Working with a Director

Two weeks ago I had my first sit down with our esteemed director. I’d tell you something about her, including her name, but I’ve neglected to get permission to out her on the blog.

Anyway, two weeks ago today I went over to her house for our first story meeting. I was really tired that day because the tooth problem I thought I had remedied with my herbs came screaming back in the middle of the night, leaving me sleepless. And I had a meeting early that morning on the other side of the hill with a digital company to discuss doing the scans for my upcoming book. A company that my director had recommended.

I got to her house around one and we talked for close to five hours. Five hours without discussing any specific notes on the script. We talked about movies we liked and how she thought our movie should look, compared to some of the other movies we both liked. And we talked about story. Mostly in broad strokes. But also some of the subtleties. We talked about the girls (the lead characters)…their behavior, their relationship to each other and themselves. And feel. A lot about the feel of the story. Did I mention I was really tired that day and still had a toothache?

By the time we were finished, I wasn’t sure if we had accomplished anything at all. I didn’t take notes during our meeting, nor after (something I generally do because it takes about two nanoseconds to forget everything that’s said). As I was leaving, I had to ask, “Did we get anything done?”

Since that meeting, I’ve been slammed with other things. My book and it’s looming deadline. Setting up my store at www.cheshercat.com (hint, hint…go check it out…see me on the Merv Griffin show sitting next to Jay Leno…and buy something) and taking on a bunch of movie poster designs for Cannes. Basically doing nothing on My First Kiss.

Until last night. That’s when we had meeting #2. It was a production meeting. This time at my house with the director, Peter and me. Our budget girl is out of the picture for the time being as she’s working on a movie shooting in at the Grand Canyon. It was the first sit down that Peter had with the director. Our main purpose was to make decisions on what we want in our presentation package. The package that will help up raise the 5M plus we need to get this baby on the silver screen.

We started at 8:30pm. We talked a lot about the feel of the movie and what visual style the director had in mind. We referred to movies we liked and disliked as far as their visual style. We talked about how to address the look in relationship to the period. And as we were talking, I was suddenly able to cite meaningful portions of our discussion two weeks ago. I guess we did get something done. I like working this way. It’s very conducive to creativity.

We also talked about the visuals we want to put in the package. I’m so happy that our director is a visual ace. By the time we were done at around 1am (only because we were all nodding off) we had divied up the work we need to get done for the next step. Unfortunately for Peter, most of it landed on his plate. He’s going to do more work on the budget and break down the script into locations. Once the breakdown is done, he’ll get more specific shots from the film commissions and we’ll make decisions on where we want to shoot.

I’m going to get in touch with some of the Canadian producers we met in Canada and the director is going to read the script a bunch more times to further decide what visual she wants to shoot for the package.

Poor Peter.

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