Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Epic Failure That Was 'Zombie Lecher'

Ha ha ha… well that was an unproductive summer.

So since my last post I’ve completely written 3 short films (and 1 feature). Almost finished with a 4th short.

How many have I actually made? 0.

Well if you’d like to hold me accountable for these one day, here’s a bit about each.

Zombie Lecher (27 Pages) ‘An old man is trapped in his house with 4 young women during the zombie apocalypse…most of them die’; Status - I tried to raise $4,000 to shoot this “professionally” (i.e. pay people) on Kickstarter. Boy did that fail miserably (we got to 5%). Had about half the cast down, there was a short list of actresses for the rest. I was looking at the storyboards the other day (I completely storyboard my films) and I still love this story. Maybe I’ll get to make it one day.

Dying Race (26 Pages) ‘Andy Schwartz has a crisis of faith amidst being kidnapped by a cult’; Status - I wanted to do this and Zombie Lecher together a la ‘Grindhouse’, but Kickstarter said it would be best to concentrate on just one short. I feel that after another draft this would have been EPIC. Another ‘maybe one day’. Oh and this is totally that short that I wrote the scene that is like a cousin to the ear-cutting scene in ‘Reservoir Dogs’. I was gonna have the person beating somebody strapped to a chair with a rock while singing ‘Rainy Day Women’. And since it’s technically a cover of that song, I totally could have gotten that licensed for pennies.

Four Miles From Buford’s (25 Pages) ‘Super-BFFs Rori & Cherry hunt for the infamous ‘Beale Treasure’ the day before Rori’s wedding’; Status - This was my back up plan, I had written it with the intention that it would cost almost nothing to make. The cast was small. But it’s too complex to just throw together and I don’t feel the script is quiet ‘there’ yet (I don’t think it’s funny enough), if possible, I could maybe do this in Mid-September. But that is a HUGE maybe, considering two of the three people I wrote the leads for are going to a college on the other side of the state this semester.

A Sideways 8 (9 pages?) ‘Ray is stuck in an infinite loop of breakups’; Status - If you follow me on twitter (I doubt it), I said I wanted to try to write something short, like 3 pages long. This is that story. It’s super contained, just two characters talking, in one room. Not finished with a first draft yet, but I just crossed in to page 8 and I’m halfway done with the final scene. If I make ANYTHING before the summer is out. This is it. Also wrote it for the two people that are leaving in like a few weeks, so I should get on that.

That’s how I spent my job-less/work-less summer. One of my good filmmaking friends is shooting another Sweded film, hopefully he’ll let me at least chill on set since the feeling of being on a set for a movie that you’re not directing is AMAZING.

What I secretly wish is that I had a really close filmmaking-buddy who’d like to take a crack at one of those scripts. Because I would LOVE to see what somebody can bring to some silly idea I came up with. And vice-versa, I would LOVE to direct something somebody else wrote, or hell if I just had a creative collaborator who I can build ideas with. Well a new semester is coming up in 3 weeks, so maybe I’ll meet this person.