Making Meme Part 19: Remixing the Film

Following the realization that the film just wasn’t working as well as it could when presented as a linear narrative Carolyn and I set forward a plan to rethink the narrative. The story wouldn’t change, but the way it was presented would. This ultimately brought the film closer to the original vision, which I had strayed from over the course of pre-production and production of the film. I wrote every scene on a notecard and identified (and color coded) the plots and subplots they were a part of. This was taking a common screenwriting technique for visualizing story and just […]

Making Meme Part 18: Starting Post Production

As stated in the last update we’d been working on post production of the film since the first weekend of shooting. One of the benefits of shooting over eleven months was that we could work on the edit of the film between shoot days. By the time we reached the end of shooting we had a rough cut of the film. We were also able to do this partly because I was editing the film myself. Our process after a shoot day was that I would ensure we had a back up of the footage. Then, I would review all […]

Making Meme Part 15: Shooting the Film Within the Film

There are two parallel searches happening in Meme, Jennifer’s search for the creator of the surreal “Meme” mashup tape and her boyfriend Tommy’s search for a rare horror VHS: Beneath the Black Moon. The search for Beneath the Black Moon became part of the core of the film after the crowdfunding campaign was unsuccessful. I had dug more into the actual VHS collecting community and decided that while I probably wouldn’t properly reflect that community in the film, I could be much much closer than the original version of the script, which didn’t do a very good job of that. […]

Making Meme Part 14: Production Days 14-16

Two months after our last shoot days the end of production was in sight. Due to some short term relocation on the part of our cinematographer, Peter Westervelt, and other factors we had a brief hiatus in filming between March and May of 2015. This gave us time to do a bit of prioritizing and planning for what we estimated to be our last four or five days of shooting. We planned to shoot Memorial Day weekend to knock out a significant portion of what was left. The quote of the day for Day 14 of production was “Opportunity is […]

Making Meme Part 13: Production Days 12 and 13

As I mentioned in Part 11 there was some intersection between what was happening in my life at that moment and the story. Jennifer, our lead character, was drinking to self-medicate. I was doing the same thing. There’s lots of reasons for it. I was stressed over a lot of things personal and professional and making a film was piling onto that a fair bit. Many people on the shoot were doing as much as they could to reduce my stress and make the film go as smoothly as possible, but in the end I was still stressed and still […]

Making Meme Part 12: Production Days 10 and 11

Days Ten and Eleven were March 14th and 15th of 2015. Unlike most of our weekend shoots so far this weekend we weren’t shooting at just one location. For this weekend we shot at three different locations. It was probably the most stressful weekends of the shoot because we had to shoot some key scenes and had some very frustrating issues with one location in particular. The quote of the day for Day Ten was: “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night. -Steve Martin” Day Ten was shooting Tommy and Jennifer’s bedroom scenes. We’d shot everything in their […]

Making Meme Part 11: Production Days 8 and 9

The quote of the day for Day Eight of production was: “People think you have to know what you want to do with your life by the time you’re 19. Wrong! Or that you have to be in a significant relationship in your twenties. Wrong! It’s all just nonsense. – Tilda Swinton” Day Eight for production was February 7th, 2015. We were again at actress Lauren A. Kennedy’s apartment, with it acting as her character’s apartment. Day Eight sticks out in my mind for two reasons: Director of Photography Peter Westervelt helping nudge me to be a better director and […]

Making Meme Part 10: Production Days 6 and 7

The quote of the day for Production Day Six was: “I would rather be handsome for an hour than pretty for a week –Tilda Swinton.” For days six and seven of production we moved to a new location. In the film Sarah Schoofs’ Jennifer has a best friend, Lesley, played by Lauren A. Kennedy. I’d worked with Lauren on a few projects directly, including my own short The Box and Christina Raia’s web series Kelsey. On Kelsey we’d shot a couple of days in Lauren’s apartment. Lauren was kind enough to allow us to shoot there for Meme as well. Tommy’s […]

Making Meme Part 9: Production Day 5

The quote of the day for our fifth day of production was: “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.― Nora Ephron” When you’ve primarily made short films or web videos that only end up being 20 minutes long at the very most you have moments early in the production of a feature where you marvel at how much you’ve done already. You’ve already shot enough of the film that you almost have the whole arc of the story. The end feels so within reach. There’s still a long way to go you remind yourself, but look how […]

Making Meme Part 8: Production Days 3 and 4

The quote of the day for the third day of production was: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” ―John Maynard Keynes As discussed in the previous post we had a delay between Day Two and Days Three and Four. Day Three was January 17th 2015 and Day Four was the 18th. We had two long days of relatively short scenes. We chose to focus our next block of shooting after the office scenes on scenes that took place in Jennifer and Tommy’s apartment. The apartment belonged to a long-time friend of […]