H-O-L-Y C-R-A-P 4 Days Till Day 1!

Alessandro Calza ("Andrea") and Jim McMahon (producer) stand-in for digital storyboards taken during Sunday's location scout.

Alan Smith, our mystery investor from Arizona, just wired funds into our production account. We now have ALMOST enough money to make this film!

Just kidding, of course, but another 5k sure would make things a whole helluva lot more smooth! So, with our first substantial outside investor, we're off and running. Tomorrow, we have a conference call with an Italian investor living in Milan who knows our lead Italian actor, Alessandro Calza, who wants to speak with us before he'll commit any funds. The rub is that he doesn't speak any English, so therefore we'll be using Alessandro as our translator. It's an INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION!

Currently, I'm transposing the hand-written production calendar that I worked out with James (1st AD) into an electronic format so that we can pass it out to everyone tonight. Here's what a basic day of shooting looks like:

DAY3 (MON 9/18) CALL TIME 7:00AM - CLUB NIKITA
7:00 - SCN75 – DAY EXT AIRPORT PARKING LOT (:30/:30/:30)
9:30 - SCN26 - DAY FOR NIGHT INT MEX RESTAURANT (2 SETUP/2 SHOOT)
12:00 – LUNCH
13:00 – SCN26 - CONT’D
15:00 - SCN60 – DAY FOR NIGHT INT TRENDY BAR (1/:30/1.5)
5PM – WRAP – 3 SCNS - 10HRS

Club Nikita is a BEAUTIFUL bar/restaurant located within the West Village live/work/shop loft complex in Uptown, right across from the Landmark Magnolia movie theatre. We'll be using the rooftop level of their parking structure to portray the airport parking structure, and then head into Nikita, which will be dressed as both a very upscale tapas restaurant as well as a "trendy bar." If you've ever been downstairs at Nikita, you'll know that it is a wickedly modern, plush environment. Very nice.


Alessandro Calza ("Andrea") and James Johnston (1st AD).

On the crew and equipment side of things, I'm a ball of nervousness. We have just BARELY enough to do this film. Still trying to find a couple more crew members that'll work for free, and I'm scrambling to find a rental house that will rent to us within our budget. Right now, all of the quotes are averaging out to about $3k above what we have. If I really scrimp and save, we can get it down to within our budget, but I also don't want to hamstring Michael when he arrives. "Thanks for flying out, Michael. We have some great locations, but you don't have any lights!" It won't be THAT bad, but it always feels like it's heading that way at this point. AAAARRRRGGGG!


Alessandro Calza ("Andrea").

Oh! I went around to about 6 restaurants this afternoon and got 2 of them to give us 1 free meal for 20 cast/crew. At $10/head, that's $400 saved! 4 other restaurants I went to had to pass the info along to their managers, so I'm going back tomorrow to hit'em up!

1:25am. Damn. I think I might be procrastinating right now.

On a creative note, today Tiffany Vollmer cane by and went through the primary cast wardrobe with the actors and Yen. She's going to be fun to have on set - very bouyant! Plus, she's doing hair, make-up AND wardrobe! SWEET! Clare and her new assistant Loretta (who is awesome by the way) painted several rooms in Buena Vista #7, our primary shooting location. We now have a shitload of furniture in there as well.

Ciao!