Blog Titles Are A Stupid Idea

Saturday and Sunday resulted in two surprisingly successful production meetings in a row. On Saturday, Zane and I nutted out the production schedule. This included timelines for casting, script lock down, location scouting, rehearsals and what not. We also worked out a very tentative post-production schedule. The international premiere should be some time about mid-September.

On Sunday, we re-worked the ending of the screenplay. When I say “we” I really mean Zane re-worked the ending of the screenplay. I just told him wether I liked it or not while I read through passages of Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel Without A Crew”. I’m clearly the Ben Affleck of this partnership.

The action in the last few pages is still pretty much the same but I think we’ve almost got it in the bag. I’m pretty happy with the ending now and that means a lot because I’ve never been happy with it.

There are only a couple of minor things that need to be done. We need to insert a couple of character building moments. After Jonah shuts down the comic, Tracey and Danni have a conversation that currently plays as comedy. I’m thinking that Tracey should bring out an analogy about sacrifice that she borrows from the Barton Bear comics. It would underscore the emotional weight of the scene and it would work on at least two levels.

The other change should be after Danni’s apartment burns down and she goes back to Jonah’s apartments. Jonah and Danni should have a conversation about masks and costume. We originally had this in the party scene at the beginning but it was cut for pacing.

I also want to insert a Barton Bear comic strip sequence somewhere in the first act because I think we need to establish the comic strip sequence early on as a narrative structure so that it makes sense when it comes back later on, and it would also be a good intro to Barton Bear.

Otherwise I think it’s close to perfect, but I think we’ll probably be tweaking it until the day we shoot. This week we’ve got a four day weekend, so we plan on doing the first pass of the script breakdown then.

JamesX