I hope everyone had a very wonderful Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Kwanzaa. I flew out of LAX on the 13th to visit family & friends for two weeks in Michigan - and as usual, those two weeks over much, much too quickly. I had to head back to LA on the 25th... and since then have been house & dog sitting with Amanda, in Van Nuys, for her Uncle Dennis. Actually, this entire month has flown by much, much too quickly.

I'm hoping next year my family can fly out to spend Christmas with me, here in California. I'll get a little seven foot palm tree, and cover it with lights and ornaments. We'll have xmas morning with all the windows open, and a warm breeze blowing. Maybe we'd spend the rest of the day on the beach in Santa Monica.

Thanks so much to all the people who gave money to 'pedal' - the project still has a long road ahead of it, financially speaking, and I've been, over the last week, working on a budget page that will help clarify what we are trying to achieve. I'm hoping to have it up in the next several days, but first...

The project is at a fork in the road - the biggest fork it's ever come across, and I apologize in advance for being so vague, but I still have one last person to discuss this decision with before moving ahead. But this "fork" will have dramatic effects on the way the film's budget is spent.


On an unrelated side note - every few days, for the last several months, I've been checking on 'Dove Sei Tu', a blog by "girl with a movie camera" - only to find that nothing new. She had disappeared with no warning. But yesterday, she finally came out of hiding and posted a sneak peak at her work... I thought I'd do my part to spread the word and post her trailer here. Enjoy.

Labels: Pre-Production

After a slight weekend delay - due to a faulty package barcode - the mac mini has finally arrived at my door.

It happens to be "one of those" mini's that have been quietly upgraded a bit. Instead of running at 1.4 GHz, it's at 1.5, which isn't anything to brag about, but every little bit helps. And also, I haven't tested it out, but apparently it's suppose to burn at 8x, instead of just 4x.

But, all technical-talk aside, I can't even begin to explain how excited I got when I opened up Final Cut and it flew thru clip after clip with out a moment's hesitation. No more lagging. No more freezing up. No more ten minutes of rendering just to skim through a 45 second clip. It's been too long, I've missed editing so much... more than I realized, and I thought I missed it a lot to begin with.

I've been keeping an eye on a handful of AG-DVC30s on ebay recently. I'm hoping to purchase one before heading off to Michigan for the holidays - a friend in Ypsi has asked me to film a Zombie Clause event in Ann Arbor on the 16th... which, to me, sounds very, very strange and therefor... interesting.


I've been sitting here debating back and forth whether or not I should even discuss this kind of topic here on the blog for the whole world to read... I realize that last sentence is very "huh?" - to explain: I recently mailed out a stack of fundraising letters to, mostly, family members. Well, the other morning, I received a call from someone in my family - whom I did not send a letter to (mostly because this person is near me in age, and since I'm fairly broke on a consistent basis, "well, you know")... The "well, you know" line was an impersonation of Ritter in 'Noises Off', a movie that is hilarious on a level I can't fully get into at this point in time. I'm getting side-tracked.

Where was I? As some of you might remember from this post - in a later section of the letter, I proposed that two or four people invest $2,000 to $4,000 in the film. To me, this was a comfortable amount, and I am very uncomfortable talking about money, period, but as much as it could be, it was a comfortable amount of money for me to borrow for the film's expenses. Right, so I received a phone call and - when I realized the call was about the letter - I thought a generous offer of 2... maybe 5 hundred dollars was coming.

Instead... I was offered $4,000... which, among other things, threw me off for a moment. Well, it still does throw me off when I think about it.

Now, I should state very clearly before I go on - that I hope my discussing this publicly isn't out of line for the person I'm anonymously referring to above, and that their offer was and remains very, very, very (*insert "very" 3,997 more times*) appreciated. I feel lucky to have family so giving - I feel as though, just the offer itself, has lifted a great financial pressure off my shoulders, etc.

Here it comes: But - this person has children... and I can't even begin to imagine the guilt I would feel if, say, after using the said $4,000 on the film, they found themselves in a unforeseen financial situation where they needed that money desperately for a child-related-expense. Is it over-dramatic to have this worry in my mind? Am I going to find a reason to be uneasy about accepting any money from any person, no matter what their situation? Am I turning great news into... something... less great? Is all this a hypothetical question - and I just needed to write it down?

The answer to all of these questions is probably: probably.


The main reason I debated so much about bringing this subject up at all is - this site has evolved from, quote, "an extensive and personal 'behind the scenes' look at the making of an independent film", to a site that acts less as a personal documentary-related journal, and more of a front for a film that has yet to even begin filming. 80% of the ups and downs of the film aren't brought up here, simply because a person related to that "up" or "down" might read the site and take it the wrong way.

I don't want to give the impression that every-time someone comes forward with an interest in funding the film, I'm going to announce on this site. This situation - I felt was unique. Okay, that's that.

Labels: Pre-Production