November 6, 2008

I had my first official-style writer’s meeting on Sunday thanks to Caryn.

We’ll be shooting her web series The Adventures of Cory & Sid in January and Caryn made the progressive move to try and have a team of writers just like she would have if it were a full length sitcom instead of a 5 minute per episode web series. I am thankful that she didn’t decide to have a team of directors. That would have made me sad. While Sid & Cory is not my baby it is a fun series, and I get to work with people I adore while flexing my director muscles.

What was best about the writer’s meeting was getting to sit in the room with the three writers (Caryn, Samantha & Seth) and getting to hear them go through their scripts out loud and give each other ideas or laugh at each other’s jokes. There was no stress of actors or worrying about blocking, or anything else that could stop a typical rehearsal or read through. This was just the three creative’s checking to make sure their stories still worked and even to get some of my input on them. I was able to put my two cents in saying what problems we might encounter or not to worry about certain things because we can shoot it a certain way so the audience will get that even though it’s not in the stage directions, etc.

I also liked being in LA on a Sunday morning. Watching the traffic from the sky scrapers, and feeling the buzz of the city. While I go back and forth on moving to LA I really think that I need to some day. I love being there and I want more of the cities within LA to unfold to me.

But I guess I should concentrate on finishing my movie before I worry about moving into the city.

I also had the stressful director moment this weekend when my editor called me with a problem on End. I’m crossing my fingers to hope that it’s nothing big and I know that post is always problematic, but I still stress. However, I think it’s part of my job not to pass that stress on to other people but as a director try to take their stress away (and put it on me) so that they can continue to do their jobs effectively. It just makes me nervous because unlike a studio film where if something goes wrong we can reshoot we cannot. Not just because of budget but because the location has changed, the actors schedules, etc. We have what we shot and we have to love it and live with it.

I just continue to pray that God does His will with End and allows the film to take us where it will. God’s like that and I know He’s there, even for my typical director psychosis.