So this entry is a lot more like an overall review than just a monthly review as I try to determine exactly what went wrong, and what I can do next time to avoid these problems.
- Dispassionate actors
- Poor planning
- Stress management
Dispassionate Actors
My first mistake was in gathering actors who had their own set of priorities over the movie. The reason being that most of them were still in high school, and many things in their educational and personal lives still take hold of most of their time.
This is a problem I've encountered every time I've made a larger live-action film, but I thought that this time, I would have solved it by going to my old school's Drama Club and getting actors there. But as it turns out, that only solves the problem of getting actors involved. It does not solve the problem of actors quitting halfway through production.
The other group of actors that were difficult to keep hold of were people who were friends of friends. Fortunately, this group never failed to quit before their audition.
The only group I could depend on were friends of mine who had also already graduated, and though they had college classes and jobs, they still wanted to see this movie made. They're the only ones I'm disappointing with this news, so I'm planning on getting a new project started for just them. Because they're awesome.
Poor Planning
I tried to keep planning as flexible as possible, which in retrospect might have been my downfall.
I started auditioning people in December, and I got to the read-through in March. With a movie that's dependent on a school year schedule, that wasn't a very good starting pace.
Though I finished my script in October, I probably should've waited a year and started pre-production in August, in order to give me 9 full months to get the movie done.
Stress Management
The worst one of all.
The last couple of weeks, I've been stressed about things beyond my control, such as people making the auditions or rehearsals, or whether or not they'll cancel or not.
The last time I was this stressed on a set, I got a sinus infection and it lingered for a whole week into production. Needless to say, the final product was not as good as I hoped.
It's just pointless to stress about things you can't control, but it was getting to the point where stress was all I could do.
I was completely and totally unhappy with the direction that this movie was going in, and I felt that I could've done better. So, I finally decided, before we went any further, to just stop.
I think I made the right decision.
Conclusion
So, what now?
Well, I'll still be working on short projects. Like I mentioned, I have an idea for a short with my friends and me. It'll be nice to just have fun with filmmaking again.
In the meantime, I'm currently working on a documentary that I'll reveal more details about later. I've always got FlowDownStream and Newgrounds, and I've even got a few tunes in the works.
So I'm okay for now. And I hope you are too.
:),
Conner
