Sunday, March 28, 2010

south loop

Completed in 2003, my graduate thesis film, An Assignment, did pretty well. It played a number of festivals and won some awards. It also played on the Showtime and SiTV cable networks. And from that mild success I hoped to ride some momentum into my first feature.

The script I developed to be that film was The Other Kind. It told the story of a 32 year-old mother of three who comes to embrace single-motherhood after years of regretting her choices. I was packaging it as a $1 million dollar film and eventually had a TV actress attached in the lead role. She was terribly patient as the script and budget changed a number of times. Still, I could never get the project fully funded and lost my patience. The actress and I agreed, quite amicably, to part ways and I began pursuing much smaller projects.

But I couldn't even get those fucking things financed! I'll spare you the details on those projects and cut to the chase.

In the spring of 2008 my wife told me to shoot a movie - short, feature, experimental, home, whatever - or I'd drive her crazy. She even allowed me to put a little of our money into whatever I was going to shoot. Yes, I AM very lucky. And she was pregnant at that time, by the way. Very, very lucky, indeed.

So much so that my good friend and actor, Juan Ramirez, offered to also put in a little cash so we could finally get back into production (Juan had been in my previous two short films).

And this is how south loop came to be.

With a crew of six, a PA or two and a slew of free locations, we shot the project for about $15,000 over 18 days.

As of this posting we are finishing up the sound mix. The score is complete and color correction will be done any day now. The website will be up very soon as well as the trailer. Of course, I'll be posting as these things finish up.

Sorry for this long-ass post. I just need to lay the groundwork for the updates that are to come.

I'll be posting soon to set the table for my next project You've Been Great.

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