Magic Film Potion Recipe

The next 3 weeks will determine the next few months of our lives with respect to LIS. We will either be making Lost In Sunshine, and be thrown full force into pre-production as of April 1st (some of us already are!), and begin shooting April 19th, OR we'll be forced to regroup for a later shoot this year. But right now it's all about April. Actually, right now it's about March... March 29th, to be specific. That's our deadline for securing necessary funds.

It goes something like this:

We must secure locations in order to productively move forward with the majority of storyboarding. And storyboarding takes lots of time. But it's hard to secure locations without a solid affirmative on our shooting schedule/budget info, and it gets more complicated with everyone's other schedules coming into play.

We've recently had a crew change, sadly losing our line producer, Michelle, to other work (it happens, and we wish her well!) so the lovely and talented, Megan Gilbride, has ambitiously stepped in to assist us with line producer needs at this time. Thank you, Megan!! Like a film friend recently told me, ".. it takes the right group of people to make these projects happen..." Like a magic potion recipe - you have to get all the ingredients just right for it to work.

AND, time is of the essence.

Our casting director, Vicky Boone, is currently approaching our lead male hopeful, and we need this budget information to determine other factors to provide the agency with... which could determine if the actor is even available/willing to do it. And, we need (tentatively) secured locations in order to move forward with storyboarding in a productive manner.

Bottom line: Everything revolves around everything else. If one person drops the ball, it's like dropping it on all of our heads! And quite frankly, it hurts. Each person is equally important to the team's success.

May you all find your magic film potion recipe!

The business of being Crazy

You have to re-write a treatment, clean the dog hair from under your feet, stretch your lower back, make a new blaze reel for a pitch meeting this Friday, mail a hard copy to LA before Friday, reach out to people under tight deadlines, call people more than you'd prefer, make coffee and time to acknowledge your significant other(s), eat whatever you can find, make your way to the bank at some point so your automatic debits don't bounce, while planning for the biggest event of your life. Yeah. We all do it. And more often than not, it happens all at once.

So how do us film people manage our time? How do we keep from losing our minds and going crazy? I'm asking you, because today I'm not sure...

My mind keeps racing with all the little things that have to be done by 'said date' and the anxiety wants to dominate. I try to talk back to the anxiety, "Go away... come again some other day... I don't have time to deal with you right now, stupid thoughts." But I'm afraid the universe doesn't work on my clock.

The best I can do when everything happens all at once, is to write this blog. It allows me to vent.. take a step away.. out from underneath my chatty brain... to stop taking compulsive baths to try to relax, and let my lungs rest from all the massive amounts of sage smoke that fog up my living room.

More importantly, I think we have to breathe. Breathing gets lost, and shortened, with every ramped thought that races through our ambitious brains.

I have to keep telling myself that it's OK, because well... it is. There's worse scenarios to be in... and while that doesn't seem to completely help release my anxiety.. it's nice to know that it will pass too... it's either that or you'll be watching me from an insane asylum instead.

kidding...kidding...

But if I don't admit how crazy I feel sometimes, maybe other people will think they're going crazy, too. My best friend always says that the number 1 rule to knowing you're not really going crazy is by the acknowledgement of it.

So, let all of us passionate film people co-exist with the crazy business and business of being crazy - all at once.. be happy we're making movies, be happy we have the opportunity to artistically express ourselves in a challenging field that not everyone will have the chance to do.. that has the potential to inspire masses.

LONG LIVE CRAZY!

See... I feel better already.

xo Jentri

Lost In Sunshine: Then and Now

If you've been keeping up with LIS you know that we've been planning to shoot our first group of shots, mostly fall exterior, at the end of December. One reason has to do with section 181, and the other has to do with aesthetics. Well, that was then, and this is now....

(this blog has moved -- read the rest here!)