At this time last year it was official that Christopher and I were making END. It was a scary thing for me. I had a still-new job I’d only been at for about four months, a new car payment because my old car had just blown up (literally), and it finally meant that I was going to have to put my passion and education to the test.
Most of June through August of last year is a blur for me. I can’t even remember the shooting days too clearly – they all seem like one long day. What I do remember is a constant state of exhaustion. The one huge saving grace of it all was that the downtime for my job is the summer. This meant not only that my exhaustion did not affect my work days but that while working I could also do pre-production. END would not have happened in 6 weeks if work had been slamming me.
Typically, I would do my day job, get everything done and use any and all downtime at work to do what I could for the movie; things like researching equipment, casting notices, schedules, script breakdowns, and all the other odds and ends would get done at work, and then I would commute home, sit down at my computer and do the exact same thing until it was time to go to bed and do it again. Thank God that He gave me such an opportunity.
Again, I am in the down season for my job. The difference is that this year I do not have a movie in pre-production that requires my constant attention. No, this year I have a finished movie. A movie that as I type this is in consideration for multiple film festivals. The most I do with it is complete submissions, send it out and then pray that God gets my little movie into the right festivals, to be seen by the right people, and hopefully help all of my cast and crew onto that career path we all want so much.
Shockingly this is much more nerve wracking than trying to cram 6 months of pre-production into 6 weeks.
Kiss of Death (1947) dir. Henry Hathaway
1 hour ago