Here is a running commentary of the journey:
Aug. 30th
I visited with the fantastic folks over at AlphaCine in Seattle, WA. After about an hour meeting that included our cinematographer/producer Scott via webcam, I viewed the print of some B/W negative we sent there to have developed and it looked fantastic. Our post production workflow plan is taking shape.
[In case you wanted to know how insane my trip has been so far: I made the flight from Beijing with 8 minutes to spare, got the last seat available, slept about 2 hours, arrived in Seattle around noon-30, made a b-line to Alpha Cine for the meeting and tour, then took care of a ton of emails, arranged a plane ticket for the morning through a relative since I lost my credit card and went to sleep finally around midnight. At 4am I was up and out the door to walk about 20 minutes to the terminal, haggled with TSA and boarded the plane to LAX. During the flight I learned you can only pay for snacks with a credit card... NO CASH. Then in LA at the rental car counter, after a 45 minute wait in line, I learned you can't rent a car without a credit card... NO CASH. Luckily a place across the street helped me out and took this legal tender good for settling all debts public and private. Then I made a b-line for the cell phone store to take care of my bill since I canceled my card about a month before... guess what? NO CASH. After haggling with them I was able to weasel my way around to PAY THEM MONEY. Then I made a b-line to a coffee house that has wifi and got Azalia's number, arranged the meet and greet, and made a b-line to Hollywood through some fantastically awful traffic. It's going good wouldn't ya say? And in case you didn't want to know how the trip has been going, skip this part here in brackets.]
Aug. 31st -- Sept. 1st
The planned meetings with Azalia Snail in Hollywood to begin developing wardrobe for the cast have gone great! She has a wonderful eye for style, and I think we have some good stuff coming together. She's also got some groovy tunes as a musician!
Sept. 5th
Today, Scott and I had a friendly informal meeting with our attorney Mike Haskins. We covered a lot of topics and answered a lot of outstanding questions. There's still a lot of work to be done, but the plan is definitely taking shape.
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| Mike, Scott and Brandon in Denver |
Sept. 6th
This was a BIG day that had 2 crucial pieces of the puzzle hanging in the balance. If either one of these did not come through, we'd be back to the drawing board again. AGAIN. None of that though, we had success.
AM: We had a tremendously positive meeting with a campus library that is being very cooperative and interested in our shoot. We will have final word on Monday; nevertheless it was great to walk the campus and see how much excitement our project generated.
PM: In the afternoon we met with the owner of a vacant building that will serve as 4 locations in 1. Long story short: WE HAVE CONFIRMATION, it's ours as soon as we sign on the dotted line. The contract is being drawn up as I type this.
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| Temporary home of ETE studios |
So, I think we have places to shoot. This means we are a lot closer to making our movie than we were on September 5th.
Next, there are a few more auditions to conduct, equipment to test and mucho planning to work out. I'll keep the progress posted here!
ETE
