It’s always hard to make a film, but particularly hard when you’re doing it with no money. That’s an interesting challenge, and one that means each day has new surprises & discoveries. The film is pulling together steadily, but it’s always a stressful affair with never enough time.
Film is unique in its nature of being a complex organism whose parts (not unlike the human body) all have to work together to make a living form. No individual part can complete its function without the others, but they all must be complete in themselves in order to come together & work. It’s in this situation that we find ourselves right now — where location availability is dependent upon scheduling, which is dependent upon actors’ calendars, which is dependent on… It will all come together, but sometimes it feels like the election — it really could go either way. You want it to go one way, but some forces are out of our control, so we just keep moving forward, keeping the swirling mass moving in the same direction.
One interesting challenge is that we’re looking for a sponsor for the clothing in the film. Because the world in THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE is a reflection of our own in reverse, all the men at the wedding, for instance, will wear brightly colored tuxedos, and all the women will wear simple black dresses. (This is a reverse of our world, where men mostly wear basic suits, and women dress very differently.) The complication is: how do you find these clothes? We’d like dresses that have sleeves, so they’re not too seductive, and suits or tuxes that are really different from each other — but it’s hard to find!!
Another detail is the engagement ring — which the groom will wear. There are plenty of engagement rings around, but to find one that fits a man’s hand… So you see the challenges that don’t seem like much at first, but then are actually pretty difficult!
Next up: more crewing, casting (which means contacting agents), about 50 emails a day about the film, paperwork, and so on & so on… There are about 14 departments/categories of jobs on the set that we’re dealing with right now. At the same time, our other films have technical work, contracts, etc., and we’ve created a reality show that should be moving into high gear pretty soon, so we’re juggling a lot of work — all of it good stuff.
Don’t forget to vote on November 2!
