This weekend I spent a few hours with Tatjana showing her the locations I have and talking about the ones we need. This was no fun at all because my slipped disc was irritating me the entire time as we needed to drive a lot in the car.

Tatjana has since contacted a bunch of people about these locations and started organising things. She also recruited a young guy, Jeremy, who actually auditioned for Hilmar but was very enthusiastic about helping on the project in any way. So now he is location scouting! This is all great but unfortunately Tatjana has another project that pushed their dates and she has had to jump ship. A short but productive stint. We are meeting again to run over everything she has so far and hand over to Jean-Luc and I.

I went for a walk in Haras on Sunday and found a really great restaurant that would definately work. Tatjana met the owner on Tuesday night but he was not really interested in supporting low budget film making. He wanted to know how much he could get out of us so it's probably not going to work out. It's such a shame because that night I was already planning a few shots in my head having now seen what the restaurant would look like. Damn!

We've had two more casting sessions with actresses for the role of the waitress. It's a small role with a few lines. I think I have a favourite but I'm going to think about it over the weekend (if I have time!) I also met Constanz who is going to be our Costume Designer. She was very nice and showed me samples of the looks she thought might be good for Robert and Hilmar. This was great because they were exactly what I had in mind.

Simon got sponsorship from Diesel clothing. Subway, BMW and Audi unfortunately turned us down. Simon also found us a great Production Designer/Art Director. Her name is Kersten.
He also found us a stunt guy who would be perfect to double for Claus and do his stunts, plus he can play the role of the bartender. He's interested but he is in the Bavaria Film Stunt Show so it could be tricky for the time off. We'll see.

Jean-Luc met with the head of the Make-up Akademy at Bavaria Film last Friday, her name is Rory. They are totally in and she will find us two artists as well as personally supervise one of the more difficult make-up/blood scenes. Jean-Luc told me tonight that she finally read the script and that she loves it. Cool!

I'm meeting with a potential DOP tomorrow and we are going to contact a few more guys from the crew-united website. I browsed through them yesterday and made a short list because I'm biting my nails not having a DOP locked in at this late stage. Watched a reel tonight that was quite good so that's slightly comforting.

Only six days until we find out the FFF decision.

Hilmar!

I’m writing this at 7am in the moring because lately I am having trouble sleeping. My mind keeps ticking over hundreds of details about the film. There is so much to think about.

Yesterday Simon managed to get sponsorship from Puma. I think some shoes and a bit of cash. Not sure how much but every little bit will help. He has also been searching for crew and has managed to find 2 specialFX guys for the practical stuff, a loader, costume designer and maybe a sound design guy. All of which are willing to help out for free at this stage. If we get more sponsorship we can start to pay the crew which would be very nice.

On Monday night Jean-Luc and I met with another producer called Tatjana. She has quite a lot of experience with location scouting and managing and is coming on board to do just that. I’m meeting with her again tonight to show her the locations I already have in mind and talk about the ones she needs to help us find.

The big news this week though is that after seeing about 8 guys for the role of Hilmar we finally found our man, his name is Max. I finally got that great feeling in my gut when he did a reading with Jean-Luc. It’s the same feeling I had with Claus who is playing Robert. ‘Yep, that guy is Hilmar’ is what my stomach was telling me…or maybe I was just hungry. Anyway, that’s great news. I feel really sorry for all the other guys that tried out because they all were really great too and I feel humbled that they were all so keen to play the role. Hopefully I can try and use them in the future for other projects. So, Max is checking his schedule and if everything lines up then we have our man. Great!

I want to get Max and Claus together soon to go over the script for the first time and then later on do a proper rehearsal. I’ve been so busy I havn’t even had a chance to go through and make my own notes about the script. I wrote it almost a year ago now so I need it fresh again in my head before going through it with the actors. Things are getting really busy.

We have contacted a few DOP’s and hopefully will lock one in soon.

DOP's, Scheduling and stuff

Jean-Luc and I  met on Thursday night to meet a potential DOP.  Oh, first of all I heard from Denson and he informed me that he can’t do the film now.  He is shooting a feature in Australia with Toni Collette which starts during our shoot week.  Damn! (but great for Denson) Was disappointed that I won’t get the chance to work with Denson but as they say, the show must go on.  Fortunately Jean-Luc and Simon seem to know quite a few people and we have a few good guys in mind already.  

So, was supposed to meet one on Thursday night but his shoot ran long so it never happened.  It was a good chance for Jean-Luc and I to go over a few things though now that we are getting closer to the shoot dates.  7  or so weeks away.  I’m not scared, honest…ok maybe a bit.

We discussed and decided that Jean-Luc will 1st AD during the shoot and Simon will take on a Production Co-ordinator role.  I’m happy with this.  In the next month our goals are to lock in the cast, locations and crew.  I’m spending time this weekend doing more storyboards and trying to rough out a shooting schedule.  During the week I went through my shotlist and roughly timed out how long I think it will take to shoot, assigning 10, 15, or 20mins, etc to each shot then adding it all up.  Came to 42hrs not including breaks or transport time for all the exterior/location stuff.  We only allowed 4 nights to shoot this stuff so it might be a bit tight.  This works out to at least 10.5 hours a day and we will start around 5pm so that puts us wrapping each day around 3am or so.  Gulp!  We are considering adding an extra day for these ext/location scenes.

Simon has been contacting more potential sponsors.  Puma will receive the script this week and hopefully be thinking about chipping in.
  

Apologies for not writing more often but as expected I seem to have little time for the blog. I'll try and write shorter and more often in future.

So in the last couple of weeks many things seem to have happened. First of all I slipped a disc in my back which made it difficult to go to work because I could not sit without much discomfort and pain. On the plus side while I lay in bed for almost two weeks I could write a few things for the application. While Simon and Jean-Luc were busy working with Jochen and Jutta on the budget for the film I wrote character profiles, a directors statement and compiled a list of festivals that we plan to enter. Along with a few storyboards I had already done, CV's of all the key people, a rough post-production plan, letter's of intent for support from Bavaria Film, Trixter and others, Evan's beautiful artwork and letters from some actors, we had a pretty nice little package together that we handed in during the week. There were only 7 applications for funding so I think we have a good chance. Fingers crossed!

The casting has continued also and I have seen two more older actors for 'Robert' and four young guys for the role of 'Hilmar'. So far they are all very good actors but I am going to see a couple more before I make my decision.

Simon has contacted BMW and Coke to see if they will sponsor the film and they are taking a look at the script. We also sent it to '13th Street' which is an organisation that runs a film festival called Shocking Shorts but they also co-produce shorts sometimes. They havn't read the script yet but hopefully we will find out something this week.

Finally, yesterday Jean-Luc found the agent for the 'Big Star' we were hoping for earlier on. In a last attempt Simon gave them a call and eventually was able to send the script to his secretary who said they will read it. We cross our fingers for that too. We're running out of fingers!!!

Now that the application is out of the way I can concentrate more on the directing side. There is only about 7 weeks until we plan to shoot so I need to start nutting out the details.