September Update

I spent this month sifting through the footage of Multilevel Relationship and uploading the best clips to the computer. Because we shot Multilevel partly in the house on Cedar Street, the scenes are strewn all across the seven tapes we used. Unlike the compact (locationally and time-wise) Stick In The Mud, which we wrapped in two days and in one location, we only filled three tapes worth of footage.

Andrew Gates who just happens to still work in my academic department, did a ton of the grunt work in cleaning up our logs and organizing the footage.

I was able to keep most of my Thursday's sacred for the footage. I have one other movie/art project that I had said yes to before we even started pre-production that I also have to fit into my Thursday-break-from-professor-like work. The good news is that it only managed to steal half a Thursday this month.

August Update

For both Daniel and I, August has been the time to catch up with all the things that we put on hold in order to make the movie happen.

For me that's meant getting ready for starting school and starting classes. For Daniel, it's included the overwhelming tasks of selling a house, selling most of his belongings, navigating a divorce and moving -- all while trying to father two-year-old twin boys.

We have divided the projects between us. Daniel will be editing STICK IN THE MUD.

I'll be editing MULTILEVEL RELATIONSHIP.

I'm eager for school to start so hopefully film editing will fit more neatly into the space that I've carved out for it (Thursday mornings --- and occasionally ALL DAY Thursday).

That's a Wrap!

After five days of early mornings, late nights, freezing waves, sandy bathing suits, amazing food, endless rooms constantly transforming from rent-a-center-bed-dorms-into-sets, ice cream, dailies, diabetic shocks, a hundred hilarious stories and one magical twilight hike -- we've wrapped primary footage for two short films.

The whole experience was as exhausting and exhilerating -- as fulfilling and rewarding as we could have hoped. I know that I can speak for the whole production team when I say thanks to an amazingly talented cast & a tremendously skilled and hard-working crew.

This kind of work -- creative, intense and chaotic -- can only be this enjoyable when you work with amazing people. It was a good four days...

Thanks to everyone who inhabited and pitched in at Cedar Street --

Danielle, Emily, Daniel, Andrew, Michelle, Johnny, Anna, Levi, Katie, Tim & Chad.

Great News About Our Cast

I'll post at great length about their various attributes later, but I'm happy to announce our cast...



Tim Carmany will play the role of STEVEN in Stick in the Mud



Katie Rose will play the role of JENN in Stick in the Mud



Johnny Russell will play the role of TERRY in Stick in the Mud and KENNY in Multilevel Relationship



Anna Carini will play the role of ERIN in Stick in the Mud and Becca in Multilevel Relationship



Leve Petree will play the role of AARON in Stick in the Mud

I can't tell you how excited I am about these casts. I'm actually (literally) dreaming them in their roles..

Good Things Coming Together

Our cast is coming together -- we should have more of an announcement about them soon -- but we're continuing to find great people to work on our team.

We're still looking for an audio technician if anybody knows one...

I do have to say a big THANK YOU to the folks at the Michigan Film Office! They've been very helpful -- even though our production isn't making the wheels of industry in Michigan spin (yet!), they've still been prompt, geneous & resourceful in the way they've responded to us...

Still Casting

We're receiving headshots and resumes from actors these days, and we're excited to see our talent pool growing. We feel increasingly excited about the group of actors that we're assembling. Have you sent your headshot in, yet? Your acting resume?

Hurry! We want you!

I just dug up an old headshot of Johnny Russell our lead for Multilevel Relationship. He's gonna make a great Kenny.

Technological Choices

Some of you know about some of the technical choices that we're aiming for in this film -- that will make things more interesting than the average Digital Cinema shoot.

Daniel and I just spent a weekend together and one of the choices we're wrestling with has to do with a compositing technique that we're using for a section of Multilevel Relationship.

The super cool hipster-rific choice is to use the ancient Hitchcock-old-school Rear Projection technology...the definitely more manipulable, but also way more synthetic technique of Greenscreening. Old School vs. New School.

No decision yet, just round one of the debates....