Road to the Red Carpet (5/22/11)

My first major short film is getting underway, "Odyssey of the Soul". The script was a collaboration between myself and a good friend of mine, Rich Harrah. I'd link it here, but it's just a first draft and there's a couple parts I wanna rework before I start linking it places. On my director's notes copy, there are entire sections of the exposition that are just x'd out to rework completely.

Next week, on Thursday, I'm actually doing auditions for the female lead. The male lead has been set in stone from the beginning, I honestly couldn't imagine anyone else playing this part. Rich and I actually specifically wrote the female part for one of the actresses auditioning, but there's so much depth to the character we wanted other people to give it a try as well.

We're building a mini-soundstage for it, actually, and I'm extremely excited about it. It's going to be 32' x 20' if I recall, so it's pretty sizeable. I'm gonna be working with a full crew of almost 15-17 people, so I'm really excited about that. It's coming together so much better than I expected. My first film project earlier in the year was a failure, because I put to much trust in someone who just didn't pull through. I learned from that, and there are actually a lot of redundancies in the crew list. If one person doesn't pull their weight, I can cut em loose and still have a backup, which I think is extremely important.

Set construction will start in a couple weeks, after my concept art comes in on Thursday. Anyway, like I said, I'm really excited.

The goal of this short film is very high. I already know it's a long shot, so to quote a great man "Don't tell me the odds." I want to get the film into the Nashville Film Festival. Not too bad yet, that doesn't sound to far-fetched, right? Here's the citch. If a film wins in the short film category at Nashville, it goes up for consideration at the Academy Awards. (perhaps better known as the Oscars).

Now, I know that its a long shot, but I embrace the possibility. I also want to enter it in the CineVegas film festival. Why? What more could I gain other than the Oscars? Well, here's the thing. If your film is granted access to the CineVegas festival, you get FREE round trip travel to the festival as well as being put up in a hotel for your stay. And, it gets better. The grand prize is $10,000 Dollars, which is pretty darn sizeable.

I'm extremely excited about this film. I know it's not likely that I'll achieve the things I mentioned above, but the experience of making this film is one that I will surely treasure as my first true filmmaking experience.