Nick Royer
Well-known member
Note: This is a mirror of the official production blog available at my website, www.royerfilms.com. Chase is the working title for this production, not the release title to make it clear. Comments and advice are welcome and appreciated. So here it goes:
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Hello all.
First, a little about myself. I am going into my sophomore year of high school this fall. Where I live, directing is considered a hobby at best, and not a career option. I have been making my movies since I was a kid back in the 90’s. I used an ancient Sony Hi-8 camcorder to make some of my “movies” in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. These usually involved my fleet of matchbox cars and looking back, people that have seen them agree that they were excellent for my age. I seriously got into filmmaking in 2005. I bought some good consumer-grade equipment and started to make short films with my friends. This was fun, but I wanted to do more.
I upgraded to professional-grade editing software and set out to make a short film bigger than anything I had done before. I ended up with a 25-minute short about four kids lost in Alaska after a plane crash. The film became popular locally and was shown in a small film festival. After that I got an XL2 and got better at my craft. Moving on, I made another 11-minute short about a young racecar driver leaving his hometown to find a better future. Both of these films can be watched at my website, www.royerfilms.com.
As I went in to high school, I got busy and before I knew it summer had come and I wasn’t close to being ready to make my next film. I wanted to do something new. Something better than what I had done before. I wanted to do hold auditions, spend enough time to make it good, and most importantly, get my work back into the eye of the community. So this time I decided to get some help. Instead of doing everything on my own, I decided to get friends to help out in making the vision become a reality. And I decided that this time I would find a good screenwriter and start off with a solid script.
I spent several days reading scripts online. I considered getting the rights to a finished screenplay, but in the end decided to have one written specifically to accommodate my wants and needs. I found my writer, Matías Caruso, at MoviePoet.com. Matías had written several impressive contest-winning screenplays for the site. We began negotiations for payment and what the finished product would be. I was able to get a great rate in the end and we signed a contract after just a week or so of negotiating.
Matías got right to work on our project, even setting aside a feature-length project he was also working on. He took our available locations and production budget and created a screenplay that blew us away. Surprisingly he finished ahead of schedule and even gave us the finished screenplay without any prior compensation due to a problem with our payment check getting stuck in customs. Working with Matías was great, and the finished screenplay I got was far better than anything I could have written myself.
That brings us up to the present. Casting for the new short film, currently called Chase will begin in a few weeks time. We are hoping to begin production in a little over a month and release the film in the fall. I will update this page as progress takes place on the film. Thanks for reading.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello all.
First, a little about myself. I am going into my sophomore year of high school this fall. Where I live, directing is considered a hobby at best, and not a career option. I have been making my movies since I was a kid back in the 90’s. I used an ancient Sony Hi-8 camcorder to make some of my “movies” in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. These usually involved my fleet of matchbox cars and looking back, people that have seen them agree that they were excellent for my age. I seriously got into filmmaking in 2005. I bought some good consumer-grade equipment and started to make short films with my friends. This was fun, but I wanted to do more.
I upgraded to professional-grade editing software and set out to make a short film bigger than anything I had done before. I ended up with a 25-minute short about four kids lost in Alaska after a plane crash. The film became popular locally and was shown in a small film festival. After that I got an XL2 and got better at my craft. Moving on, I made another 11-minute short about a young racecar driver leaving his hometown to find a better future. Both of these films can be watched at my website, www.royerfilms.com.
As I went in to high school, I got busy and before I knew it summer had come and I wasn’t close to being ready to make my next film. I wanted to do something new. Something better than what I had done before. I wanted to do hold auditions, spend enough time to make it good, and most importantly, get my work back into the eye of the community. So this time I decided to get some help. Instead of doing everything on my own, I decided to get friends to help out in making the vision become a reality. And I decided that this time I would find a good screenwriter and start off with a solid script.
I spent several days reading scripts online. I considered getting the rights to a finished screenplay, but in the end decided to have one written specifically to accommodate my wants and needs. I found my writer, Matías Caruso, at MoviePoet.com. Matías had written several impressive contest-winning screenplays for the site. We began negotiations for payment and what the finished product would be. I was able to get a great rate in the end and we signed a contract after just a week or so of negotiating.
Matías got right to work on our project, even setting aside a feature-length project he was also working on. He took our available locations and production budget and created a screenplay that blew us away. Surprisingly he finished ahead of schedule and even gave us the finished screenplay without any prior compensation due to a problem with our payment check getting stuck in customs. Working with Matías was great, and the finished screenplay I got was far better than anything I could have written myself.
That brings us up to the present. Casting for the new short film, currently called Chase will begin in a few weeks time. We are hoping to begin production in a little over a month and release the film in the fall. I will update this page as progress takes place on the film. Thanks for reading.