The Whiskey Priest

hansel960

hansel960

Active member
Hi everybody! I'm raising money for my next short film called "The Whiskey Priest". It's a 5 page short film with the main character heavily influenced from Graham Greene's masterpiece "The Power and the Glory".

SYNOPSIS (of some sort...)
It's set in the 1930's in South Texas near the border of Mexico and it's during a period when the Mexicans were killing and/or scaring off all the priests. This is the story of the last priest in Texas, who is a drunk, and is tired of running and hiding from the authorities. He decides to go to a barbershop - where he knows the mayor of this small town works out of the backroom - to face his destiny.

So that's where I currently stand. I'm planning on shooting in LA in September. It's a simple, one day shoot and my DP and I are leaning heavily towards shooting on Super 16. That's something I've never done before but we'll see how it goes...

I'll update more as I get it.

Tommy Rennier
 
The fundraising has begun! I've setup an account on IndieGoGo.com. Here's the link:::



That's an amazing site that I was turned onto by Ted Hope on his website:

trulyfreefilm.blogspot.com

It's been up for 2 days and we've already raised over $1000!!! The goal is to reach $10,000 and go for a solid cast for this one day shoot. 16mm makes me happy.

I'm going to post the script on there (and probably here) within the next 24 hours. Be sure to check it out.

Even if you don't contribute, join the project and help spread the word. If you become a friend on IndieGoGo you'll automatically be put on the e-mail list! Help indie film thrive!
 
I spoke to some agents of some well-known actors on the phone today. Had to get through 2 secretaries to talk to one of the agents. These people like to play hardball!
 
As you can see, we've already raised over $1,000 in just a few short days!

I got hit up from a website called "The Fedora Chronicles" that specializes in period pieces and they are going to help spread the word for our fundraising efforts. So hopefully that helps! Not much else to report on right now.
 
Has anybody found an awesome barber shop in Los Angeles? I need a film friendly barber shop that can look like it's from the 1930's!

Any help would be appreciated.
 
I spoke to a writer on the phone today from examiner.com. She's going to be running a series of articles following the production of The Whiskey Priest!

That's pretty exciting. More exposure is always a good thing.
 
Location Scouting

Location Scouting

Location Scouting photos are up (on Facebook and MySpace)!



Found some decent stuff on Saturday. What’s crazy is that on Sunday Andrew Elkins (sound man extraordinaire) and I went to Orange County to have lunch with the DP (Nathan Carrington) – a really good guy – and we went by a few more barbershops and they were all pretty awesome. So we’ll have to heavily consider going down there. It’s probably less hassle as well. The way I figure it is that it's probably a lot easier to get away with not having a permit in Orange County than it is shooting on Pico in Santa Monica. And I really don't want to pay for a permit. Why $1,000 for a permit when I can put that towards shooting on 16mm? It's only a one day shoot and LA likes to screw the little guys.
 
Wednesday consisted of lots of boring, boring work. But it must be done! We have a little problem in the script where I wrote in about ten extras outside the barbershop window. Well that's not going to be feasible on our budget. It's not only ten extras, but ten people that need to look like they live in the 1930's. So scratch that. I sent workaround ideas to my DP. It will either involve creative camera work or a small re-write.

I'm getting ready for the exciting part of the journey, I'm putting together a small wish list of actors for my Casting Director to start making phone calls. We're not exactly going for Johnny Depp and Christian Bale here, but definitely some recognizable faces. Some television actors and smaller film actors that I think are great. I'm excited to see how this turns out. I believe in actors so much that I have nearly half my budget for actors. I don't think most indie filmmakers would even try calling these guys, but I figure why not? The worst they can do is say no. But I truly, truly believe the script is good enough for them to fall in love with and all the makings are there to get this thing to Sundance.

Other than that I worked on the budget after receiving some numbers from my DP (he was calling rental houses) but I don't want to release those numbers at this time. The online goal is $6,500 and I will combine that with my own money. So it won't be that small, that's for sure. My last film was about $3,000...so this is already more than doubling that.

That's all for today. Should have an update after my Casting Director makes some calls on Friday. Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see how it goes. I also reached out to a Production Designer. We'll see if she hops on board or not. Another friend that I went to school with in Missouri that lives in California. She's worked on some big movies too.

Tommy
 
Nothing much stirring at this point. It's been nothing but trying to cast the film for the last 5 days. Calling agents every day during lunch (it's the only free time I have to get it done) and sending the script around. I'm hoping to get somebody or something in place soon, but it's a lot of work. I think the script speaks for itself so we'll see here.

If I can't get anybody that I specifically want within 2 or 3 weeks I will post a breakdown on breakdownexpress.com and cast it from that. But I'm fairly confident we can get the guys I want.

When talking to agents I have found the very 1st page of Corrado's Production Blog to be unbelievably helpful! Thanks for the great information...
 
hansel960 said:
I spoke to a writer on the phone today from examiner.com. She's going to be running a series of articles following the production of The Whiskey Priest!

That's pretty exciting. More exposure is always a good thing.
Click to expand...

Well then: congrats!
 
Has anybody had any luck with Breakdownexpress.com? I just submitted my breakdown today. Does it not submit reels with the actors? I need to see reels! But seriously, anybody have any good luck with it?
 
It's been nothing but casting, casting, casting lately. I started the casting process by going for some television actors and making calls to their agents. After that failed I posted a breakdown on breakdownexpress.com. The cool thing about that website is that it only release to managers and agents. So it's a step up from Backstage or Craigslist where you have tons and tons of actors hitting you up.

Breakdown Express is really clean and you get pretty legitimate actors. Anyway, I did run into one snag with it and that's the whole SAG thing... Some of these actors won't work non-union. So I had the choice of getting a SAG Short Film Agreement (and possibly increasing the talent pool of actor's submissions) or sticking non-union. And, in the end, I'm going to stay non-union. I found six actors I really liked on Breakdown Express.

After that, I decided that six actors wasn't enough (to fill the 3 roles). Some of them might not end up working out for multiple reasons. So I released the breakdown on Backstage Casting as well. This releases to the actors. I got about 200 submissions to sort through and narrowed that down to about 15 more actors. That took a lot of time.

I reserved a room at the Space Station in Hollywood for Sat. Aug 22 and I'll have a line-up of around 15-20 actors to choose from...if I can't find 3 out of that I won't know what to do! I've never held a casting so this should be interesting...

Besides casting, I spoke to the owner of the barbershop in Orange County and he agreed to let us shoot at this establishment. And that went amazingly smooth. He was enthusiastic about it.

A friend of mine that I used to work with, Ryan Strong, offered to do the artwork for me. He's a great graphic designer and photographer. You can see his stuff at http://www.ryanstrong.net/.

And lastly, my friend Zack Weber (who I'm shooting some music videos for in September) has been actively promoting my film in New York and helping find investors and fans alike. So that's been a great help!

I'm excited because I'm done with my editing job at MTV in less than a week and I can devote my free time to storyboards and shot lists. That's the most exciting time for a director in pre-production (at least to me)!
 
Here's the principal players for this thing....

THE PRIEST _ HARRY PAVLIDIS
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THE BARBER _ MICHAEL GRIFFITH
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Well...it's been a while since I've posted. We finally shot the movie last Sunday, October 4. And it was awesome! But not without trial...

I'll catch you up.

Since we picked the cast, my DP, Nathan Carrington, put together a really solid camera/grip/light team for our shoot day. Everybody worked for free and they were fantastic. I hope the movie is good and makes them proud. These guys were A+ professionals who were not only efficient and hard working, but they knew what they were doing to make a great image for the film. Nathan himself is a fantastic DP and I hope to collaborate more with him in the future.

DOING A PERIOD PIECE! A pretty dangerous idea. Little did I think about every single prop and wardrobe that would need to go into this movie. Luckily, two things worked out for me. It's only 1 location. And I learned about Debbiesbook.com. That website saved my life, which found me History For Hire Prop House. That prop house is full of really nice people who helped me pick out a lot of great props for a 1930's Barber Shop piece. It cost a solid chunk of change but I was in so deep at this point it didn't matter. That website also led me to find Palace Costume Co where they have SO much period piece clothing.

So everything was coming together great, right? We thought so. The cast, crew, props, wardrobe, location, shot list, equipment were all ready to go... That is until a few days before the shoot our location fell through on us. This was pretty devastating, but I'm never one to give up.

So...I spent my next 3 days sleeping a total of about 8 hours. I spent all day every day driving to Barber Shops looking for the perfect replacement, with great owners, etc... Well suffice to say we found one at about 8 PM the night before the shoot. That is until 9 PM when that Barber Shop backed out as well.

So now I'm having a mental breakdown. I've got 15 crew members and 4 cast members that need directions to the shoot, countless people that have invested their time into the film, and about $3000 of rentals at our houses. Well luckily we found Parlor Barber Shop. Andy, the owner, saved us. In a big way. It all worked out. It wasn't my first choice, but in the end it was probably the best choice. It was in a quiet location (we had no permit - because of the last minute thing), the owner was cool with us moving his stuff everywhere, and it was close.

So we shot the movie...AND IT WAS BRILLIANT!

It looks beautiful. I'll put screen grabs up soon.
 
Screen Grabs from our shoot this past Sunday!

RED Cam
Super Speeds
Daylight Balanced
1/2 Tobacco
3 Lights


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