I am mentally composing an episode to tell you about how things are going, focussing on two participants you haven’t heard much about yet. Before I did that I thought I should give you a run-down of the major people we’ve suckered into our adventure. As I get permission I’ll provide links to facebook pages and whatnot. (update: Facebooks links are apparently useless to people who are not already friends with that person — as far as I can tell — so I will not be including as many links here as I’d hoped.)

Me — I may not be the most important person on this project but it’s my blog so I’m going first. Plus, I’m the one who started the ball rolling by putting a small amount of money where my mouth was. I am the writer of the original story and a co-aurhor of the screenplay, along with my brother fuego. You already know more about me than probably you want to, so we’ll leave it at that.

fuego — the director. My younger brother and veteran of many major film productions. In fuego’s hands this project quickly escalated far beyond my original expectations. It only made sense that he upped the ante; he’s not in the business to produce crap, and to be worth his time the result of our endeavor has to be something he can show at film festivals with pride. His first message on the subject was titled “Taking over the world.” Not only has he been critical for adapting the story for the screen, he has been able to bring in plenty of film professionals who are between gigs right now. (The entire Prague film business is between gigs.)

Martin — Assistant SomethingOrOther, or maybe Assistant Everything. I met Martin a long time ago because we both spend too much time at Little Café Near Home. Martin knows a lot of film students and has done a good job connecting us with the best of them. He was especially important early on, asking questions I didn’t know to ask and generally thinking things through. When fuego and I asked him for someone to help us negotiate locations, he brought us Lenka.

Lenka — we really need to figure out the right titles for these people. It is because of Lenka that negotiations for locations are going so smoothly, and much more cheaply than we dared hope. When she is given a task she doesn’t schedule it, she does it. After reading the script, she felt strongly that one of our locations wasn’t right, got on the phone and set up another place in half an hour. While we were there for a planning session, she gave me a quick report on how her money-raising efforts were going. I tried not to get too excited, but it had quite simply never occurred to me to go out and ask people for money in exchange for a mention in the credits. “One can maybe do the catering,” she said, “and then pay a little more.” (Note to self: find out what a “media partner” is.)

Soup Boy — Director of Photography and storyboard artist. I’m actually the only one who calls him that, but there you go. Soup Boy is a good guy as well as a talented dude with a camera. He’s got a lot of things going on, so I feel fortunate that he has some time to work with us on this thing. His name will start to show up more and more as we get closer to shooting.

Jakub — Editor. When Soup Boy turned down the “opportunity” to edit our little show, Martin recommended Jakub, his brother, who is apparently tired of editing documentaries for television and would enjoy working on something that’s narrative fiction. He hasn’t been involved much yet, except to answer a few questions here and there, but he’s a good egg and works five minutes’ walk from me, so I’ll be able to pester him to my heart’s content.

We also have a sound guy, Aleš, and sound post-production (important with all the music). One challenge for me: Don’t get all neurotic about the sound after the problems with Pirates. Also we’ve had the invaluable support of Jessica, fuego’s mother-in-law, for casting facilities.

With the team coming together, I’m getting more and more excited about this thing. We have a chance to make something very cool, and not everyone gets an opportunity like that. I’m in over my head, but there are enough people around to lend me some buoyancy. Only a week and a half until we shoot!

1

Sweet!

Thanks!