Strike, AFM, Filmmaking

So, it's been a week of writer's strikes here in LA land... Though it doesn't affect me directly at present in terms of my indie film work, it's a bit nerve racking because it just means that the system is even slower than it already is, meaning it's going to take forever for new work to be read! Ughh, it's already so slow! I guess all of this just gives me the impetus to focus on Raspberry Magic and make the film, no matter how low budget we have to go. I'm just at that point in my life where it's like do or die, I have to make the film and move ahead. I've also been thinking lately about doing a couple of narrative shorts for the web. I've got so many ideas, and it may be fun to shoot something in kind of a low-fi format and just get it out there. I love the possibility, because it's so much easier than screening something in film festivals--people can watch it much more immediately! On another tip, my producer and I went to AFM last week to meet with several people about the movie. It was fun but weird on many levels, hanging out in the lobby of the Loew's Hotel. We met with a couple of distributor/producer types who are helping us make this film happen, which was great. The weird part was seeing some filmmakers dressed in costumes or handing out schwag like pens and buttons. Man, it's a total down and dirty sort of hustle, people trying to get the word out however they can... This business is def tough at every juncture.

Quiet Week, Strike Looming

This is the first week in a long time that I haven't had meetings for Raspberry Magic. It was weird, but a good time to catch up on a bunch of things like putting together our fall newsletter/update. The week before, I had a pretty big deal investor meeting with a crew of people, which went very well. Megha and I had spend weeks putting together slides that are beautiful but also shock full of information. It was a stressful process and at one point, I thought we might kill one another, but it all worked out. It was a great experience to tell the story of the movie and also break down the financial for a captive audience. There are a number of people who are interested, but this process is so long, it requires a lot of talking back and forth, meeting with more people and then more people, constantly. I think sometimes that's the part that's hard for me, because it's a lot of waiting. But, we are lucky that we've got the meetings, and that we have a good group of people interested in the film. It's crazy with the whole Hollywood strike looming. I am sure it will impact me in ways I never imagined, even though it's not directly. It does seem like, though, with all this going on, we'll see more money going into webisodes and indie film. It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out.