Yesterday I brainstormed with my friend & co-writer on ideas for the new draft of our feature screenplay Like all such things, it's taking longer than we'd like to get it where we want it to be, but we'll get there, one revision at a time.
A lot of planning in pre-production is finding out what works and what doesn't work. Me personally I focus on how I can make it work, with the limited resources that I have. I noticed too much of my time was spent on trying to have a polished project, Sometimes those projects that are polished are not the ones that are perfect, but they are the ones that are meaningful and have a greater emphasis on purpose.
Just co-founded Chichester Filmmakers to help develop skills, retain local talent, and sew the seeds for a kindling film industry on the south coast of England. First 2 short films are in Development and PreProduction with another beig developed for 2025, and now talking to potential funding sources to do a feature film.
Even though streaming dominates the movie market, I'm still tickled that my movie Detours is now available on DVD through Walmart on line & Amazon, & coming soon to Barnes and Noble & FYE.
Pre-pre-production: Gearing up for the next 2 short film shoots here in the UK for 2024, AND just created a new Film Makers club for the City of Chichester (@Chichester Film makers).
The little things that make me (very) happy:
a follower on Threads (aka the new Twitter?) who I don't otherwise know said the following to me after watching Detours:
"I enjoyed it tremendously. I laughed and cried, but most importantly I felt better after watching than I did when I started."
We all know what a slog it is to make a feature, so any time I get positive feedback, it helps. A lot.
I appreciate the mentions by friend/collaborator Tara Westwood. Her description of our project is perfect: "Mara and I are now co-writing a feature about medically assisted death (trust me it’s a lighter story than it sounds)"
We've discussed (many times) the importance & difficulty of promoting our work with minimal budget. I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by Canvas Rebel about the joys & challenges of being an indie screenwriter & making my 2 features. You can check out the article here: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-mara-lesemann/