Friday, 18 October 2002

I wrote a first draft of the script for the film I want to make.

I feel like I'm being flighty, unable to stick with on project for any length of time. But, after worrying about it for a while, I've decided to just go with it. I'll work on whatever of my projects I feel like. It's not like anybody's paying me for them, so I might as well do what I want. It probably hinders my career as a writer, compared to if I worked more diligently on getting things finished and out to editors, but I've decided to just live with that for a bit.

I sent the first draft of the script to Chuck McCaffrey, who is a serious student of film and has expressed an interest in working with me on the project. I also sent a copy to my brother Steve. They sent back comments. We exchanged several emails over the course of the day.

My new digital video camera didn't arrive on Friday. I hadn't really expected it to, but I was hoping. I wanted instant gratification!

Without that camera, I took my digital still camera and went to one possible shooting location for the action sequence in my film. I need a city street that meets an alley, with some sort of place where a third character can overlook the action. There's a parking garage in downtown Urbana that may work okay.

The Urbana location actually would be perfect, except that it's on Main Street. It's not so busy that I couldn't shoot around people coming and going, except for one thing: In the film, there's a sort of a knife fight. I think it's pretty likely that someone seeing a guy with a knife would call the police.

One option is to go the formal route and write a note the mayor saying that I want to shoot my film, inform the police, maybe hire an off-duty police officer to stand there and look reassuring. Another option is to go someplace where there's enough fewer people that I might be able to get the whole thing done without anyone noticing.

I'll scout another location Saturday.

I'm having so much fun!