D'fwago Productions

Another step down the road into making a film that’s been in our stack for over ten years now, A Life Worth Killing For.

As always there were a few no shows, but all in all the day was pretty busy. We started at 8:30 am and managed over 30 auditions for the 2 lead roles and principal role in our film. There were a lot of really good people and we will be narrowing our list down over the next couple of days and letting everyone know by Thursday, May 19. I hope in time we will be able to bring a few of the others we are not casting into our big production expected in 2012.

And finally, on Wednesday May 18 we have our latest 24 hour short film Get A Life screening at the Bloor theatre at 9:30pm as a participant in the worldwide film race.

Come out and cheer us on if you can!

And special thanks to Heather Farmer for lending us her pic from our auditions.

This is exciting news on several levels…we are finally taking pre-production steps on A Life Worth Killing For. This is a script I wrote back in the late 90s. Eric Myles and I began reshaping it over and over and there it sat for more than a decade. I did have a round table read to see if it had some legs to it and the response was really good. That was back in 2002/2003…I forget which but the good response is now at least 7 years old.

Still as we began hitting the 24 hour film contests I wanted to start pushing for something bigger, something planned, something scripted…if only to show we are not just one trick ponies. Of course, maybe we are but I like to be proven wrong, over and over…

Anyway, this is our biggest budget flick since Harmonivore back in 1993.  And when I saw biggest budget I really mean, small, independant film budget…but still as we work our way towards doing a feature film, this is our intermediate step.

We started a casting call for A Life Worth Killing on Sunday and have seen a very solid 150+ resumes coming in. We will be going through every single resume to pare down the numbers for our auditions that will be happening on May 14. There are three main roles we are casting…

Here’s the breakdowns:

John: Male, Late 20s – Late 30s. A cold blooded, self assured killer without remorse. However, when A job goes wrong John becomes a shell of the machine he once was and is filled with self doubt and finds himself unable to kill when needed. Must be physically fit.

Jill: Female. Late 20s – Late 30s. Like John, Jill is a cold blooded, self assured killer without remorse. When John has a crisis in confidence it is Jill he turns to as a trainer, a mentor to bring him back to the fold of the killing elite. As a sinfully sexy and brutal business competitor she relishes the task of making Johns life insufferable.

Dr. Barbara: Late 30s – Early 60s. Dr. Barbara has been treating John for years, believing all his stories to be just that, flights of fancy from an ordinary man. When the truth is uncovered he/she is not prepared to deal with John.

Synopsis:  John is the perfect assassin; professional, emotionally detached and happy in his work. That is until his trigger, his reason for being, is destroyed by his own hand and he suffers a crisis in confidence. John must turn to his nemesis and business competitor Jill for guidance if he is to return to the avocation he loves so much.

Neil Bennett (foreground) and Pat Williamson (bkg)

That headline isn’t an insult…well, yes it is, but I don’t mean it, it’s just the ever-so-clever title of our latest 24 hour short film. This one was for the worldwide film racing contest.

Sadly we couldn’t rangle our whole team from Book Club but we did manage to pull in Neil Bennett, Pat Williamson, Pamela Tophen, Eric Myles and myself for a pretty solid team. Despite missing at least one of our regular crew we managed to muddle our way through yet another 24 hour brutal test of sleep deprivation. The main lesson learned from this one? Two 24 hour film contests within one month is a) too much and b) makes one punchier than they expected.

Going through my notes I have this breakdown on Get A Life:

Stage 1: 10 pm. Receive our assignment. Theme: Identity Theft. Prop: Noodles. Action: Pouring a Drink. Brainstorm begins.

Stage 2: 12:30 am – script written, loving the idea.

Stage 3: somewhere around 4:30 am. Realizing despite having a one page script, it’s written incorrectly and probably should have been in point form and expanded to at least three pages.

Stage 4: 5:30 am. We are going to be heavy on footage for something that is only supposed to be 3 minutes and 30 seconds long, not including credits. Already cutting in our heads we decide not to shoot a gag that isn’t necessary and helps get Pat and Neil wrapped ASAP…

Stage 5: Pat and Neil are wrapped. Eric is digitizing footage, not loving the idea as much as I did at writing stage. Going through the typical shooting depression where everything is awesome and next minute, everything is horrible.

Stage 6: Working on picking out music and SFX  while Eric edits. The first rough cut is 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Exactly 40 seconds too long and it seems to move at too much of a breakneck pace. Eric begins cutting back.

Stage 7: Eric lops off 33 seconds off without damaging flow…still moving at a fast clip…how to lose another 7 seconds without seeming like just a series of shots.

Stage 8: Eric has a cut running at 3 minutes 26 seconds…oddly it seems slower than the 4 minute + version, but the film now seems like it is working. I begin working on credits which can run for 30 seconds but we hate long credits so the briefer the better…run back to one of our locations to grab a shot with the Nikon D7000 to try and utilize it in the credit crawl.

Stage 9: We are ahead of our usual schedule for a 24 hour film contest but Eric and I are both punchier than usual…laughing at things that are not funny. In fact, this is easily our least funny film…but it’s shaping up to be something different.  Different can be good…right?

Stage 10: We complete the film and begin uploading 2 hours prior to the end of the contest.

We can’t post or link to the film as of yet but there will be a screening on May 18th at the Bloor in Toronto…so come on out and see it if you can. I think it is one of more interesting and tonally different films…and it is something Eric and I have always, especially me, wanted to do…make a completely silent film (dialogue wise) and I think we mostly pulled it off!