Long time, no blog.
Believe me, I haven’t spent all this time sitting around playing Left 4 Dead (if only!) The something potentially awesome that I had in the works seems to have fallen through, so it really wouldn’t even mean much to relay what that was – though it could have been pretty awesome.
I know not many people read this, so what I tap out here is more for my sake than anything else, a way to track what I was working on and when and what became of it. So, I figure, since I’m about to head off down another, hopefully not futile, path I should log it – or blog it.
I have, for the past many months, been trying to concoct something to shoot for a feature film. I’d hoped it would be Detox, but that one is proving too expensive without investors. I’d thought, naively, that a short film would be enough of a proof of concept to generate interest for a feature. Apparently it no longer works that way. So, I’ve decided an actual feature may be a better proof of concept to, hopefully, get funding for Detox. The problem I kept running into was that every idea I had ended up being even more expensive to shoot.
So I went back to the basics.
What I’ve got cooking now, I think, as of now, will be cheap enough to self-finance – or at least need little investment money – and still be something I would be proud to be credited as “A Michael Dunn Film.” This “something” has yet to be scripted. See, that’s where the new thinking comes in. I’ve spent quite a lot of time researching how to make a microbudget feature. There’ve been some people that have offered some good advice – despite being dickheads – and some who’ve given what seemed bad advice and proved to be decent guys. I’ve been taking it all in and have a plan that – hopefully – will work and will result in being able to have a finished feature-length film under my (and my collaborators’) belt without affecting the day job.
Suffice to say, the biggest piece of advice, at least in the scripting stage, is to write around a location. Our biggest expense on “The Bet” was building the sets – in money and time – so, if Matt Wilkinson (producer of “The Bet”) is onboard past the initial “You interested?” stage (which he’s already mostly onboard at this stage) – basically after he reads the setup – then we’ll move on and scout locations which will be factored into the script.
From there, with a finished script, we’ll move ahead to breaking it down and budgeting to see how much the whole shebangy will cost. And, if feasible, make a feature.
Stay tuned.
There’s not much to go on here, but sounds intriguing. Keep us posted!
V xx