What’s Up Lovely (Production Update 3)

April 16, 2009 – Pre-production coming to an end

Principle Photography begins on April 22 — 5 days left to hash out some more details.

Still location scouting — trying to nail down one more important piece of the puzzle. As soon as it’s locked, the shooting schedule will be set and ready to go. Been all around the city this week taking shots of potential spots and sending them to Varner (DP). He finished camera tests and seems pretty geared up and ready.

Met with Jenn Dees (Luci) to talk about the script — which is 8 pages long. So I guess it’s more of a treatment. Anyway, it lays out the entire movie in a series of bullet points. Should be interesting to see how it plays out into an entire film.

I’ve been casting actors — some old, some new. All of them are learning that my approach to this film is less structured (creatively) than my usual ways. Scenes are developed, but very little dialogue is written. Most of the actors will play out the scene with certain objectives in mind, but other than that there are no parameters. There’s no traditional script to adhere to — and I’m very excited about that.

A huge film influence on this project’s approach is “Shadows” from John Cassavetes as well as Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant”. I’m not talking about those films’ content or style — I’m talking about the way the filmmaker worked with the story and actors…and how they created cinema through collaboration and trust.

This is going to be fun.