My Life as a - wait, what day is this?

[pendamuse]

When you sit down in a the­ater with your $20 pop­corn and your cup of 32 ounce soda (a cup they won’t let you pee into, might I add), you know you’re ready for an expe­ri­ence. You’ll see a film and you know there will be some spe­cial effects, some funny dia­logue, some decent act­ing. But do you really know what’s going on and how all of that good stuff got there?

I thought I did.

Really.

I’ve been a hor­ror movie fan since the Sat­ur­day after­noon Thriller Dou­ble Fea­tures on WXON TV20. I’ve seen guys in suits, pros­thetic heads, wire work, green screen effects (espe­cially the bad one). That I can still be impressed, both by the bril­liance and the mis­fires , says a lot about the heart of the indus­try and the drive to make movies.

The last six months have been an eye-opening edu­ca­tion on the drama behind the drama on screen, and I’ll admit, I got most of my prior infor­ma­tion from tv and movies. What do you mean I don’t just sit in a chair and yell into a fun­nel? What work?



Dang, I was look­ing for­ward to those pants.

I have my actors, my crew, my pro­ducer. I have my meet­ings, my rehearsal footage, my rewrites. Every­thing is run by me and it’s almost like I’m a respon­si­ble mem­ber of this crew. I don’t know what I was expect­ing when I was tapped to direct this film, because there is no Direct­ing Your First Film For Dum­mies, but I can’t say I’m unhappy with the hands-on expe­ri­ence. In fact, I’m thrilled by it. I’ve helped cre­ate pitch pack­ages, had calls on wardrobe, dis­cussed effects, scouted loca­tions. Things are hum­ming along in Austin in prepa­ra­tion of the shoot in New Orleans, but I’m involved as I can be here in Michigan.

There are 27 days before we begin film­ing, and every day I feel the sharp lit­tle teeth of panic chew away at the edges of this bub­ble of seren­ity I have, bring­ing the dis­tance between here and New Orleans a lit­tle closer. Every day, 1,100 miles seems a lit­tle closer and I can prac­ti­cally feel those warm balmy days on my neck, I can feel the exhaus­tion of long days, the giddy delir­ium of short sleep, shorter tem­pers, unend­ing resets. I feel like I’m simul­ta­ne­ously creep­ing towards June and rush­ing towards it like the swing of an axe.

Before I know it, I’ll be step­ping of a train in New Orleans, check­ing into my room, meet­ing with my crew, film­ing, drink­ing, film­ing, wrap­ping, check­ing out, motor­ing back towards Royal Oak, and this phase of the expe­ri­ence will be over. Almost a year’s work of work and effort will move into post-production, at both a snail’s crawl and the blink of an eye. and I’ll be back in front of my com­puter, still try­ing to process the fact that it’s hap­pen­ing at all.

I hon­estly don’t know how to feel about this, but I think I’m wel­com­ing it.