So we went back at it for some last minute additions to the movie. We brought in Evey and had her do her best news anchor impression. I say things went well. There are more photos in the gallery.

So we’re moving along still thinking we can get that May deadline hit. We’ll keep you posted.

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update so here it goes.

It’s my last night on vacation in North Carolina. Tomorrow I’ll be back in New Orleans for Lundi Gras. Even though I’ve been away we have been working. Phone calls and emails have been going out in support of The Local 504, and our soon to be announced new project.

As it stands we have a May 9th deadline. At this moment in time I feel pretty good about that. We’ve decided to add a few short scenes to the movie but none of that should take too long. The last cut of the movie was really starting to look pretty good, and the few people that have seen it have had some great things to say about it. Especially in the roles of Vladimir and Vaughn.

So besides a few pick up shots we still have to finish sound, soundtrack, and effects. Easy peasy.

We’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready for viewing and thanks to everyone that has supported thus far.

More to come.

Now I know that we still haven’t put the feature out, but we’re confident that this won’t interfere with it’s completion. Yet there is still no firm time frame for when that will happen.

At the moment we’re not ready to give too much away on the new project. We will say that it’s going to be a ten part web series. Each episode should be around five minutes long. They will be release either weekly or bi-weekly, still haven’t decided.

We’ve got some great new talent coming in on both sides of the camera. There will be some familiar names and faces returning to this project as well.

We’re very excited about the possibilities of this project and look forward to sharing this project and it’s progress with you all. Stay tuned for more news as it happens.

So all our filming is done.  We had our wrap party.  If you didn’t make it that’s too bad.  I think it was a good time had by all, some of the details are a little hazy.  If you went you may remember the new trailer, if you didn’t you may not have seen the new one.  So just wanted to let you know that the new trailer is up on our website, vimeo, Facebook, Myspace, and Youtube pages.  That’s a lot of places to go and look at it.  Leave some comments and let us know what you think.

Real quick, that image above is some concept art for our movie by Scott Leutner, http://www.scottleutner.com.  You’ll be seeing more of that stuff in the future.

In the meantime we have some other things we’re working on.  I’m guessing next on the list is our short that we’ve recently written.  I’m currently thinking a 4 or 5 day shoot on that.  We’ll be needing cast and extras so be on the look out for that.  Still working on writing our next feature, but I think we have a little bit before we start moving ahead on that.  We’re also helping to write another feature that already has some financial interest.  Lastly we may be working on another project with Supagroup, don’t know how much we can talk about that right now though.  So that’s a good bit of stuff.  Somewhere in that we’ll fit in regular life stuff.

On another note, we have some t-shirts left from the wrap party, let us know if you want to buy one.  Also we have some for some actors and crew that didn’t show.  I’ll save them till I see you again I guess, but I think some may have gone missing in some of the celebrations.  Let me know if you would like to claim them though.  As always you can buy shirts on our online store as well.

Thanks for your continued support and we hope that you enjoy our new trailer.  For those we worked with on this film, we hope to work with you again.  For those that supported us we hope you enjoy what we produce, whenever that may be.

The end came suddenly and without ceremony, much like it all began June 28th, 2008. On that date we got together for the first time. Maybe a little less jaded, a little more optimistic, and a bit more naive.

We dragged Vaughn and Dean to a building full of every lost item you can imagine. It was hot as hell, there were mosquitoes biting us and we had no idea what we were getting into. Aaron took an incredible amount of time lighting the room, and for his efforts I think he did a great job. Vaughn, who didn’t smoke at the time, was forced to smoke a pack of herbal cigarettes. They were disgusting and smelled like pot. The DAT recorder failed us. Can’t really remember what went wrong but I know we were having problems. Vaughn saved the day by having the exact model in his office. So Allan and Vaughn took off to retrieve it. The rest of us went to Markey’s for lunch and beer. It rained. It rained hard. If I remember correctly we ended up trapped there for a bit. Eventually we got back and finished the first scene of the movie. We didn’t slate a thing and had about a hundred takes of everything. Maybe it wasn’t great, maybe it was, but the one thing we did know was that it had begun.

I don’t know if any of us thought it would take this long to film everything. I think it was Lefty who first suggested it would take longer than we expected, much longer. At the time I thought he was crazy. I don’t recall what his estimate was, but I hope we beat it.

In that time since late June there have been loss of jobs, divorces, break ups, loss of family, loss of friends, and loss of homes. If it was unexpected it probably happened. Not to say that it was a series of disasters, there were good things. I believe there was a baby born, and a marriage or two in the mix. Through out it all though, we stuck it out. Our crew stayed together and we only really lost one actor in the whole thing. Not bad.

We’ve been incredibly lucky in the people we’ve met. They’ve made wonderful donations of time, money, and property. Things we never imagined when we wrote this came to be because of them. That’s probably been the most amazing part of it all.

On that last day we stood in The Saint. A bar donated to us for the day, by an owner that couldn’t show up. I don’t know if he intended to leave us in the bar unsupervised all day, but that’s the way it went. We didn’t take advantage of the situation, and hopefully left the place somewhat respectful. I think we had about 30 people that showed up to be extras, some friends, some strangers. They stayed patient through all the mess that the day was. Those are details that I’d rather not get into. In the end when it was over, everyone left. There were a few hugs and handshakes, but really it was all about getting out. It was nothing as I had imagined.

Later I found myself in another bar, alone. There was no crew get together, there were no actors celebrating. It was me, in a bar, in a stool, with a beer. I felt no relief or reason to celebrate. I was angry about all the problems we had that day, I thought of the long road ahead. Maybe I was right that night.

Now with a few days to look back on it all, I really think there is much to celebrate. Regardless if we’re done with every aspect of the film, what we did do was a major one, and one that I had my doubts about at times. Even on that last day.

Thanks everyone that has stuck with us, everyone that has stuck with me, because even though there is much work still to do, there is also much to celebrate for what we’ve done.

We only have one more scene left in this damn movie.  You’d think that we’ve figured out what were doing by now.  You’d be wrong.  I wouldn’t say everything was our fault, but still.  We’ll start with Angela.  She was going to be an actress for us, very nice of her to agree to do this scene.  She didn’t show.  Great.  Then a group of the loneliest guys in the world get on their phones and call all the lady friends they can think of.  Charlie, who actually turned out to be perfect, agreed to do the part.  Hooray.  Like idiots we sit around and do nothing while waiting for her.  After she shows we go to the site.  We forget to bring one of the props, for the second time that day.  Jack then applies the handcuff to his wrist, but we forgot the key.  Yep, total pros here.  The car we got for the scene was a stick, the driver we got for the scene couldn’t drive a stick.  Yeah, this was turning out to be a great scene.  We ran on a time crunch because of fading light.  Then after it was all said and done.  The van ran out of gas.

On a positive note, everyone laughed.  Andrew did a nice job of filling in for Lefty.  Charlie was a great sport about everything and did a nice job.  Jack learned how to take off in first gear.  Allan fulfilled his life long dream of being a stunt driver.  Shane made a lot more possible  by being around, wish we had him from the beginning.  And although nothing was perfect, it just might work.  As usual pictures are in the photo section.

One More Scene!

The day ranked high on favorite shoot days.  All in all it was pretty efficient.  All the owner of the boat wanted was some Popeye’s chicken.  That made him awesome, because Popeye’s is awesome.  Hell, I want Popeye’s right now.  All joking aside, everyone thought they were awesome people…and they were.  If the whole movie was shot on that boat it would at least be fun shooting.

Things that sucked were the 30 mile trek to the site.   Also just had the head gaskets replaced on the van.  For whatever reason it over heated on the way back.  Half way across on a 20 some mile bridge.  That was fun.  The Motorist Assist guy was pretty awesome though, and so was the police man that we first encountered.  Wish we would have taken a picture with them.

Two more major scenes to shoot in principle photography.  That sounds awesome.

That’s right we got a sale going on in our online store.  Starting 15 January 2010 until 10 Feb 2010.  Free shipping on orders of $35 or more.  At check out insert the following coupon code:
USD$: FEBSALE2
CAD$: CADFEBSALE2

Easy enough.  Now go to our store and shop: http://thelocal504.spreadshirt.com/

Well we finished off another actor.  This time it was Vaughn.  Hooray.  There was a lot of things trying to get us to cancel today, but in the end we prevailed.  I know some would have rather put this off, but this keeps us on track.  There was a lot of blood today, and in some ways that was bad because we all had blood lust.  Forgot a few little things we intended to shoot but we’ll make up for it later.  There are more pictures than there should be in the photos section.  We set sails next week.  Kill us some KGB Agents.

Enjoy.