Pre-Production

Unto the Breach

Anything you say in print about making a film is always a massive understatement. When I say it’s been harder, more stressful, more harried, more time-consuming, more chaotic, than you can imagine, I mean that literally. Every day has been something new that threatened to sink the film. Every day we’ve figured out a way to stay on track, if not on schedule, and keep moving forward.

And now we’re here. The writing, the designs, the campaign, the fundraising, the meetings, the wheeling, the dealing, the plans, the building, the compromises, victories and defeats have all conjoined, and tomorrow, around 8:30 am, they will produce actual footage from a project that first entered my head in 2009. Aphorisms like “It’s been a long, hard road” don’t begin to describe it.

Is everything ready? No. As I write this, my amazing art department is putting the finishing touches on the sets we’ll be shooting tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night, after we wrap, I’ll be working on Saturday’s props. I’m just now finishing my shot lists and blocking notes. We’re all exhausted and excited and stressed.

But it’s always that way. Every film that isn’t some hundred-million-dollar epic with a crew of four hundred operates the same way. It just is. Today I was on the phone from 5am until 3pm answering a flood of questions, dealing with problems, etc.

Tomorrow, all the chaos will fall away, and all that matters is what we capture. When they talk about the magic of movies, they don’t mean how wonderful or spectacular they are, they mean it’s like a trick; you only see what we show you.

Tomorrow, we hope to show you the best face we’ve ever presented to an audience.

I have an amazing crew and an incredibly talented cast. I wish us all good fortune.

(reprinted from Bryn Pryor’s personal blog)

Final Weeks of Prep

We’re in full-scale pre-production on Cowboys & Engines. Sets are being planned, props are being built, costumes designed. We’re still in the process of locking down locations, but we know when we’re shooting; the second week in May is when it all happens!

That’s not to say there haven’t been any hurdles on the road to production; we’ve had casting changes, technical concerns to deal with and mildly contentious rewrites, but creation is a dramatic process by definition, and we’re all confident the final result will be stronger for the obstacles we’ve had to overcome.

As we get closer, we’ll be blogging more often, posting more pix and updates, and putting up the occasional small video, so keep a close watch!

New Kickstarter Video, New EPs

We’ve been trying to schedule time to sit down with Walter Koenig, and VFX Supervisor Ryan Carter, for weeks so we could interview them about the project, and incorporate those interviews into our Kickstarter video.

In the last two weeks, it finally happened. Both Walter’s interview and Ryan’s are up and on the Kickstarter homepage.

We’ve also had a huge boost to our campaign in the last week. Both of our Executive Producer spots have been taken; one by Mike Cabana, who is a good friend of Meghan Wren, one of our pre-viz artists. The second by Melissa Kimbro, a close friend of Bryn Pryor.

We’ll have bios up for both of them in the coming weeks, but both Michael and Melissa have hit the groud running, asking all the right questions and focusing on doing everything they can to help us reach that magic $100k mark!

Welcome to the family.