Adrenaline Film Project ripped from our brains!
Last weekend we created a movie from scratch! Mary and I and our new writing/producing associate, Jane Barnes participated in the Adrenaline Film Project, part of the Virginia Film Festival. Starting on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., we had to invent a story, pitch it to Hollywood mentors (Jeff Wadlow (Writer-Director of Cry Wolf, Never Back Down), Beau Bauman (Writer-Producer Cry Wolf), and Leigh Kilton-Smith (Acting Coach who has worked with Wadlow on several productions) –– our pitches were rejected, rejected, rejected, and finally passed), write the story (again rejected multiple times, finally green-lit, kinda-sorta), scout locations, cast actors and dancers, art direct the location, rehearse, choreograph (because what’s a movie without a big dance number?), light, shoot, shoot, shoot, compose music, edit, edit, edit, mix sound, and debut the masterpiece on Saturday at 10 p.m. in front an audience of 600!
We got feedback from the above mentors as well as Mark Johnson (Producer of Diner, Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man, Chronicles of Narnia 1-3, etc.), who sat at my side during the edit, making me nervous as the clock raced toward the deadline.
On completion, we were pleased with the results, BUT during the earlier editing we were pissing our undies, fallling out of our chairs. We appreciate the input from our Hollywood fellows, but we think their suggestions sucked some of the juice out of the film. We are currently recutting it to return some of the surreality to it. We’ll post both versions in the next few days so you can see the A/B results.
In the meantime, some production stills and frames:
