What's Doin'

Wow! I've really been ignoring this poor ol' blog this past week or two, haven't I?

Well, rest assured that I wasn't just curled up somewhere in a fetal position listening to whale sounds and sucking my thumb. No sir, I've actually been doing some preproduction stuff for my next short film project, Fear of Falling.

Some time ago (about the time I first started thinking of screwing around in this biz called show) I adapted a short story written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Kent Williams called Fear of Falling (originally appearing in Vertigo Preview #1, 1992). I wasn't too sure about my screenwriting abilities or my technical skills at the time (to be perfectly honest, I'm not that much more confident about them now), so I kind of figured that I would adapt a story and meet myself halfway. It took the pressure off of becoming involved in a project that might turn out looking like crap and dashing my aspirations against the rocks like so much sea foam.

I knew that I could never do anything with it once it was made because I don't have any official permission to do it or rights to exhibit or distribute it, but I thought it would be a good exercise, nonetheless.

Alas, the project was sidelined by the Digital Guerilla competition I entered last year and eventually shelved in favour of stories that I owned or did have the permissions to use.

Flash forward 18 months or so and I'm back to FoF as my next short. I've gone back and done a little work on my original adaptation and I think it could turn out really well if all is handled right. I'm prepping the short now, as I mentioned before, and will hopefully be going into casting in a few weeks. We'll see how things turn out. As it stands right now I'm about to shoot an animatic with some action figures and mock sets to work out the camera moves. I'll probably post again on the progress of that. In fact, I may be starting up another blog to serve as a production diary while I do all of this ridiculousness. I'll keep you posted on that one.

I'll try to get back with more DS9 thoughts and some words about some great swag that I've been picking up. You can probably expect another linkblog to be coming soon, as well.

mike