Woke up at the late-late hour of 6:00 this morning. Jet-lag bonus is already wearing off. I spent the early morning taking frame grabs of the casting video to send to fuego, and reviewing the performances again. Seeing the footage, my opinion on a couple of the early performance shifted for the better. Ruthie 2’s stock rose dramatically.

That info sent, I emerged from my haven in time to bid the breadwinner of the household a fond adieu as he set off for work. That left Yoyo and me to fend for breakfast and later to go out to a variety of stores to spend a large amount of money. Listerine, check. Flashlight keychain, double-check. (They were on sale for three bucks. The packaging made a big deal about how the LED would last for 100,000 hours, even though the battery would only last 25. Reassuring to know that when the bulb reaches the landfill it still has most of its useful life ahead of it.) The batteries are not replaceable, so I bought two. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished for a flashlight keychain when coming home to my Prague apartment in the dark.

But that has nothing to do with Pirates. I spent much of the day with Yoyo riding shotgun, including the time I spent with Rudy. He had picked up the nuclear warhead prop from a friend, but it was not what either of us expected, I think. It has taken me some time since seeing it to put my finger on where it falls short, but now that I look back Rudy was already responding to the problem before I even saw the prop. It doesn’t look dangerous. There may be some historical accuracy in this piece of metal, but I want people to be afraid of this thing, to know that in the wrong hands something like this can kill millions. Part of the magic of the script is that somehow you don’t think this thing is in the wrong hands at the end.

There was a moment during casting yesterday, when I realized there was depth to the script. For me, writing is about making a good story, and if you can go back later and discover nuances and complexities, all the better. Those subtleties were shaping the story as you wrote it, but only later can you go back and really understand them. After the second Ruthie had auditioned, I spoke briefly with the guy reading the other lines in the dialog. In the script it says, “Ruthie looks unimpressed.” He was rolling over that moment to get to her next line. “Pause there,” I said. “It’s the first time Ruthie affects Moab. That look is important. Let it work.”

Now, at some level I knew that this was a skirmish between the two for respect., but I had not articulated the significance of that moment so clearly before. At first, his capitulation seems like an expression of his weakness, but later you understand that his earlier speech was not bluster at all, and his backing down was out of respect for her strength. At the time, the line just felt right. Write the story first, worry about the significance later.

No action from Smithers. No word of Seldom Seen Smith. The time to write an inflammatory e-mail from a panicking writer/director draws nigh…

Sweet!

Thanks!

I woke up at 4:30, fresh as a daisy and ready to go. It was time to put jetlag to constructive use, so I spent the wee hours of the morning freeloading off the neighbor’s wireless network, catching up with emails, figuring out where things stood, updating my list of questions, props, equipment, and so forth. fuego had found a bit of internet in the czech village where he’s trapped with the rest of the crew of The rise and fall of the Frog Empire, and had sent a few questions. I answered them as well as I could, which wasn’t very.

One question was about the car. We have two candidates for chopping now, and both would work pretty well. One is a station wagon, and the owner has no concerns for the future of the body of the vehicle. It’s a little banged up, but it’s the first choice. I’m looking forward to painting Crusader across the tailgate.

I compiled a list of supplies I wanted to stock up on and did my best to find locations in Albuquerque to buy them. I had breakfast with my hosts and then set out for the first day of casting.

When I got to the place, there was already plenty of activity. I got lucky and found a parking spot just as someone pulled out – parking was a source of much consternation all day, as potential Ruthies and Moabs thought they were there in plenty of time, only to cruise the parking lot as the specified time came and went. It was all right, though.

Honestly, I wish I had that casting call to do over again. I’d never done one before, so my first inclination was to leave things to the experts. In fairness, a couple of times they asked me “do you want to see more?” and made it clear I just had to speak up. Still, I was reluctant. At first I didn’t realize that the candidates had not been given the full script, so in retrospect I’m surprised at how few people had questions about what the heck pirates are doing in a roadside diner.

There was a guy there giving the candidates some backstory and coaching. My first interventions were with him, straightening him out on some of the nuances of the story he was missing. A few times as he coached someone I could see them getting the wrong idea and I intervened then as well, but there were times I should have said something and didn’t. sometimes it was out of some misguided sense of fairness – the previous readers hadn’t got that advice, would it tilt the playing field unfairly if I warned the next ones of consistent mistakes the others had made?

Other times, my failure to speak was a product of an again misguided unwillingness to interfere with the casting people as they did their jobs. It’s stupid to thing that way – I could have helped them do their job better. Part of it was also fatigue. I felt good early, but the room was hotter than June Cleaver at a Fourth of July picnic. As morning passed into afternoon, the people reading the lines to the candidates started getting silly. I’m looking at the recording of the auditions now, and there are a couple of them I wish I had asked for a more serious read.

In my defense, there were more applicants than we were prepared to handle, and by the end I felt time pressure to get on to the next actor.

A note to aspiring actors – don’t be the first to audition, and don’t be the last. If you’re first, the crew hasn’t found all the pitfalls to warn you about, and if you’re last, they’re simply tired, and they’re thinking of all the other things they need to get done. About a third of the way through the auditions is the place to shoot for. Also – and this is important – read the script out loud, all the parts, before you step in front of the camera. There was a tricky part in our script, an unfortunate page break, that tripped up many a Ruthie. But some of them whooshed right through that section without blinking. On a tight schedule, showing up to the audition prepared is a big indicator of how ready you are going to be when shooting starts.

Due to an unfortunate faxing mishap, some of the actors were not given the luxury of preparation time. One of these guys stood out. He started by asking questions, and then gave a solid read. I was impressed, but physically he wasn’t really what I was looking for as a pirate captain. Still, he’ll do in a pinch.

At some point in the course of things Redbeard happened by. I liked him right away (he said he liked the script, and that’s all it takes to make me like you). He wants to be the Director of Photography. Rudolph and Red have a good working relationship. Red knows a guy with an insert vehicle. All around, it’s a perfect match. Rudy wants Red to be DOP.

Enter Smithers. Smithers wants things to go through channels, but from where I’m sitting the channel needs an enema and he’s the blockage. I want to sit down with my DOP and go over the storyboards in the next few days. I want to know how he sees getting this thing done and I want his perspective on the challenges. Three weeks before shooting it’s a challenge, two weeks before shooting it’s an obstacle, and one week before shooting it’s a rewrite. I’ve been on the scene for about a day now, and I’m getting a feel for the problems. Smithers may be a problem.

And where is Seldom Seen Smith, mentor, industry heavyweight?

The morning wore on into early afternoon, and our time in the studio was up. Rudolph (Rudy) and I agreed with the Art Director (Bonnie, of course), to head out to the Frontier for lunch. We talked mostly about Pirates, but some other things as well. Not heavy business, just a get-to-know-you kind of meal. Then is was back on the move, first to Bonnie’s to check out props and go over the storyboards. Bonnie is on board, and has a great can-do attitude. Chop the top off a car? She’s never done it, but there’s always a first time. She started asking me about what sort of look I wanted the film to have – she’s been studying various movies for ideas. I waffled, but now I have better answers. I’ll talk with her again on Thursday.

After than it was on to Rudy’s to go over some more details, then elsewhere to get a copy of the video from the morning’s auditions.

Jet lag was starting to take effect. DVD of most of the day’s performances in hand, I set out to a mailbox place to get it on the way to fuego – when I realized that he would not be home for several days. It was time to send a select few ones and zeros over the Internet. After a couple of errands I headed home (it took a little longer than it should have – someone had rotated Albuquerque 90 degrees).

One thing I noticed today, that I will be more diligent about in the future as I learn who is on my crew and who isn’t. There were a couple of snafus, and a couple of times when people did not respect requests for quiet. When we knew we were running out of time and there were still people to audition, I did not feel the sense of urgency I want to have on set. Most of the people who were there will not be on my crew, but I think I should have put my foot down a bit harder. At that moment, they were working for me, and even though I was the least experienced person there at filmmaking, these were my auditions and all the people there were my crew right then, and I’ve been a boss long enough to know when to assert myself. They failed a test, and so did I.

1

Sweet!

Thanks!

All right, you’ve heard (figuratively speaking) me going on about this whole Pirates thing. But what the heck is that all about?

Well, the Duke City Shootout is an unusual sort of film festival – making the film is actually a part of the festival itself. Out of hundreds of script entries, the best is picked in each of seven different categories. And here’s the cool part of the festival – the prize for writing a winning script is a movie cast, crew and equipment for one smack-down week of intensive film-making. All the shooting must be completed in three days, then there there are a few more days for editing, then the resulting films are judged and awards are given.

It’s not every day you get enthusiastic help to make your vision real, and in this case it gets even better. Some of the help and many of the judges are people even I have heard of. These are people that it’s worth having see your stuff even if you don’t win. So it’s exciting. As a career event, it’s probably more significant for fuego than for me, as he will get a directing credit on this masterpiece. Still, my resume will now include something called the “Federico Fellini Award”.

Best of all, we’re making a movie. Twelve minutes of cinematic magic from our heads made real with the efforts of a large number of dedicated and hard-working people. In the tradition of this blog I won’t be calling them by their real names unless they ask me to (you know, it’s always good to have a Media Empire as part of your PR machine), but I will be chronicling here the efforts of a crew of people with more dedication than brains as we try to create something we can all use as a calling card.

It looks like no one has ever tried anything quite this ambitious at the shootout. We come in with a couple of advantages – our director really knows how to direct (many of the other winners are more like me, I think), and fuego has connections in the biz, skilled people eager to help us out. Three days of shooting means that everything has to be ironclad ready-to-go when the shotgun sounds. Yes, a shotgun will sound. Our success will already be decided to a large degree before that. The right people, knowing what they need to do and when, and all the tools they need ready to go. Then, no doubt, there will be the times when something isn’t going right and we need to blast through it and just keep shooting.

So now I am sitting in a London hotel, on an overnight layover on my way to Albuquerque, to do anything I can to have us ready at the starting gun. Too bad I don’t know what I’m doing. fuego has given me some location scouting pointers, and I think I can provide a valuable opinion during casting, but other than that I’m probably the guy who drives to the White Sands gift shop. I hope they have snow globes.

Sweet!

Thanks!