My Short Film

Sorry I've been out of pocket the last week. Inspired by my friend's short film, I'm writing one of my own. I have this really great character-driven idea, set in one location (with a cast of thousands at this point, but once I see the sticker price, I'm sure I'll kill many of them off), set during one day, with some great live music by a friend (little does he know, heh, heh, heh).

Last night, I met with an old college friend who is now an award-winning producer (I love being her cheerleader!) who encouraged me to keep it character-driven and not turn it into a little genre movie. Our talk made me think more clearly about my motivations for writing the short film in the first place: I want to direct a feature.

I'm following my own advice on this one. I'm writing a short film in a genre I want to work in, building in some dramatic moments, some comedic moments, a fight sequence (to show I can handle action), and I have some strong ideas for the visual design (who can resist the Downtown LA skyline against sunset??), and cinema verité-esque montages. I'm planning to shoot in a variety of media (dv, S-16, S-8, B/W reversal and color reversal) and my lead has strongly conflicted motivations for what happens to him in the film. And there's a great twist.

Of course this is only the first draft and I haven't released it into the wild yet. We'll see what the feedback is. If it's bad I'll bitch about it here and hopefully one of you will cheer me up? :-)