In the last week, some significant progress has been made in pre-production of the screenplay, including a production schedule, a re-write of the script, and casting. Despite the progress, I can't help but feel slightly worried by what is still left to do as time runs out.
The first few days of the past week were spent re-writing the script. The ending had to be changed fairly significantly due to my own lack of decent research. Along with that, I simplified it down a fair bit too. There was too much back and forth going on, so I condensed a few scenes down into one and cut out the bits in the middle that weren't necessary. Suddenly 28 scenes became 22, and 13 pages became 12. Much easier.
In case you're wondering, I won't be uploading this version of the script until the film is released. This is mainly because of spoilers, but also because we're already at work on the next draft, so there's no point. The people who do have the script however *smooth segue* are the actors!
We now confirmed all three main cast roles of Dave, Kate and Damien. Once the final videos were sent in last Wednesday, myself and Robert reviewed all of them and chose the best people we could agree on. Then there were the tricky messages between cast to sort out, but nothing was too bad as most of those who didn't get a main role should be joining us on the shoot to help out and appear as background artists.
I'm very excited about the cast. All of the auditions were great, and I really enjoyed seeing my script come to life. The auditions for Kate in particular were all very different, but each one gave me some new ideas about where to take her character, so I'm extremely grateful. Contrary to what I said last week though, I won't be announcing the cast just yet. They have the all important forms to sign off, and I think it is best to not say anything at least until those are done. I might be really mean and stay quiet until we release a trailer...
There was a bunch of minor things that also happened in the last week, including emails about the location and messages about other various pre-production, but the one big thing I wanted to talk about was the production schedule. In total, it took me four hours to compile all the information on each scene to work out who should be there at a certain time, when we could and couldn't be in a location, and how was easiest to do it all in just 18 hours.
At least it did, until we were told we couldn't quite do it like that! As these things go, there are guidelines in place - in this case mainly about being up on a lighting rig - which you have to work around. All part of the fun, I guess. So a second production schedule later, the week came to an end.
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