Fall semester had started and I was ready to make my film. I wrote the script and when I received it back from my teacher I got a pretty good grade. But at the same time I felt like it was more of a 'WTF?' moment. My teacher wondered if I was absolutely sure I wanted to do this film. I didn't hesistate and I said "Yes"; he didn't mind at all.
So my shooting script was approved for filming and I was ready to go. One thing I forgot to mention was that at the same time I was writing my script, I had every single shot planned in my head. So in order to preserve those shots I fired up 3D Studio Max and created my animatic. I decided to create an animatic instead of drawing storyboards because when I was drawing story boards, I wasn't getting the feel for each shot. Here is the end result:
Doing this really helped out when it came to filming. When we were ready to film each shot, I showed the animatic to my actors and crew. Doing this really helped them get the feel, rythm and choreography of how it would all play out. In total, the film contained a total of 51 shots with 23 pre-planned fx shots.
My next challenge was to find a shooting location. Where can I find a forest area and be allowed to bring guns without having to get a permit? Nowhere, at least in Southern California. My original plan was to film at Mt. SACs Wildlife Preserve across the street which would've been the perfect location. Unfortunately, the school denied me permission to film there and I had to look for an alternative. I ended up going to Galster Wilderness Park in West Covina after a few suggestions. I walked around the park and took some video notes. The entire park is basically a trail with a few small open areas. But by throwing in a few camera tricks, I was able to make the location seem much bigger than it actually was.
I absolutely hate producing. Anything that isn't part of the creative process, I dread. But you gotta' do what you gotta' do. In the past I helped various people on their projects for free. This allowed me to ask them to return the favor later on. Finding a crew was the easy part, finding the actors though proved to be difficult.
I didn't want to use my buddies as actors because 1. they didn't fit the role and 2. I was so used to directing my friends in Comedy films that I felt my directing range was going to be indefinitely stuck on that level. Thankfully my friends understood this and worked as crew on the film. So I decided to challenge myself in finding actors that fit the role perfectly (or at least had the look).
Originally, I had 2 different actors set to play the role of Hunter and Companion 2 weeks before shooting. But 1 week before shooting, the first actor ended up having last minute schedule conflicts and the second actor...well...I don't know what happened. I wasn't receiving any responses and I didn't want to take a chance. So I let him know that I had to move on.
Now I had to rush myself to find 2 new actors. I posted up a Craigslist posting and for some reason people kept deleting them (probably because I wasn't offering any pay). So after multiple posts I was finally able to cast Nikolay and Spencer. I posted some tips on getting free actors through Craigslist on jonE5films blog, where my film was featured as 'Film of the Week':
http://jone5films.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/short-film-of-the-week-hunters/#comments
Now I played the waiting game.
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