Robertson6
Active member
I have been waiting for this day for nearly 2.5 years now and now that the time has finally come I get to start my own thread about our first feature film. This is a faith based feature film with a story and shooting style that we are hoping will change the way people view Christian films. About 2.5 years ago I felt the calling to make a Christian movie that will touch on some very serious issues in this country. I spent the 1st year basically story boarding and writing a basic scene by scene treatment of what I felt this movie should be about and what we are trying to convey to the audience. After scrapping everything and starting over for about the 3rd time I sought the help of a professional writer who helped organize and focus my thoughts. Unfortunately she didn't work out and I was back to working with my co producer Chris. We had a really good story at this point and a pretty good back bone to build upon, so we began writing and editing it again ourselves. We had our first casting call seeking to fill 6 main character positions and had nearly 30 people respond. After 2 long days of casting we had decided on several of our main characters and somehow found another writer. We met with him and turned the script over and let him begin. For the next 6 months Steve would write and Chris and I would edit and change and then write some more until we had a final draft that we loved. Due to the lack of funding we had to delay 2 different times and the doubt of this film ever being shot was coming into full focus. So during our last time down we met with a script consultant and wanted to get some honest feedback from somebody that has no knowledge of the story or the trials up to that point. We felt that maybe we couldn't see the forest for the trees that were in the way. He was able to read our 140 page final draft and give us some very open and honest feedback. So Steve, Chris and I met with Jason for 3 or 4 hours and had him lay it on us, the good and the bad. His ideas were very helpful in knowing what an "audience" might see in our film. His main pointers were some minor and even major story changes and to cut our shooting script down to 100 to 110 pages in length. After nearly 2 months we got the script trimmed down to a modest 113 pages and much tighter with less pointless fluff.
Now it is all set; we have an super awesome script, a cast of nearly 20 counting all the smaller individual parts, we will be shooting at 31 different locations and needing roughly 200 extras. Since all of us have day jobs and can't shoot during the week, we will be shooting every Friday evening and all day Saturday and Sunday for the next 15 weeks. Yes that is 3.5 months, although we have 4 weekends in there for re shoots and pickup stuff. We have our scoring guy already lined up, he has his own script and has already began assembling some music for the film. We have had several production meetings and 1 full cast script reading. We have our 2nd scheduled full cast script reading this Saturday and begin the first day of Principal Photography that evening. We go into full production next weekend, the last weekend in March.
I thank you all for your support and will begin posting up things a couple times a week, as well as some shooting stills when they become available (as soon as I figure out how to put them into a thread, help anybody). Please check out our website for more information about the film, we have the basic synopsis on there as well as some demo stuff we shoot over the summer as a temporary trailer. None of the scene you see will be included in the movie, plus they are in SD and we are shooting HD. It was kind of practice and we were wanting something to show possible investors that we weren't just a bunch of kids with their parents camcorder.
We have done this entire film through donations up to this point as we have no working budget (other then spending my entire life savings and selling everything my wife would let me) to get to this point. We are still hoping to receive donations if you know anybody that is interested, we appreciate everything we can get. All of our cast and crew believe so strongly in the film that they have decided to donate their time to the film and work for no money. If somebody is interested in making a donation over $100 and would like it to be tax deductible we are a 501c3 group, just PM me and I will discuss with you how that is possible. Thank you everyone and God bless.
Most of my inspiration to finally start this project came from watching most of your post about your own filmmaking experiences, especially Matt Sconce and Faith Granger. Seeing what you 2 have done as non professionals (no insult intended) has blown me away and shown me that I can do this also. Thank you!!!
Richard
Now it is all set; we have an super awesome script, a cast of nearly 20 counting all the smaller individual parts, we will be shooting at 31 different locations and needing roughly 200 extras. Since all of us have day jobs and can't shoot during the week, we will be shooting every Friday evening and all day Saturday and Sunday for the next 15 weeks. Yes that is 3.5 months, although we have 4 weekends in there for re shoots and pickup stuff. We have our scoring guy already lined up, he has his own script and has already began assembling some music for the film. We have had several production meetings and 1 full cast script reading. We have our 2nd scheduled full cast script reading this Saturday and begin the first day of Principal Photography that evening. We go into full production next weekend, the last weekend in March.
I thank you all for your support and will begin posting up things a couple times a week, as well as some shooting stills when they become available (as soon as I figure out how to put them into a thread, help anybody). Please check out our website for more information about the film, we have the basic synopsis on there as well as some demo stuff we shoot over the summer as a temporary trailer. None of the scene you see will be included in the movie, plus they are in SD and we are shooting HD. It was kind of practice and we were wanting something to show possible investors that we weren't just a bunch of kids with their parents camcorder.
We have done this entire film through donations up to this point as we have no working budget (other then spending my entire life savings and selling everything my wife would let me) to get to this point. We are still hoping to receive donations if you know anybody that is interested, we appreciate everything we can get. All of our cast and crew believe so strongly in the film that they have decided to donate their time to the film and work for no money. If somebody is interested in making a donation over $100 and would like it to be tax deductible we are a 501c3 group, just PM me and I will discuss with you how that is possible. Thank you everyone and God bless.
Most of my inspiration to finally start this project came from watching most of your post about your own filmmaking experiences, especially Matt Sconce and Faith Granger. Seeing what you 2 have done as non professionals (no insult intended) has blown me away and shown me that I can do this also. Thank you!!!
Richard
