In which it all starts to come together

Working on Crazy 8s is very different from any other shorts that I've done before, namely that we basically can't prep anything until Day 1 of 8. My initial belief was they we prepped what we could, started shooting on Day 1, then posted and delivered eight days later.

Not so, as I learned on Saturday. After the story meeting, we all (the Crazy 8s people and us lucky eight) held a production meeting where they gave us the do's and don'ts and details. The only things we're allowed to actually prep in a traditional sense is our locations, cast and crew. Everything else we can form ideas for, but we don't know our gear list and delivery requirements until the 1st day. 

In that sense Day 1 is actually the first "official" day of prep. Day 1 we get our paperwork and prep, Day 2, we pick up gear and finalize everything we can, then shoot Days 3 and 4, then post Days 5, 6, 7, and deliver on Day 8. This cuts 2 days from my initial plan of shooting on Day 1, but in a way works much better since we now have to shoot on the weekend, which frees up a lot of people for cast and crew who would otherwise be working during the week.

The closer we get to the start the more excited I get. Our crew list is starting to come together, the script is getting closer to being locked, and it seems, as Fisher Price would say, the possibilities are endless. One of the things we talked about in the production meeting was the industry support we'll be getting. Not only are they (oh so kindly, I might add) giving us three grand worth of rentals from a local production supply company, we're also getting an online and colour correction session with a local post house and a mix at a sound studio.

Sweet!

As for the story meeting I mentioned, it went quite well and was a lot of fun. It's always very cool to get a fresh pair of eyes on the script, especially someone who's a story editor for a living. The hard part now is still slimming down the script. 

It's a hard balance, because the majority (something like between 70 - 80%) of shorts that do really well are under 7 minutes, and many festivals prefer shorts under five minutes, and right now Pi Day clocks in at approximately 9 minutes. The script is about 9 and 7/8 pages, and normally one page of script is one minute of screen time, but comedies (like mine) tend to play faster, so I'm guessing it's 9 minutes. Trying to cut another two minutes out is going to be very difficult if I decide to go that route.

Crazy 8s requirements ask that the shorts be no longer than 10 mins, so I'm fine there, but if I want to make my distribution audience as wide as possible then they recommend it clock in at seven. Right now, I don't know if my story as it is can accommodate any more cuts without losing plot points, so I'll have to re-imagine a few scenes to make that work.