It's a Wrap!

Got the message last night.  Not by phone, not by telegraph.  Oh no.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Era of Facebook, which means I found out via my Facebook news feed:  An update from our director, Maurice Moore:

THAT'S A WRAP!!!!!!!! Wow...we did it. A beautiful feature film in 18 days. I am a blessed man!! To my AWESOME cast and crew- you guys were amazing. U made me look like I knew what I was doing. I'm forever in your debt!! Time to Party. See you tonight at the wrap party. Much Love...ANAIK FILMS 4-EVER!!!!

Along with the news feed, turns out that Laura Perez, our Line Producer, posted some on-set photos.  Which I quickly, but silently, pilfered for your Betterment.  You're welcome.

So's as not to spoil, I'll just present these shots without any details about the scene itself.  

That's Maurice and Nathan in the foreground, Director working with Leading Man: 

That's Maurice on the far left, with the camera pointed at Raney Branch sitting on the right.

Here's a great shot of the locale they're using.  Looks nice in LA, eh??

That's Moe on the left, our sound expert Jordan next to him, and that's Frank and Alex on the right. 

Here's a much better pic of Alex Rios, our producer/camera/post-production force. 

Here's his just-as-talented brother, Frank Rios, our Director of Photography:

Here's a pic of the source of our photos, Line Producer Laura Perez:

Thought I'd close out this post with one of my favorite pics:  One of the props.

Getting closer....

... to shooting, that is.  The latest word is, the Brothers Rios arrive in LA 4/24/10, do a week of pre-production strategizing, then out come the lights, cameras, and action! for principal photography beginning 5/1/10 (or therebouts).

And in typical indie fashion, Maurice got in touch with the writer (ahem) with a change for one of the key scenes.  Turns out we couldn't get a locale for Mayor Doreen's office, but we COULD get a restaurant locale.  (I would have thought it would be the other way around, but that's showbiz.)  Change in script required.

Fired up the last version of the script (Draft 6, dated 2/25/10), changed the locale in the slugline.  In a fit of inspiration, called Moe and asked if we could add a character.  He said go for it.  Back to work I went, and ended up with a scene that got more done, story-telling-wise, than before.

I love it when a spontaneous plan comes together.

Be back soon with on-set stills.  As they become available, of course.

I quit. But then -

We've made a few short movies here and there, and... it's a lot of work.  Though we shot "I Am Jesus" in 3-4 hours, it took weeks to align everybody with our location and our time frame.  And let's not forget the writing, preproduction, post production, the marketing, blah blah blah blah blah.

Extrapolate that out, 11 pages to 90 pages, and you're looking at a significant chunk of time.  So faced with that, with Christmas coming up and other expenses on the horizon...

I quit.

Call me a coward.  I just don't think making it half way to being done is the same as Success.  So instead of pushing forward, with a very real possibility of not making it, I postponed shooting my zero-budget feature.  It's not good form to get people involved, then pull the plug because of time or money or whatever.

So yeah, big quitter.  That's me.  But then?

Talked to Maurice Moore, a director/producer friend of mine in Los Angeles.  Said "Hey, you know anyone that would be interested in shooting a zero-budget film?"

He said "Yeah.  I would."

In the interest of making a long story short, I won't mentioned that he liked the script, that his people liked the script, etc.  We'll just report that Maurice is now gathering a team of LA-based talent to shoot Sixufus.

And ya know?  This may be a better ending than the one I had envisioned.

As we work through pre and post production, we'll be posting reports and film clips and whatnot here, so....