ELENA VANCE wrapped... what an experience!

So after a lot of pre-production -- rehearsals, prop-making, location-securing, wardrobe selections, and lots and lots of fundraising -- we finally kicked off the ELENA VANCE 6 day shoot on December 26th.  After the first weekend (12/26 - 12/28) we regrouped and then attacked the final weekend (1/2 - 1/4).  And then it was all over.

The ELENA VANCE crew is the finest crew I have ever worked with, and the production values on this movie are also the best I have ever had on a shoot.  More than ever I felt the joy of the on-set experience, and I am truly starting to understand just how collaborative cinema is.  There are filmmakers who come up with their vision, and then see every part of the process from that inception to the finished film as different means of diluting the purity of the initial idea.  This is not the way to go about making movies.  For writers, nothing comes between their initial idea and the piece of blank paper in front of them.  There's no point trying to be that bullheaded when it comes to filmmaking.  The only way to go about things is to surround yourself with a crew of people who are exceptionally talented at what they do, make sure all of these people understand the beating heart of your idea just as well as you do, and then release the reins and watch them come up with a barrage of creative concepts that you never would have thought of and yet are even more true to the original vision than what you would have done on your own.  What a sentence that was.

Anyway, I knew all that to be true about movies a long time ago, but it wasn't until ELENA VANCE that I managed to gather together a large crew of wildly creative minds.  It made everything so easy and the on-set experience became blissful.  Having an amazing production designer made a world of difference; just wait until you all see what Darcy did to create Elena's bedroom.  Extreme Makeover Cinema Edition.  This movie also featured the best sound operators I have ever had on a movie, the best lighting, the best script supervision, the best production assistants... I am still floored by how smoothly everything went.  And to top everything off, the rain held off (for the most part) until the final day of the shoot... and it made everything look so much better for that day.

Anyway, now is probably not the time to thank all the people who made my movie possible, but I've got one quick story that can serve as a microcosm of the entire wonderful experience.  On Day 5 we were preparing to shoot one of the first scenes in the movie, a scene which introduces Beraly (played by Cami Ottman), the younger sister to our main character Terry.  From the beginning Darcy and I had discussed how she should be wearing a prissy church-style dress her mom made her put on, but that in order to endure it she also wears her boots and her crazy wooly hat.  Just before shooting I told Darcy that I figured Cami could lose the hat for this first scene and just have it for the Peacock Lane scenes... and with that, Darcy launched into a detailed description of who Beraly was and why she should be wearing the hat in the first scene.  After a few sentences I cut her off so that I could quickly surrender.  That's what I'm talking about: the key to a successful movie (not that I know much about success yet) is surrounding yourself with people who are so talented and see the vision so clearly that they can actually dictate to you what your vision is, as crazy as that sounds.

All these great BTS stills are by the amazing Larry McFarling, by the way. =)

So many more stories to tell, but right now I've got to go watch the Seahawks game.