Skyward - Day 0 - 2008 April 17

This is my first blog since conceiving Skyward.

Why I can't seem to take a passion and turn it into a working scrīpt, I don't know. Maybe it's because I impose some pretty severe limitations on myself:

• It has to have fight scenes

• It has to have a final fight scene

• It's not a movie 'about' martial arts

That doesn't SEEM so bad, but your basic story structure involving a villain would probably surmise that the villain has the advantage at the end of the story, and if he/she is such a great villain, he/sh... fuck it, he has a gun. He shoots people and he hits them, and he'll damn straight shoot the hero and kill him as soon as he sees him.

Instead, I take the gun away and make him fight. So now he has to be incompetent to a certain degree AND he has to be young enough to fight. There's another requirement:

• The actors have to be competent screen fighters

Old folks won't do very well for a fight scene, and I like using my guys-- god dammit, one last one:

• The fights (largely) involve The Stunt People

So, in an effort to please the assholes who don't enjoy a quirky comedy with a bunch of action scenes, I have to figure out a way to do a story involving everything I just listed. If I don't do what I've just listed, then I stray dangerously far from what I set into motion for The Stunt People in the first place. We're a crew of martial artists and actors who make movies - good movies, hopefully.

As I wrote Contour 2 I noticed that I had no idea what I was writing anymore. I wanted to do 3 or 4 certain fight scenes involving certain people, but throwing a plot around that was becoming impossible. As I had been writing it, Contour 2 would have ended up being a mess of imagination-land rules (in Uruvia) and stitches everywhere to make sure I could have these fight scenes work in a story. But they wouldn't. I sat there thinking, "I should just do a character-driven movie." So I filed away Contour 2 and wrote Skyward.

Skyward involves three main characters. Clay, his wife Jamie, and her brother Devon. The three are a trio of lonely souls up in Redding, California. Clay is more territorial than a dog, and he becomes paranoid when he suspects that Jamie is having an affair. Clay is also learning to be a pilot, something he's wanted to do since childhood, but his vision is failing him so badly that he soon gives it up. Devon is in a fix: he owes money to a financer. For what, we don't know. It probably involves drugs, or parties, but he's not paying it back, and the financer starts harassing him. Clay offers to relieve Devon of his debt if he'll watch Jamie to see if she's cheating. After some prying, Clay convinces Devon, and Devon observes Jamie is indeed cheating, and he takes it upon himself to kill the guy. It turns out he killed his financer, and Jamie WASN'T cheating on Clay, and the three dispose of the body and go on the run.

There's more to it than that. I'm going to need a prize-winning poet to write a decent synopsis. The rough draft is done, and now we have another month to get the working version of the scrīpt ready. Ed and I are busy preparing the budget, and I have to send it out to a few people. As of now we have $20K to shoot this movie, and that alone might be enough. ... But we'd like to have $50K, maybe even a little more.

The next version of the scrīpt needs to be done by May 15, and the storyboards and final scrīpt need to be done by June 15. Pre-production (legals, locations, equipment, tests) will be in full swing then.

One exciting thing is we're hiring Greg Ephriam to be our DP. He has the holy-shit-what-is-that-thing of video cameras: The Red. If we plan this right, Skyward will be shot on the Red. An editing setup for this thing won't be cheap, but the Red 'noteriety' will be worth it alone. First action movie to be shot on Red... yes.

There are no big names attached to the project yet, but that could change.

More than anything, I want to make Skyward enjoyable for everyone. Contour took quite a beating from folks who don't like zero-budget films. Most sour reviewers wouldn't even give it a chance, and I imagine if we had spent some money on a good DP for Contour, shot it in HD, and just spent more money in general, those assholes probably would've liked it. Skyward is for the assholes in the world, but I'm not leaving our fanbase hanging: there are 5 action scenes, ... no, 6. Lemme recount. Bar, workyard, backyard, house, lounge, and barn. Yeah 6. That's real good.

Now I worry about getting this scrīpt working better and better. I'm still an amateur scrīpt-writer, as this is only my second feature. I'll pass it around to people, get all the feedback I can (provided the feedback isn't along the lines of 'I think this movie won't work'... I don't really believe that right now) and then shoot the stupid thing. More updates as they come.

Eric