollar stretch a loooong way, built momentum and enthusiasm and finished the whole damn thing and have a local premiere in 5 days. We fixed problem scenes, touched up footage that looked flat and miserable, adapted when we had to, rewrote and streamlined.
Okay, that's the abridged version of my story, what's yours? There have to be similar experiences, funny, sad infuriating stuff. Rotten actors, bad scripts, absurd situations, jail time...what's your favorite story from your favorite project?
I just finished my first film as producer/director and it was a remarkable experience. It took a year and a half, everyone involved had day jobs (except the actors) and we had zero budget. I could go on and on and on and on and on...
...well, you get the picture. But I'd love to hear other people's war stories, success stories, tragedies, etc.
In the course of those 18 months, various crew did the following: refinanced a house to buy a camera and software, had two foreclosure notices on a property once coming within three days of actual repossession, lived without water for a month, suffered three broken relationships, nearly burned down an historic theater while shooting, had a film shoot interrupted by a cop on a Segway who though a fake wedding in a public area without a permit was real (didn't he see the tennis shoes on the priest? Thank god he missed the puppet peeing in the punch bowl; I think that would have given it away.)
We also had two hard drive failures, one motherboard failure, one indoor shoot in a great location with the day-for-night turned on resulting in horribly dark footage, delayed shooting several times because the lead actor kept getting paid gigs (good for him, what can you do when someone is donating their talent?) had an actress on our first day of shooting refuse to move until someone rescued an abandoned puppy that later became the director's on-again, off-again girlfriend's dog who later chewed up his son's Christmas toy, cast three different people in a part in one week, lost wardrobe, forgot wardrobe, lost a tape of adr.
We also plugged into a great pool of local talent who were more than willing to work with two unknowns on faith in a good script, got great performances, learned to capture, edit, green screen, make a dollar stretch a loooong way, built momentum and enthusiasm and finished the whole damn thing and have a local premiere in 5 days. We fixed problem scenes, touched up footage that looked flat and miserable, adapted when we had to, rewrote and streamlined.
Okay, that's the abridged version of my story, what's yours? There have to be similar experiences, funny, sad infuriating stuff. Rotten actors, bad scripts, absurd situations, jail time...what's your favorite story from your favorite project?
