The producers of Greta have put up a really slick flash site for the movie. Check it out. It incorporates a lot of the music and production design that's used in the film. I'm particularly enamored of the doodle animations.
There are also sites for the film on MySpace and Facebook.
I'll post more news about the movie when we know what the release plans will be.
I've been mum for a while because this bit of good news had not been officially announced yet and I didn't want to jinx anything, but...
My first movie just went into production.
It's called Greta, and it's being produced by Whitewater Films and directed by Nancy Bardawil. It stars Hilary Duff, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Murphy and Evan Ross. It should go without saying that I'm completely floored by this great cast, especially considering that this is a pretty small movie.
Here's an article about the project.
This project has been a long time coming. It's one of the first scripts I ever wrote and, at one point, in a careless moment, I nearly threw away the only existing copy. A number of producers have gotten involved -- and then uninvolved -- over the years. But it's finally, truly happening.
In one of my early posts, I talked about the bottle of wine that I've been saving until my Big Break, and how, year after year, no matter what good things had happened to me, I've yet to pop the cork.
Well, I'm about to pop that motherflippin' cork. And drink the whole damn bottle.
Last weekend was the second and last of the two-weekend shoot for my short film, Walking Wounded, and I'm still recovering. It's a 16-page script, which means we averaged four pages per day. That's like shooting a 110-page feature in about 27 days, which is pretty respectable.
The Panasonic HVX200 treated us pretty well. It's got its limitations -- gainy blacks, for instance -- but overall I'm very satisfied. It functioned flawlessly and we've got some great images. However, I don't know how anyone could work with the 4 or 8GB P2 cards. The 16GB cards were released right before this shoot, and we got to use two of them, for a total of 32GB of in-camera storage. That allowed us to shoot an entire day before off-loading, a process that took around half an hour or more. If we had to swap out 4GB cards so we could off-load and keep shooting, I think I would've jumped in front of a bus.
Among the random things I learned on this shoot...
- August in the San Fernando Valley is mighty hot, and white people who spend all day on the roof will get sunburned.
- Assistant directors and script supervisors are essential for any production that aims to be even a hair above amateur; I know because we didn't have one and we suffered for it.
- People who will work on your short for free because they like you -- or, even better, they like the project -- are priceless.
More updates to come as editing and visual effects get underway.
