Surprise Surprise....

No $$$ from the Austin Film Society. Really, I wasn' t that surprised. There was only 1 feature length narrative film on there that got actual money, and they seemed to have connections with the Motion Media Arts Center here in town. But it was a zombie movie, so you can't go wrong with that. Documentaries were the name of the game this year. And we're definitely not a doc or an "experimental film." I'm just bummed that we had to wait like 5 months to find out what I already figured would happen, cuz that's a lot of wasted time when I should have been more actively working on other ideas instead of wondering "what if they actually give us money."

Anyways, I'm kinda glad they didn't give us money, cuz I don't know what I would have done if things were actually easy. So what now? Well, Todd and I are exploring other avenues for funding. And by God we're going to pay people if it kills us. Prolly not very much, but it will at least be something, cuz working on a movie for 14 hours a day is one of the hardest things a person can do mentally and physically, so the days of free labor are over. Todd and I have been having numerous conversations about this stuff, and we're formulating a plan. I'm going up to Dallas in a few weeks to meet with him and our Storyboard artist (yes, we apparantly have one of those now) and we're going to put together a different proposal... a better proposal. And with that proposal along with the trailer we'll shoot, we're going to put our Producer hats on and try and convince the powers-that-be that this movie will make them money. And to tell you the truth, it really can. I'm serious.

So I'm hoping we can still make our start date in January, though I think we're going to shoot a week in January and then a week in March. (I wanna pull a Cast Away and allow a couple months for Todd to bulk up after we shoot the first act, cuz there is passage of time in there in which he goes from average joe to crime fighting bad-ass) So we still have a lot of crap to do; like that next draft of the script which I have no time to actually sit down and work on, but we'll make it happen. Apollo 13 was on last night, and as Ed Harris so awesomely says..."failure is NOT an option". Though if you know anyone who has lots of money to spare and wants to invest in a cool movie, let us know.

In other cool movie news, my main man Craig Elrod is having a reading of his script next weekend, which I'll be videotaping for him, which I'm super excited about. I read the script and it's good shit, so I can't wait to see the actors actually reading it out loud. http://craigelrod.blogspot.com/

Last weekend I was a PA/boom op/1st AD/lots of other shit on Paul Galvan's movie "A Neighborhood of Giants." I only was able to work on one day of the multiple day shoot, but my day was about 14 hours outside nonstop in the 100 degree heat, with lots of child actors, so needless to say it was crazy. I did have an enjoyable time though, so hopefully the editing goes smoothly on that cuz I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. The kids were all kinds of cute, so with that alone on his side it should be a good flick.

Support independent filmmaking, and watch the Emmys tonight, cuz Conan is the shit.