Production Diary: Stockholm Santa

Dreadylocks

Dreadylocks

It's very exciting times, folks! Stockholm Santa is marching steadily toward production! In this thread
I'm going to document our journey from pre-through-post-production. As tempting as it is to just talk
up the project and make myself sound all super-professional, I'm gong to be as honest as I can here
about how this film is actually getting made.

At best it will be a place for some people to learn something, even if it's what not to do. At worst, well,
there will be a record so that the world will know how and when we died, and what we died fighting for.

Let's start with the basics, for those of you who aren't familiar with the project.

StockholmSanta.png


Download and read the full 8-page script here: http://www.sammigirl.com/santa/StockholmSanta.pdf

Brief Synopsis:
After briefly encountering and falling in love with a mysterious girl, young Brady goes on a mission to
find out who she is and where she came from. His yearning to find her leads him to do something he
never thought he would do: kidnap Santa Claus.

Who's on Board so far?

Sammi Stephans - Director and de-facto Producer

Ernest Worthing (yes, THAT Ernest Worthing!) - Director of Photography
http://http://www.ernestworthing.com/

Mike Farnham - Assistant Director

Joseph Weindl (aka CrackerFunk) - Editor

Dan Scott (aka Wheatgrinder) - Special Effects

Catering and Kraft Services - My Mom

What's have we got done?

The budget has been made, not met, and slashed. All props are either already bought or will be borrowed/donated.
My parents have agreed (to my wonderful surprise) to kick in a little cash plus pay for the food. Everyone
listed above is a volunteer, and the actors will be, too. Most of the meager budget I've got is going to pay
a sound person $50/day.

The script has been broken down and scheduled for a two-day shoot. However since the lead and one of the
other three actors are children, we're going to have a crew call for the day before to get the shots planned.
This way (fingers crossed) we can keep the hours for the kids to a reasonable amount.

schedule.JPG

Day One of shooting we've got 3 5/8 pages; Day Two we've got 4 7/8

[more to follow...]
 
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It went really well! Had a couple people call to cancel this morning, but everyone else scheduled showed up (maybe this is a perk of working with children, the parents don't let them flake). I would have liked more options for Brady but there is definitely at least one actor for each role that was excellent.

:D:D
 
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So now what's left is finishing my shot list, deciding on wardrobe and hiring a sound person.

I'm meeting with some sound guys this week. And I have a few days off so I hope to have all the other tasks done before my work week starts on Thursday. :)
 
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Well we're shooting tomorrow! The crew met up today and got the set dressed/went over everything. So on that end we're all set.

So far the only production setback is that our friend Ernest has thrown out his back. So I'll be playing camera op with his coaching. Wish me luck operating his 7D as I have no hands-on DSLR experience. (Of course I'm bringing my camera as back-up, since I know how to use it.)

But most importantly let's all send out out collective Indietalk positive energy/prayers, all film-related things aside, that Ernest feels better!
 
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We did it! It's in the can. Finished up pretty early yesterday, and the footage looks great :)

I just want to thank everyone here for their support, and especially those of you who have volunteered your time and money to the project! Ernest, Wheat, C-Funk, Nick, Bird, Jeff, you know who you are! :D

We do have one small setback, unfortunately. When I was reviewing some of the footage last night I discovered that basically one scene is gone. Well, not gone. The files are there, they just have 0kb of data :(

It's a pretty big scene, story-wise. For those of you who read the script it's the interrogation scene. I do have a little of it, in the form of the first take wherein the actor didn't know where his prop was and broke character to ask. So we've got about the first 3-4 lines. I also have the audio from all of the takes we actually did. We didn't do a lot of coverage since the kid was getting pretty tired and we were about to send him home for the night. Of course, now I'm kicking myself for not getting more and also for only checking a few of the files after the transfer and not checking them all. Lesson learned.

Ideally I'd like to re-shoot, but at a minimum it's going to cost me $82 to rent a camera and lens ($105 with insurance), I know I can get the kid back, I don't know about the actor playing Santa. The sound guy was super-nice so maybe, since it'll only be a 1-2 hour thing, I could get him to come out for $25 bucks. So that's $107... which is $107 more than I have :(

Other options being go from the bit of the one take I have, to maybe an exterior with the audio. But even with that we'd have to cut out a bit of the scene, since we can't just stare at the outside of the house for 1-2 minutes.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? (donations? ;))

I'm still optimistic that, re-shoot or not, we'll make it work. And I'm soooo happy about the way everything else has turned out. I'm really excited to get my rough cut done and then send it off to my world-famous editor!
 
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