Skyward - Day 18 - 2008 May 29

I thought I'd make one tiny change to the scrīpt... two actually. One, Clay ends up killing Ronnie, and two, Clay suffers an eye injury during the bar fight, rather than just having one from the get go. And now the entire movie is changing. I've been deleting huge numbers of pages, and I'm still cutting it apart. The whole thing is down from 117 to 103 pages, which is nothing but a good thing right now considering there are 8 damn action scenes. I'm actually deleting an entire DAY from the story, which is awesom...Read more

Skyward - Day 17 - 2008 May 27

I started rewriting a little last night, and started wondering what the hell I'm going to do with Devon. First off, I don't know why he borrowed money. School? Not likely. Maybe he didn't borrow money... what if he knocked up Ronnie's daughter, and she had a kid that he owes child support to? Something not related to Ronnie's company would make the story a little stronger. Maybe Ronnie lent Devon money outside of the casino, and he's already in the hole with the casino management anyway. Not sure exactly...Read more

Skyward - Day 16 - 2008 May 26

I've had lots of time away from the scrīpt and now I'm ready to get back to it. The big stumbling block has been the scene where Devon kills Ronnie, and the only solution I could think of was to have Devon trick Clay into killing Ronnie.

I'm impatient today because I want to get out and hang with some friends. So I'll leave it at that. Spent the whole weekend in Eureka.

Skyward - Day 15 - 2008 May 17

Ah... I did it. I got the working draft done on time. I was working so hard on Devon for a whole week and started thinking that I was writing too much of him into the scrīpt. Then I felt like I was thickening the beginning too much, and I lost all sense of pace. So I printed the whole thing out, biked over to the Bay St. Mall, and sat for 2 hours reading through it and marking the damn thing up and down.

That allowed me to get much more in tune with the pacing of the film and the characters' motivations. Devon's...Read more

Skyward - Day 14 - 2008 May 15

I've narrowed the problems with the scrīpt down to the first half. What motivates Devon to kill Ronnie, the person he owes money to? It's not even motivation, but necessity. I added in a small bit with the Sam character. Turns out Sam will take over if Ronnie goes, and he tells Devon about this after Devon meets with Ronnie at the office. So now it's at least in Devon's head that Ronnie needs to go. He almost asks Clay for help, but decides to do it himself, perhaps both to save Clay and make himself feel less l...Read more

Skyward - Day 13 - 2008 May 14

Last night I started making my way back through the scrīpt, polishing up everything, cutting down some dialog here, adding some there, making names for characters who had no names previously so we can better plan who needs to be where when, etc. I made it halfway through and went to bed. I've been losing sleep lately and figured I should catch some back.

I'm hoping that this Friday will be the beginning of my new work schedule. I'll only be working Mon-Thurs from now on, giving me ample time on Thursday nigh...Read more

Skyward - Day 12 - 2008 May 13

My attempts to finish a working draft of the scrīpt by the 15th may not be so futile after all. I've re-written most of the stuff at the ranch, added a night, wrote the dialog for the Clay and Devon scene at the bonfire, and tried to make the rest of it flow properly.

Tonight I'll be going through the entire scrīpt again and both getting a feel for the flow and being sure certain themes play properly throughout. What I need to focus on are the following:

Not much left to say. I just need to keep writing....Read more

Skyward - Day 11 - 2008 May 8

Ed had a long talk with our distributor and learned a lot of important things, not the least of which is that we HAVE to get a name for this movie. Fortunately we can do that through him. One name that popped up was Amy Jo Johnson, who would be rad for Jamie. And we were throwing around the idea of trying to pay David Hasselhoff to play Willie.

Also, apparently you can score some cash by shooting in certain states for a minimal amount of time.

So what I need to do now is get this scrīpt semi-finalized by May 15. ...Read more

Skyward - Day 10 - 2008 May 6

I haven't touched the scrīpt in a few days because I don't want to go on a writing binge just yet. I think it's best I brainstorm a little before diving into it.

First of all I need to move the camp fire scene. Ed's idea is that we do the fight between me and Chelsea at a camp fire, so we might as well combine the original camp fire scene with the fight scene, except now we'll have it later on at Tussen's. Jamie and Tussen will go to sleep, and Clay goes out to the fire. Devon wakes up in the midd...Read more

Skyward - Day 9 - 2008 May 5

This weekend I'm heading back to Cottonwood for Mother's Day, and while I'm there I plan on visiting Chelsea (and Nathan if he's around) to talk some more about the project. In early June we need to get out there and shoot a teaser. Most of it can be shot here in the Bay Area really, if not all of it. The teaser isn't an actual teaser, just stuff we're shooting for fun to get people interested, a concept trailer I guess it's called. Some stuff I think we could definitely use:

I think we could m...Read more