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Jeremy LaLonde's Blog Entry - January 25th/2007
So we’re t-minus two weeks away from shooting the Bravo!FACT and I’m stupid-excited. Been working with the Production Designer to get the artist’s work/loft designs in the right order, as well as running around town with Mr. Anthony Grani to lock down locations. I’m hoping that by the end of today we have everything set in place so we can officially book all of our crew and whatnot. Jeremy LaLonde wines and dines Something I meant to mention before but it slipped my mind was that a few weeks ago my producer, Anthony, and I decided to have a dinner with our two leads, Ms. Mary Krohnert and Mr. Andrew Pifko, both brilliant actors. What does it take for me to consider an actor brilliant you may ask? Well for one it’s all about “getting it”. Which comes down to, if they ask questions about the script/character, they’re asking the “right” questions. Questions that make sense. Questions that will actually make a difference to their performance. Not “Would my character be the kind of person who eats bacon, or sausage for breakfast?” kind of questions. (unless you’re shooting a scene wherein they order breakfast and you ask them to improvise). And yes, an actor asked me that once for a role where there was no connection to breakfast meats in any way shape or form. I responded by telling him was a vegetarian to which he raised his eye brows and said, “Well now, that changes everything, doesn’t it?”. So the lesson is if you get a weird actor like that, don’t try and mess with them, it just makes it worse. But more on what makes an actor brilliant is someone who just shows up with their A-game, and I don’t just mean they’re off-book, it means that they’re so off-book that they could do a completely improvised scene and the character fits in like it would in any written scene. It’s about doing the research and figuring your shit out. To a director, at least to me, an actor is not a painting or a prop, I don’t want an empty canvas showing up on set. I want a big fucking sketch book full of ideas and thoughts. In my opinion a good director does most of their directing in casting, picking the right people, if so than directing on set should be fairly short hand. So getting back, we decided to have a sit down and chill dinner which I think is a great idea, especially since I don’t know Mr. Pifko that well, a nice little ice breaker. Try to work this into your budget, or just cook something for them. Goes a long way, I think. Jeremy locks shooting dates That heading should actually read “Anthony Grani locks shooting dates”. I just got a call from Mr. Grani letting me know that we’ve got our official shooting dates for the beginning of February so we can start gearing towards something. Lots to do in the next two and a half weeks. There’s a few roles I still have to cast. One of the small roles I have an offer out to a Canadian celebrity, so we’re still waiting to hear back on that one. This is all very very exciting. Jeremy talks about shooting format So in my last log I bitched about film Vs. digital. I should probably mention what format we’re shooting on. Sony has a new, and I say new with ignorance since I’ve really only be aware of it for about eight months or so, format called XD-CAM. It’s using disk technology instead of tape. A lot of shooters, including mine, Zach Melnick, love this format. It’s a slight hassle in post, although it’s getting to be less and less that way as technology catches up. Up until the last year I was mostly a Final Cut Pro guy, lately I’ve been cutting on Avid mostly because of where I’ve been working, and so I’m going to try editing my new short on Avid. Now here comes the issue. XDCAM is completely compatible with FCP, not so much with Avid, although in the last few days I’ve made a breakthrough and found a way to do it. The XDCAM is supposed to mount like an external drive so that you just have to drag your clips into your editing program, which is way cool and saves A LOT of time. For you editing geeks on Avid all you need is to download some software from the SONY website called XD TRANSFER. You don’t have to open it or use it – it just has to be installed on your system otherwise the system won’t mount it on your desktop and you won’t be able to drag your clips in. I’ll get into my feelings about editing technology in a future blog. So there’s my little techno blurb for the time being. Jeremy and his group therapy I got to a writer’s group once a month. It is run out of the Liason of Independent Film in Toronoto (LIFT) and moderated by Aron Dunn who is a Development Executive for Portfolio Entertainment Inc. and an all around good guy. What I get out of a writer’s group is a little extra knowledge. We get great submissions, horrible submissions, all which help me as a writer. I think it helps to look at someone good and analyze it and figure out why it works. On the contrary it’s almost more helpful to look at someone bad and figure out why it doesn’t, what would I do to make it better? Over all it sharpens my story telling skills. I find just meeting and having debates with other writers often helps stir up my process and helps me to get the best out of myself. Writers, by nature, are kind of hermits. For some that’s best, but I’m the kind of person who likes to throw stuff out there to see what works. I think it’s important for any kind of artist to get feedback, especially honest feedback, but mostly it’s important for an artist to not take it personally. Going to script readings and writer’s groups the saddest thing that I see is people who think their work is already perfect. Why go? People who, when you make a comment about the work, they take it more personally than they should. I find it a bit sad when people aren’t ready to improve. As an artist you need to remove the ego, you need to say “This is my idea, this is NOT me. Here it is, how can I make it better.” Jeremy is stupid busy So I started writing this blog entry about a week ago and then my life spiraled out of control. Got busy with an editing project at work, and we had, what could have been a major set-back with the short. We found out that with ACTRA on strike they're no longer allowing TIP productions. So if you want to shoot you have to pay the full rate, plus the 5% contingency. Which, because of the amount of extras we want, really kind of screws us up. However Mr. Grani, the wizard of the budget, has found a way to make it work. Also the nice people at ACTRA are doing their best to accommodate our needs without breaking our bank. The big key it so ALWAYS ask for what you want, you might not get it but so what? Someone famous said that if no one ever tells you no you're not asking for enough. I agree. Just found out that the Toronto Arts Council is not going to throw us some cash for "Hoff's New Direction". I have mixed feelings about this. We're working on some sponsorship, but grant money is always better because it's usually pretty guilt free and not tied to anything really. This is my third rejection from an arts council in the last year, and coming from a guy who worked on projects for several years that was solely based on grant money it's a bit of a blow. You can't help but take it personally, wonder what's wrong with you, your approach. I think that I'm just not putting enough of "me" into my proposals. I'm used to a more formal professional approach, looking at filmmaking as a business, however for the arts grants I'm starting to realize that's not the best approach. I've read a friend's approved grant application and it's a little more... is bleeding heart the right word? But then again they got the money. Who knows. Jeremy prepares to shoot So we're a week and a bit away from shooting. Mr. Melnick is in town this evening so we're going to have dinner and discuss the photography and all that jazz. I've been working on redoing my storyboards based on our actual locations, but I've been lazy/busy. That'll happen in the next few days. Also I'm very excited for this Saturday when I get to see some preliminary work from my wonderful Production Designer Ms. Meaghan Lynch (I hope I spelt her first name properly, I know several Meaghan's and they all spell their name differently). So everything is looking good. I've cast one of our supporting roles last evening and we're still waiting to hear about the cameo. I'm just about to call Ms. Krohnert to discuss her character/wardrobe, etc... Talk soon! 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