Greetings Gotham City…

In five days I head to LA to meet up with Mike Hedge and prepare for our jouney into Black Rock City.  Mike Hedge is producing a docuemartary out at Burning Man this year called “As the dust settles” and asked me to be one of the DPs.  I will admit I was very reluctant at 1st to bring a RED camera to the Playa, the Black Rock desert can be a very agressive environment… at times 70mph plus winds, huge sand storms, hotter the hell in the day time and freezing at night, why on earth would I take a RED there?  I don’t know…maybe cause so many things went wrong with last years film expedition that I am trying to prove to myself I can do this.  The Playa gives and the Playa takes, you must be ready for anything and open to any outcome in order to find a comfort zone to work in out there.  I learned much from last years “Green Man” (my least favorite year at burning man) and I look forward to doing the time warp again!

I am building a configuartion that is rock solid for run and gun dessert shooting, my goal is saftey of the gear 1st,  design a comfortable set up and try and keep a low profile so not to take away from others expeirence.  I really did not think I was going to be working this year but times are hard and I dont have much a choice…the road ahead is not going to be easy, but then again when do filmmakers ever do things the easy way?

Never too late to donate today! Well thats the spirit of 48 hour I suppose, trying to make due with what you have available is half of it. One thing you must have is food cause a fed crew is a happy crew and thats why we are taking some donations and possibly holding a fund raiser for our 48 hour film…food and transportation. The 48 hour film competition (make a short movie in 48 hours) is a fun exercise for everyone and it should serve as a great field test for our RED 1781. Patrick Sarni and myself have been doing some planing and trying to figure out who our talent is and what locations we are using but it complicates the situation when you do not know the genre or the story until the night it begins…June 20th! We will keep you posted with our progress.

So I just got a phone call from one of my partners in Crime, Kendall Smith, who just informed me that it was official…we are registered as Team Lurkers for the 48 Hour Film Competition. Thank you Mr.Smith…I always manage to miss this deadline, not this time. Here is a blurb from the official 48 Hour Film Competition site…

The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours. On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week.

A friend and filmmaker form my home town Richmond VA, Lucas Krost, called me down to work on one of his 48 hour films, Terminus, when he competed in the previous 48 hour show down, and all I can say is its insane film production on steroids…little time for sleep. Lucas reached out to the city for help and had an incredible response from Richmond which certainly paid off as his film was ultimately selected for the Cannes film festival and screening in about a week…Congrats to Lucas and his crew. While there was much to gain from Lucas’s approach, New York is another story….our budget is very low, competition is very high, but either way we are going try and have fun doing it.

8 pages complete and only 90 odd to go. Writing is one of the most challenging professional trades in the world of filmmaking, and arguably the most important.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will be turning my focus to writing as I have just starting working on my 1st feature film, “Chasing August”, a character driven dark comedy. Continuous updates of our screenplay development only here on the Gotham Guerrilla.

Look forward to the contributions from guest writers, both professional and beginners as they share there own trials and tribulations to becoming a writer. I will be also be updating the TOP LINKS widget with some good resources for screenwriters including information on contest and or screen writer related grants. If you would like to suggest a link please forward to haskell@gothamguerrilla.com for consideration.

I will leave you with a quote from friend and mentor during my film school days, Michael Chaney…

“You can make a pile of shit look really good, at the end of the day its still a pile a shit”