Bang! Another two weeks gone! Just like that. The closer we get to shooting the more problems we solve, the more problems we discover, and the more things we try to jam into a day. When I pressed “Publish” on my last post, we only had one cast member to find. This then increased to two, but luckily, thanks to another few days of long auditions we have now OFFICIALLY cast our complete film! We even ended up creating two new characters, which is a little scary, but we honestly feel it’s for the best. That’s the beautiful thing about independent film making – you can make this kind of decisions on the spot. Casting has taken up a lot of our time over the last few weeks – just trying to lock down the very best people we can. I’m VERY happy to say, that we have an amazing cast lined up – every member is truly fantastic. We also spent a lot of time meeting up with potential crew members, and sussing out more locations, writing countless e-mails, making countless phone calls, and most challenging of all – just trying to get some kind of a schedule together. It’s so unbelievably hard to get everyone (i.e. cast) in the same place at the same time – especially when you’re not paying anyone! It really is a logistical nightmare. If one thing doesn’t go to plan (i.e. a vital cast or crew member can’t work on a specific day, or a piece of gear or location is only available at a certain time), then it really stuffs up the whole “grand plan”, and some of the time you just need to re-think everyone from scratch. It’s not a job for the light hearted!

We were originally planning to have our first day of principle photography THIS COMING WEEKEND believe it or not. But, for better or for worse (votes still to be counted), we have had to reschedule due to actors availibility. On the negative side, this has meant that we’ve had to re-think a lot of things and call up and cancel stuff, and reorganise things for another time, but on the positive side, at least we get a bit more time in pre-production. So now, our first day of shooting is on Tuesday 12th of August. We have SO much to do up until then. At least now we have our cast and locations sorted, but we still need to build sets, props and costumes – write up call sheets and schedules, do rehearsals, complete visual effects tests, and numerous other things! Some how, the list of things to do seems to get bigger day by day even though we are ticking things off at an amazing rate! The best news is that Anli is back in action, after fighting with Glandual Fever for several weeks – so it’s really nice to have her smiling and happy face back! We really missed her, and are very happy that’s she’s feeling a fair amount better (not perfect – but these things take time).

So anyway – I must be off… I have a stupidly big list of things to achieve tonight, so I’d better get back to it. Apologies for not writing more over the last few weeks, and also for not putting up many photos. We still need to upload some of the camera test footage as well – so many things to do! But all of these things will come in due course. Thanks to everyone who has spent us e-mails asking questions, and giving us positive feedback – we honestly really appreciate it! Ok.. time to get back to it!

Chris!