Nostalgia

Feeling a sense of nostalgia due to me looking back towards the beginning of this production. There's a strange feeling that it was a life time ago when we were actually filming this project.

For anybody that knows little to nothing about the process of filmmaking here is the basic premise of how it works. It's a bit like a sandwich.

PRE-PRODUCTION
Production
POST-PRODUCTION

Why are pre and post capitalized? Because those are the two most time consuming aspects. But they also make up the bread of our sandwich. You can't have a high quality sandwich or hamburger without excellent bread or buns. I can prove this to you by having you purchase dirt cheap hot dogs but buying excellent buns. It's a great hot dog. Flip that procedure around, cheap buns and expensive sausage. Not so great.

This is my formula for my film.

Pre-Production:
-5 years until final draft of screenplay (this was not full-time work but probably over 1000 hours of accumulated work)
-5 months of prep time for film production including casting.

Production:
-Over the course of 3 days 1/3 of the film was shot. Almost all San Diego scenes were completed.
-2 days of shooting desert locations.
-2 days for San Francisco road trip.
-3 nights of filming night car driving (including reshoot)
-Other than this odd and end scenes were shot. Beach location was shot on 3 separate days due to scheduling and weather conflicts. A night parking lot scene was shot in this fashion in a single night.

Post-Production:
-Countless hours.
-Editing was taking place in between shooting. Documented in this blog are 15 hour editing days. There were plenty of them.
-Jason Rudd has been working ruthlessly on sound for over a month and a half now.
-Jason Downer was becoming soul crushed due to music burnout.
-Color timing took well over 200 hours of work including the render out.

So I guess the train of thought in this whole post was filmmaking is brutal. But if you want a great sandwich you need great bread and a delicious middle. It's just strange that the meat takes so little time compared to making the bread.

So many hours of my life have been slaved into this project. Sad to know that some people for one reason or another will simply not like the film. But hey, you can't please everyone. And on a side note, anybody that would make such a simple statement as "that movie sucked" has never made, and will more likely than not ever make, a feature length film in their entire lives. So they're opinions are almost obsolete.

I also wanted to note in this entry that it has been a wild, wild, wild ride making this. I'm coming towards the final line of completion and in a strange way I'm a bit sad of this fact. Even more bizarrely, I'm even a little scared. It's strange to have something with you for so long and to finally just say "Yep. All done." Seems surreal to me.

I want to welcome my new actors to this project but I'm going to keep them secret and not reveal their identities until I finish shooting the opening and closing scene of my film. We're scheduled to shoot the brief but critical scene on March 6th. Still waiting to see about weather and other logistical concerns.

Filmmaking's a drug. Through all the ups and downs (thrilled/joyous/suicidal/homicidal) I can honestly say that I have the desire and the burn to make another film. During the stress of the production I was certain I was going to call it quits, (almost always feel that way during any production I've done) but as the film begins to take its true form and make it's own little world the joy of playing God is overwhelming.

I hope each and everyone of you reading this enjoy the world I created with this film.

Much love,

-Ryan.