It’s
been several months since my last blog entry. I didn’t have time to write
because I was busy FILMING THE MOVIE! The whole freakin thing!
17 locations, 28
actors 16 days and a lot of hard work.
So
how did it go????
I
think it went well. I can’t believe it’s finally over. This sounds very cliché
but I learned SO much during the process, and if I ever get to make another
feature, I’ll be way more savvy.
When
I look at the first video blog I posted back in May of last year, I now
disagree with many of the things I said. Come to think of it - maybe I should
take that video down so some other unsuspecting first time filmmaker doesn’t
stumble across it and take my bad advice. Or I should at least add a pop-up
annotation bubble to the video that says “DON’T LISTEN TO ME! I AM WRONG!”.
But
really, who knows. Maybe that old advice would work for some people. Everyone’s
experience is different. All I can tell you is what ended up working for me.
I
think the most important thing to remember is that you can’t give up. If you’re
serious about making your movie, then set a deadline and promise
yourself you will stick to it no matter what. Many of my friends who are
parents have told me; “There’s never a perfect time to have kids. You just make it work”. If you’re insane like me and care more about making films
than making babies, then I think the same advice applies. There’s never going
to be a perfect time to make your microbudget film. If you tell yourself to
wait for the perfect time you’ll be waiting forever. So, set a deadline.
I
set myself the deadline of Feb 6th 2015. Because this is the date I
get both my boobs chopped off.
WAIT
– WHAT!?!?
Yes,
you read that right. A bit of backstory:
Many
women in my family have had breast cancer, and last year, after a lump scare of
my own, I decided to get tested for the BRCA gene mutation. The tests came back
positive, which means I have a VERY high chance of getting breast cancer during
my lifetime. My doctors suggested a preventative double mastectomy, which will
take my chances of getting breast cancer down from 87% to under 4%. So next
Friday I’m getting them both chopped off.
Knowing
that this surgery was looming and that I would have to have a second surgery in
May for the breast reconstruction and recovery time after both surgeries, I felt
I wouldn’t have the energy to shoot this film anytime soon after all that. The
film had been cast, the locations had been chosen, I'd spent over a year
working on the script, I'd put so much preparation into place, there was no way
I was gonna let it all go and try to re-establish momentum one year later. In all honesty, the experience of trying to put the film together had been so gruelling for me, I don’t
think I would have had the energy to start from the beginning again after my
surgery. In my mind it was January or bust.
So
I began putting everything into place within my budget of $50,000. Then, two
weeks before I was due to start production, disaster struck… (Yes, AGAIN). A
family member who was going to lend me $25,000 for the film no longer could. I
was two weeks away from production and half of my already tiny budget was gone.
I would have to humiliate myself again and call the whole cast and crew to tell
them once again that the film wasn’t happening. I felt horrible. I cried on the
phone to my mother, who told me not to be so hard on myself and to give myself
a break. To wait til after the surgery and then see what happened. I cried to
my husband who told me that I shouldn’t feel like a loser. That I was a human
being and that my work didn’t define me – which was incredibly touching, but
somehow didn’t make me feel much better.
Then
my friend Lindsay called me about another project I'd been doing some work on.
She wanted to find out what my schedule was. I told her:
Something
you should know about Lindsay before I go any further: Lindsay is hands down
the most positive person I have ever met.
She
asked me what happened. I told her I just lost half my budget and was
supposed to start production in two weeks.
“How
much money do you have left?”, she asked.
“Under
$25,000”, I replied.
Lindsay
paused for a moment and then said “I think you can still do this”.
She
then proceeded to give me a pep talk about how it was entirely possible for
me to still make this happen. And it was exactly what I needed to hear.
Over
the next couple of weeks, I slashed the budget AGAIN, by half. I’ll go in to
more detail about how I did that in another entry. But we did it. I shot the
whole film. And I shot it before I got my boobs chopped off.
"To achieve great things, two things are needed;
a plan, and not quite enough time." - Leonard Bernstein
Our last day on set January 18th 2015
