The "Straight On Till Morning" Poster...

Here it is!

The One Sheet Poster for "Straight On Till Morning". I'm so pumped! This looks so much better than I thought it would thanks to Natalie Young our photographer, and Lonny Chant who did the titles. To Brian Erzen for his keen eye and for hooking me up with Lonny in the first place. And to all of you who were giving your thoughts and opinions on which struck you as best.

So now we have a poster...for a movie that hasn't been shot yet. We also have a number of other images, many of which you can see as background of the "finished" website www.SOTMmovie.com.

Looking at the images gets me excited to tell the story of David & Kaitlin. Hopefully it'll get other's excited to work on or see the movie. Of course by doing this and asking for all sorts of opinions, I was reminded of the fact that everyone has their favorites and their vision of how things should go, and even though seeking advice is always wise, in the end I've got to make my own choices and own decisions and sink or swim with them. As my good buddy Dan Kraus said in one of my many emails asking for opinions about fonts, blood color levels and more: "This looks great...but you gotta start trusting yourself! you don't need opinions on this small stuff -- you got it goin on, bro!"

Thanks Dan.

Producers...and more Producers...

So I'm at the stage of interviewing Producers.

It's exciting. Really. No, really it is.

Okay, it's not super exciting. Meeting new people is, but trying to sort out the truth from the fast talk is interesting. After all, whoever this is that joins the team has to be trustworthy, a problem solver, creative, knowledgeable and frankly fun to be around. After all we're going to be hanging out A LOT in the next year.

A whole lot.

I just watched "CASINO" tonight, first time I'd ever seen it. And the whole movie is about trust, and that's what it's going to be with me, Neal, Laurel and whoever this Producer is. It'll be exactly the same (well, minus the baseball bats, exploding cars and gunshots).

Still it's scary, and exciting. Up to this point I've been the sole producer essentially on almost everything I've done. I've produced, directed, shot, edited, often written. It's not that I'm a control freak, I actually enjoy watching all the cool creativity and work people put into a project. I like to see everything, and understand it the best I can, but I know there are people who can do certain things much better than I can, and it's awesome to watch it happen.

Like the photo poster shoot. Sure, I could have taken the pictures, and they probably would have turned out pretty good, but Natalie Young blew it up! (not like the car in casino). Everytime I look at the pictures I go "wow". And now we have Lonny Chant helping with the titles and graphic design.

Anyway...

Producers.

Producer.

Looking for that person who wants to get involved, see's the value of this project, falls in love with David and Kaitlin like I have and wants to make this mother of a movie no matter what.

Do you know the Producer?

A Bloody Good Photo Shoot

So tonight we did a photo shoot for
"Straight On Till Morning". We were
shooting the poster for a movie that hasn't been made yet. The goal is to make a captivating image that we can use to drum up excitement as well as get investors interested by using it as part of the website and business kit. Hopefully the image will turn out great enough to use as the actual poster so it will become a very familiar "branding" for the film.

We shot at good old Feet First, home of many (many!) of the www.TrespassingOnTheLot.com shorts. Natalie Young was the fantastic photographer. I highly recommend her for professional images of all sorts. She's super cool and has a great eye and I can't wait to see the images. Katie Chandler and Alysha Marcoantonio did the bloody good blood. I'd never worked with them, but they came highly recommended from the Blood Queen herself. So we took a chance and they were great. And for our models we had the ever awesome Laurel Marlantes and Scott Tompkins. One to loom, the other to be beautifully bathed in blood. (Okay, we didn't get to crazy, there is romance in the movie too).

It was a new experience for me. Even though I've taken photos since I was like 9 years old, and I did professional headshots for a couple years, I've never actually done a shoot like this. Where it was all designed and planned out. It took 5 hours from set up to tear down, but I thought it was really fun. Everyone seemed in a good mood and up for the creativity.

So will it work? Will it be the image that helps drum up excitement for "Straight On Till Morning"?

We shall see -- But I feel pretty excited about it!