[03 Jun 2003|07:50pm] This is Astrid Fingerhut, the other director--I think it will be pretty obvious to everyone which part of this film was written, directed, produced, and shot by women. ;) Well, the directors and producers averaged just about 8 hours of sleep over the 72 hours of filming . . . it was pretty tough today to jump back into my 9-5 life. Highlights: Co-director/producer Kelley, who worked tirelessly, stepped in to do whatever was necessary whenever she was needed, and never lost her sense of humor (much less her temper) . . . our DP, who is allergic to dogs, literally held her breath during the shooting so her wheezing wouldn't affect the sound . . . one of our actors spent about 6 hours Friday sitting outside on the front porch in the cold with the dog so he wouldn't whine in the background . . . two central actors came in less than a week before the shoot (one the day before we filmed) and were amazing and a joy to work with . . . our editors, who were calm and kind when we showed up in the middle of the night with that day's film, gave us beers, told us jokes, and did an amazing job of putting this film together. Actually, I can't say enough about the cast and crew that we had--they were all amazing. I'm still exhausted enough to feel a little weepy when I think about how many people I'm grateful to for this. Lowlights: Saturday morning, which was forecast for sunny and 70 ended up being rainy/gusty and . . . 1. Seriously, it was about 45 degrees and very windy and our actress was so cold her lips were blue. Damn, can you imagine what we could have done with 96 hours?! 2 comments|post comment

An exercise in compromise [03 Jun 2003|06:22pm] Hi. This is Geoffrey Fingerhut. Well, we did it. The 3 projects got finished right under the time line. Our start time was 10:00AM, Friday May 30th. The receipt from the post office says 9:46AM, Monday June 2nd. We had 3 different crews shooting 3 short films that are linked thematically. Each project had very different experiences ranging from very good to taxing. But ultimately we got the job done. I was director/DP of the second of the three projects. My crew was pretty bare bones but worked exceptionally hard. We had little hurdles all along. Rain, camera error, camera operator error, lines not memorized, traffic jam, bad directions, tornado siren, power outage. However, we had more good experiences than bad. We had good performances from actors, wonderful work from crew, and three locations that were very tolerant of our presence (even after we left the refrigerator unplugged spoiling a lot of food). The editing was by far the most difficult. It was hard to let things go in the interest of time. I'm still way behind in sleep... but that seems to be par for the course. See you at the festival. post comment

[24 May 2003|11:18am] I figure it's time to update the journal. A lot has happened since the last entry, namely: 1. We changed the name officially to "Down into Happiness." 2. We are shooting May 30th at 10:00 a.m to June 2nd 9:59 a.m. 3. Two of the three directors quit the project. 4. The two new directors are Geoffrey Fingerhut and Astrid Fingerhut. We're still trying to get a few locations squared away, namely the location of the ketchup drinking contest, but we're about 90% there. We are about 95% crewed up and we've got all the actors lined up. I bought a velvet painting of a cat on a piano, and there's a sale on 24 oz of ketchup for 99 cents... but we're still looking for lawn deer. Strikes and gutters. post comment

[22 Apr 2003|04:41pm] Hi This is Benjamin Fingerhut. A few words about the production of our movie. First off, I want to mention that the title Happiness is going to be changed. As I mentioned in my proposal I am definitely well aware of the Todd Solondz film and I certainly do not want to compete with that amazing film. When I found out that we had been chosen as one of the twelve participants my reaction was, "Yes!... Oh crap!" My friend and one of the writers on this project, Adam Kline, said it best in an email reacting to the news. It went something along the lines of, "You are a dumbass for entering this contest... dumbass!" We have our first production meeting tonight. post comment

navigation [ viewing | most recent entries ]