Producery Wednesday

Right, so now the whole laptop saga is out of my system I can start catching up with the other exciting stuff that’s been happening.

Erm …

Okay, so not much really. Well, that’s not true; I had drinks with Abi Titmuss last Wednesday, that was quite cool.

But then again, even that statement isn’t quite true; it was one drink and there were four of us there: me, Mandy (my wife), Jonathan Sothcott and Abi. Abi wants to do a short film I wrote, Jonathan wants to produce it and Mandy just wanted a drink, so everyone walked away happy. Since I have a vested interest in all three things, I walked away the happiest of all.

From there we all went our separate ways, I met up with producer/director Don Allen and we talked over the rewrite for Kapital. We managed to close up the plot holes from the first draft and talked through the character changes needed for the new story – and it all seems to work.

Between these two meetings, I had a phone call from a third producer, Mark Shields. It seems LVJ, the never-ending project, is actually nearing the end of post-production. For reasons I’m not going to go into here (mostly because I don’t really know), LVJ has been in production for a little over seven years. There’s a trailer on the website, if you’ve got the time, it’s worth a watch: http://www.lvjmovie.com/videotrailers.html

 And there’s a production blog here: http://www.lvjmovie.com/blog.html

For the first time there’s a cut everyone seems happy with – it’s not perfect, but it’s watchable and makes sense – am I available to go and watch it and offer my opinion?

Yes, yes I am.

And I did, yesterday; and it’s really good. A lot of the effects are still missing, but the animatics help fill in the blanks, and some of the transitions need smoothing out – but overall it’s watchable, interesting, funny and surprisingly tense towards the end.

Surprising because I wrote it and know what happens – sort of.

The whole process has been unusual and someday I’ll be able to explain it in full, but today is not that day. Suffice it to say the film has been made against overwhelming odds and getting as far as it has is a real testament to the talent and dedication of the guys involved. It’s been a seven year shoot on two continents with more effects shots than ‘Titanic’ and a budget which spiralled from nothing to … well, nothing.

Despite all the problems, the final result looks like it might well have been worth all the effort and that’s good enough for me.