Getting Ready

So, May 2009. Busy month, but not too bad. I attended a handful of business lunches, an ABC/Disney Fellowship Q&A, a comedy acting showcase called The New Comedy Adventure, an EP release party for “So Long Now” by Real George, a webisodes pilot premiere, and my first feature premiere ever, of “The Boys, The Sherman Brothers’ Story.” I submitted to the BlogHer Community Keynote. I went to my day job. I went back to yoga. I visited Portland and hiked in Washington. I saw Star Trek twice, the second time with screenwriter Q&A. Bliss.

My webisode shoot thankfully pushed to June 20-21. Preproduction ensued and continues. Production Meetings! Auditions! Location scouting! Shot design! Rehearsals! Much fun.

You might even call it heaven.

Schedule crunch be damned, I also made it to No Budget Film School this month, which I can report was very good and definitely worth the price of admission. Excellent course materials, too. My only warning, if it’s something you’re interested in, is that it ran over both days. Thankfully, the final session on Saturday was about alternative distribution, which I’m up on so I was able to leave right at 6pm since I had an evening commitment. On Sunday, however, I was very interested in the final speaker and so stayed until it ended at 7:30pm which was quite painful schedulewise. *Way* worth it, though.

Many things of interest from No Budget Film School, but perhaps the most interesting to me in terms of why-did-I-never-think-of-this is that if I ever decide to create a no-budget feature, I should totally be the field mixer while I’m directing. Sound has always been one of my fortes (and something that’s near impossible to get done for free) and one of the directors who spoke said he often held the boom. I love to field mix when it’s boom into the camera, or mixer on your hip. I can talk to the actors about their roles while I’m miking them up! Add a DP and a producer and I’m in No-Budget Business! So I’ve got a brain gerbil starting to run on the no-budget feature concept in the back of my mind.

Branded web content, however, definitely in the foreground. Actually getting a paycheck for directing in 2009 is so close I can taste it.

So I am way focused on my upcoming webisode shoot as well as various tasks still coming from my shoots at the end of last year. *Definitely* looking forward to the GRIT webisode project we shot last year hitting the web this summer! Web stuff is so fun; it really rocks. It feels like playing on my home turf.

I’ve also realized that I’ve sort of organically started studying the 1/2 comedy form in its various iterations, so that’s interesting. I would really love to shadow on a half-hour show in the fall, that’s for sure!

My big fail for May is that my business finances remain a mess. I bought new software… and that’s as far as that got. I’m still at receipts-in-a-shoebox status. Sigh. I also really need to clean up and organize my computers and drives. Not to mention my room!

Finally, on the plus side, I got my first projects ever – a music video shot half 16mm and half digital and my first digital short from film school – transferred from VHS to Quicktime last month. So I plan to get those up here in June. I think you’ll get a kick out of them.