Director's Commentary

Hi, this is Gil O'Brien, the real Gil O'Brien. I want to talk about the ideas behind and the process of making "One Hit Wonder" and also give hope to the aspiring director who has very little cash and contacts by explaining the mechanics of my experience with "Very Low Budget Filmmaking".

I think the first thing I should do is explain where the story came from. I like to call "One Hit Wonder" a semi-autobiographical feature. I say "semi" because the storyline has roots dug in the truth, but the plot takes a course of its own. The story originally was written as a musical in 2001. I had written about 20 songs up until that time. Some of the songs fit the standard love song pattern, but most of them were story based and were full of what I thought was funny.

Now, I know you're saying, "That's great Gil, but what the hell does this have to do with the movie? You're talking about the stage production and I want to know the behind the scenes of the movie!" Trust me, I'll get there. It will all tie together.

I took a look at the songs that I had written and tried to find a common theme. The songs that I thought told a story were the following: “If You Let Me”, “I’m a Man”, “Mailman”, “Driving Me Insane”, “The Stalker”, “Murphy’s Law” and “Say You’ll Stay”. "If You Let Me" talks about being in love even though you may not have a lot of money. "I'm a man" is about all the desires that we men have (good and bad). "Mailman" is about a disgruntled mailman. "Driving me insane" is about how the things that attract us to people are the very things that annoy us later on. "The Stalker" is about a delusional stalker, who thinks his infatuation is love. "Murphy's Law" is about how anything than can go wrong, will go wrong. And, finally, "Say You'll Stay" is about pleading for your love to stay with you even after it seems to be too late.

They say to write what you know, so I took a look at the events in my life that had led up to me being 32 years old. I went to college, I got a Graduate degree, I worked as a stockbroker. I played the guitar. I was playing music in open mics after work, but had to have a full-time job in order to pay the bills. The thread seemed pretty obvious to me. The story was about a man who was a musician who was married and was having trouble making ends meet. He would need a sidekick and the songs "Mailman" and "Stalker" summed up an off-the-wall character. I needed to have at least 3 to form a band, so I decided to turn Murphy's Law into an actual character named Murphy. I always liked the black characters in 70's television sit-coms. They always made me laugh. So I thought that I would also make the Murphy character black. The story would be about a journey of the 3 men and balancing the main character's relationship with his wife with his desire to play music professionally.

When I finished writing the musical, my plan was to submit it to the New York City Fringe Festival. which is an experimental theater festival that is held every year. 2001 was a rough time, as you know. I was out of work, living at home (Basically doing a George Castanza). I didn't even have enough money to pay the $40 entry Fee to get into the Festival. I put the play to the side and it sat in a drawer for 5 years.

In 2006 I was back on my feet. I had gotten married and my wife Sonja had my son Jake. I pulled the play out of the drawer and said to myself that I wasn't going to do all of this work in my life and just let it sit in a drawer. A 5 year delay is interesting because there was also a lapse between me first dating my wife and me reconnecting with her 5 years later. But that's a story for another day.

When I took another look at the play, the development of the characters was a lot thinner than the current film version, but the story was strengthened by the lyrics of the songs I mentioned before, plus about 6 more that I had written as I had decided on a plot. In January 2007, I ran an ad in Back Stage Magazine, which is a NYC publication for actors looking for auditions. I got about 500 responses, either by email or in the mail. I was very pleased by the results. I was getting a wide response, mostly for the characters of Gil and Sonja, but I was also getting submissions for some of the other roles as well.

From the headshot and resume submissions that I received, I narrowed down the candidates to those people that I thought were right for each role and contacted them with the option of 3 different times, all on the same day in February of 2007. I booked a room that held about 100 people at Roy Arias Studios in the Times Square area. It cost me about $25 per hour, with a $20 setup charge for all of the chairs and the total bill came out to about $100 for the 3 hours.

When people started arriving at the audition, I think some were surprised by the amount of people that were there. I think they thought it was going to be a one on one audition. What I wanted to do was leverage my time. I had people come up and read a scene from a section of the script, otherwise known as "sides", that I had sent them. I thought that I could tell from that reading whether they fit the character or not. The experience was pretty grueling. I really had to concentrate over the next 3 hours and pick who was going to be in the show. There is an old saying that I heard when I was an actor in the early 90's, "Be the first or the last to an audition". That was definitely true in this case, because I selected the actors for the roles of Gil, Tom and Sonja from the last group. Looking back, I think the psychology is that the last people you see are the freshest in your mind, so they have the biggest impression on you. The first people you see can have a huge impression on you, too, because you may say, "Wow! That guy nailed it. I'm giving him the part" and then you may have that mentality going into the next audition and you don't pay as much attention. But for me, like I said, it ended up being the last people I saw.

I really didn't get a huge showing for the character of Murphy, but I was really impressed by both Corey Wright and Jeffrey Lamar. I think Corey has a really good sense of comedy and Nathaniel has a very laid back approach that went well with the Murphy character. I decide to error on the side of comedy and chose Corey. I also found a lot of talented players for other characters. John Fico was hysterical as Tom, but I wanted someone with a stronger singing voice. David Arthur Bachrach was perfect as Lou Duva. Dan Tibbets was to be the police officer. Jon Freda was to be The Machine. Jon also has some film credits, so I thought that I could use him as a draw when applying to the Fringe Festival.

The cast got together for a small read-through and then we went into a very good music rehearsal space called "The Studio", yes that's the name, "The Studio" on 30th street in Manhattan and started practicing the songs. I find that actors can pick up their lines and develop a scene fairly quickly. The tricky part is getting the music down, so I wanted to spend about 75% of the cast's time on that aspect of the production. The cast worked for free and that is standard in a non-union production. The rationale for the actors is two-fold: 1) They have more items to put on their resume and 2) If the production gets picked up by a producer, they have the potential to get picked up as well or, if they are not picked up, they can still correctly claim that they were in the original production of an original play that someone has actually heard of. So, the risk is that they are wasting their time, the upside is what I just mentioned.

I videotaped the acting scenes on a consumer-end video camera that cost me about $300. My intention was to use this for my submission to the Fringe with my application. The review panel supposedly looked at a taped representation of each play (if you submitted one), so I thought it would help my chances. The deadline was rapidly approaching, but I wasn't ready to send in the video, yet, so I sent in the application without the footage. I put some of the clips up on YouTube to garner interest in the production as well as to give the actors something they could point to when someone asked them to show a reel of their work.

I suddenly became aware that, although the festival accepted about 200 plays a year, they were usually plays that weren't very commercial. They were mostly political or very weird. So, I got a one page rejection letter from the nice people at the Fringe stating, "Better Luck Next Time". And, to add insult to injury, a few days later somebody stole the video camera from my closet at work.

I told the cast the bad news. They took it pretty well. They had indeed been wasting their time. In hindsight, I could have waited to see if I was accepted to the Fringe before holding auditions and rehearsing. I wouldn't have gotten to see the pages come to life, however. It is a very moving experience to see professional actors take your words and become the characters that you have envisioned.

Then a very strange thing happened. I had gotten a call from a good friend of mine named Joe Songco. He told me that an old acquaintance of ours had seen the scene where Gil gets fired and thought it was very funny. He said that I should turn it into a movie. I really had never even thought about that. I guess I thought the whole idea of making a movie was so foreign to me. I didn't know the first thing about making movies. They have to cost millions of dollars to make, I thought. I don't have access to that kind of money. My friend Joe told me to give this guy a call and see what happens. Maybe he has some advice. I said, "what the hell". What do I have to lose.

I gave our old friend a call. His name is Joe DiMarco. It's very ironic that he was involved because I was in Little Italy watching the fight with him and Joe Songco when Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear. As you know, that incident is reiterated by Murphy in the movie. So, I told him what I was doing and he gave me very simple instructions. He said, get a book on screenwriting and turn the formatting of the play into one that is formatted for the screen. It should come out to about 90 pages. Send it back to him and, if he and his business partner liked it, he would forward it on to some people in the entertainment industry. His business partner Sean Casey and he are entertainment lawyers and inked the deal that merchandised all of the items that related to "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon".

I was a little overwhelmed by the idea of having to reformat all of the text into one that was film compatible, but the prospect of having people in the industry take a look at it far exceeded the prospect of having to spend additional time on modifying the script. In addition to having to modify the script, I had to eliminate all of the songs that were in it. I didn't want this to be a film adaptation of a musical. I wanted this to be a story that was told with dialogue. That forced me to extend the length of each scene and create new scenes. For example, the entire sequence when Gil and Tom meet at the bar and discuss their lives and about how Tom met Murphy in Jail was not in the original script. Also, there wasn't the confrontation between Gil and Murphy. I created that 8 minute scene when I adapted the script for the screen.

After a crash course in screenwriting, I presented the script to Joe DiMarco and waited for a response. Well, actually I couldn't wait so I did some leg work myself. I had heard through various sources that the way to obtain financing for your movie is to get big name stars involved in your project. They are supposedly willing to work on your project if it is something of interest to them.

I bought a subscription to IMDB Pro. You have probably heard of IMDB.com (Internet Movie DataBase). That's where you can see what movies someone has been in. It's a very useful reference tool. They also have a Professional section as well that gives you information, such as the agent contact for each actor.

I spent the $14.99 a month to get this information and started emailing all of the actor's agents that I thought would make the perfect fit for the characters: John Cusack and Russell Crowe for Gil, Jack Black and Dan Fogler for Tom and Chris Tucker for Murphy. Needless to say from the current look of the movie, none of the aforementioned agents got back to me. I did get an email stating interest from Maxine Bahns, who I thought would be good for the role of Sonja, and her agent said that I could send an "attachment letter".

I frantically tried to call Joe DiMarco to let him know that Maxine was interested in the movie. If you remember the films "Brother's McMullen" and "She's the One", Maxine Bahns was the love interest of Edward Burns in both of those movies, as well as in real life at the time. Joe was on vacation, so he told be to reach his business partner Sean Casey and discuss the email I got from Maxine Bahn's agent. I asked him what an attachment letter meant. He informed me that an attachment letter means that the actor or actress is attached to the project. So, when a filmmaker is raising money, it allows the filmmaker to say that "so and so" is attached to the movie. He also told me that it really doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot unless you have an A-List actor attached to your project. Since I didn't have a Russell Crowe or a John Cusak attached to the project, I was basically back to square one.

Joe and his partner ended up passing on the project for whatever reason. You usually don't get a reason why someone passes, just an email with the phrase "good luck with the project". I got a few more similar emails from some contacts I had in my previous life as an actor.

So, I took a step back to look at the positive things that I now had. 1) I had a 90 minute screenplay that was formatted for film. 2) I had a collection of video clips of certain scenes 3) I had a picture and resume database of about 500 individuals 4) I had a Professional account at IMDB and Backstage.com

I went home that night and thought about how these assets could help me get the film off the ground. I was living paycheck to paycheck with maybe $400 a month to spare. I started to think about why I had even had thought of Maxine Bahns for the role of Sonja. That's when it hit me. In the mid 90's there was a huge influx of independent filmmakers who had made careers by investing their own money by maxing out their credit cards to fund their own movies. These guys, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez and Edward Burns were young, had no money, no experience and never even finished film school. All these guys had were scripts that they wrote about things or people that they knew and had access to camera equipment. But as minimal as that was, I didn't even have that. I didn't know anyone that knew how to run a professional film camera.

I've always been a fan of OPM (Other People's Money) and sweat equity (providing your talents to obtain capital in a company). So, I thought, what if there is someone out there who has a camera and is willing to provide his services in return for a equal percentage of the profits of the end result. I went to craigslist and checked out all the people offering their videographer services for money and simply asked them by email if they would be willing to offer their services in return for a percentage of the profits from an independent film. All of the responses, but one, were "get lost". The one person that was interested in the concept was Mike Carrasquillo. He asked me what the film was about and I told him it was about a guy who was married, but couldn't let go of his dream of being a professional musician. He asked me if I was writing about him. I knew then that I had piqued his interest.

I sent him the script and he was very anxious to get started. He said that he had some things that he was working on, but when his time freed up he would make this project his top priority. That's when I learned the lesson, "Cash is King". It's a simple lesson. If somebody is going to get paid cash for a project, they are going to focus their attention on that project and anything that is a gamble, they will focus on later or not at all. After a couple of months of trying to get things rolling I finally said I need to get started now. Today. I had waited, at this point 6 years, to have something tangible from "One Hit Wonder" and I wasn't about to take a back seat to someone else's work. Mike wrote me a lengthy email explaining the reasons he wouldn't be able to get to this until December of 2007. I knew that I was going to have to go elsewhere.

So, I went back to craigslist and looked again at the ads from videographers that were advertising their services for a fee. One guy stood out. His name was Javier Goin. He stood out, not because he had the best equipment or a reel that knocked me off my feet, but because he was in my price range. He offered his services for an economical fee of $250 per day (no matter how long his day was). I saw from his reel that he shot on a Panasonic 100 DVX-B, which is a decent professional digital camera. I only knew that from researching on wikipedia. He also advertised that he shot with a Letus 35mm adapter, which gave the finished result a film quality that solely digital video couldn't provide. He also didn't ask me to provide insurance, which could be a huge cost at the end of the day.

I invited him up to my day job cubical to discuss the project and asked him who his influences were (much like Gil asks Murphy). I think if you only have one question to ask someone when you are thinking about bringing them on board to your project it is "Who are your influences". You are going to learn a lot about who they are as a person and whether or not you can have a working relationship with them. He answered Robert Rodriguez. Perfect answer. It's perfect for 2 reasons. 1) I loved "El Mariachi" and Robert Rodriguez was the director of that film. 2) Robert Rodriguez shot and edited that film for $7,000 and I knew that I was getting a Guerilla filmmaker who was willing to roll up his sleeves and skirt a few of the normal holdups of so-called Hollywood filmmaking.

I told Javier that I wanted to be done with the film in time for the December deadline for the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. This was only 3 months away and he told me that this would be impossible. We would need more time. I would have to wait until the following year to submit the feature. My plan was to submit the finished product to what I knew to be the major film festivals: Sundance, Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and Tribeca.

I rented Brothers McMullen and listened intently to the Edward Burns' director's commentary. He explained how he shot the film for $25,000 and filmed on the weekends over an 8 month period. He even battled an appendectomy and severe snow storms. He also pointed out several continuity errors in his film that I never would have picked up had he not revealed them. Since Brothers McMullen won Sundance in 1995 and launched Edward Burns' career, I felt confident that I could shoot "One Hit Wonder" over the course of several months at $250 a day for Javier's services and $50 a day for a PA or Production Assistant's services.

I began to think of which locations I could get for free. I thought about my apartment in Brooklyn and realized that it would be out of the way for the actors and my wife was not too happy with the idea in the first place. Bringing cast and crew over would only aggravate the matter. Also, my 2 year old son Jake would probably turn the tripod into a battering ram. I needed several locations: Gil & Sonja's apartment, Tom's apartment, a bar. The list went on and on.

I decided that when I started making decisions about the cast, I needed to see if they would be willing to "donate" their apartments as locations for our shoots.

I also needed to be realistic about the actors that were playing the roles of musicians. I wanted musicians first, actors second. In the stage version, you could get away with someone that can't play the guitar for the Gil character, in the movie you can't. Ok, you can, but it would probably look fake and it would break the reality that I was trying to create.

I went on Backstage.com and did a search for actors that had "guitarist" on their resume. I got back only two results and was totally shocked to have such a limited result from my search. The first person was a woman, so she was out and the other one was Matt Hamm. He had actually been in a play called the "Guitarist" and was currently in an independent rock band called Stereo Stereo. Looking back now, I might have gotten more results if I had just searched for "guitar", but Matt was what I was looking for. He played the guitar, was in a rock band and he could act.

I spoke to him on the phone and described the role to him and he was very excited to have a chance to play the character. I decided to meet him over a cup of coffee near my work to make sure that he was a good fit. We got along famously and had similar music artist interests. I felt confident giving him the role of Gil. I explained that there wouldn't be pay, but I would give him footage for his reel and that I would be submitting the end result to all of the major film festivals. He was happy with that and was ready to get started.

The next character I was worried about casting was Tom. Tom seems very simple, but there is a lot that is going on. You need someone that can play the drums, is overweight and has good comic timing. You also need someone that is loud and obnoxious, but there is a loveable side to him as well. The first person that came to mind was John Fico. I was all set to cast him, but, after watching the director's commentary from Brother's McMullen over and over again, one thing kept coming across. I needed to put myself in the movie. It really makes sense. You will always show up. You won't have to feed another person. I wrote the characters. I know the characters. Also, I knew how to play the drums and John doesn't. So, I decided to cast myself as Tom.

I offered the part of Murphy to Corey Wright again and he was slow to respond to me. I wasn't waiting for anybody at this point and decided to contact Jeffrey Lamar. Jeffrey was interested and we met up for coffee to talk about the script and the character.

The person that was scheduled to play the part of Sonja in the stage version had dropped out all together and I was free to explore different possibilities. I went on to a message board on IMDB Pro and posted a free ad looking to cast the roles of Sonja, Vanessa and all of the hair salon characters. I got about 20 responses from the post. I orginally looked at Heather Leonard for the role of Vanessa, but after meeting with her I asked her if she would be interested in the role of Sonja. She accepted and we had the 4 main characters lined up.

Heather mentioned that her roommate would be perfect for the role of George. I auditioned Angelo DeAngelis over the phone and he was our George. I also asked him if we could use his apartment as Gil & Sonja's apartment and he agreed. That turned out to be convenient for Heather, because she lived there.

I had some other actors from my original audition in February of 2007, who were interested in roles in the film. Spyro Christie, Alicia St. Louis, David Arthur Bachrach, Chris Handley and Dan Tibbets were all from that original audition.

I asked Spyro if I could use his apartment for Tom's Apartment scenes and he agreed.

I had my cast in place, but I immediately needed more locations. The script called for George to call from the Daily News, I needed a jail cell. I remembered the location where I held the auditions and booked a couple of different rooms at Roy Arias Studios to look like an office and a jail.

The first day of shooting was in late October 2007. It was unbelievably exciting. I was actually filming a movie. My movie. The first day started at 5:00 pm and ended at 12:00 in the morning. We shot the scenes where George is on the phone at the Daily News, the original jail cell scene and all of the scenes that occur at Tom's apartment. It ended up costing me $40 for the studios, $20 for parking, $250 for Javier and $50 for the PA, for a total of $360. I shot 15 pages of the script and only spent $360.

I was so excited. This was really happening. I was putting Kevin Smith's, Edward Burns' and Robert Rodriguez' wisdom into practice. I wasn't griping about my failures, I was making a movie.

Because Murphy's Law is murphy's law, Jeffrey called me up a couple of days later to inform me that he had to drop out of the production because he wanted to focus on his music. The way I was shooting was very sparadic and he felt it might interfere with his musical aspirations. I appreciated that and was glad that we had only shot one scene when he told me this.

I went back to Backstage.com and put in the following search terms. African American male 18-25 improv. I added the improv term because I wanted someone that could be funny. Improvisation can be that someone can think on their feet and be dramatic, but usually it means they can vere from the script and be funny. I found Clinton Lowe through this search and asked him to meet me for an audition. He was running about an hour late and I remember saying to a colleague of mine, "Well that guy didn't get the part." Just as I said that, I got a call from security letting me know that he was downstairs. I had given him some sides to prepare from and, when he came in, he read it just the way I had envisioned Murphy. I let the lateness slide and cast Clinton as Murphy.

As you can probably tell by now, I don't let things get me down. Bad news, boo hoo, let's move along. We were back on track and ready to shoot the next scenes about 2 weeks later. I had to wait for each paycheck before I shot another day. The filmmakers I mentioned, Kevin Smith for example, maxed out his credit cards to film Clerks. I had already maxed out my credit cards on other failed ventures, so I could only do things after I actually earned the money.

Javier and I talked about the first shoot and he said that it was a little rough on the two man crew. We had worked on two different floors in the studio and had to travel to Harlem to film the apartment scenes. That was fine, but there were no breaks and no food. Basically, he meant feed the crew. I'm telling you, a sandwich goes a long way.

The first PA jumped ship, but Javier worked with a few PAs so we were covered. He said that these other guys work for $150 a day and they are good. We shot the Bar Scene and the management scene in the patio area of Iona bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My wife's good friend Ailish even made a cameo appearance when she kneed Tom. I had learned my lesson from the first shoot and broke for lunch. I gave everyone $10 to get whatever they wanted, so I ended up spending around $50 in total for food. Matt, Javier, Joel (the PA) and I needed to get to the new location in the Bronx to film some of the Gil & Sonja apartment scenes. We took my clown car/Mazda Protege over to Angelo and Heather's apartment and set up for the next scenes.

We shot the opening scene, the scene where Gil tells Sonja he got fired and recorded all of the planned voice overs for Gil, Sonja and Tom's characters. The day was a success. We had finished most of what I had scheduled. We shot 12 pages and the cast and crew was able to relax for about 45 minutes and eat. Total cost of the day: $450. Which consisted of $250 for Javier, $150 for Joel the PA and $50 for lunch. I had shot a total of 24 pages (27 minus the 3 unusuable jail cell ones) for a total of $810. At this pace I was going to be able to get 90 pages in the can for only 3,000 bucks! There were other costs to consider, but this was very exciting news.

Now, the Panasonic 100-DVX-B records on tape and the only way I could see the footage of what Javier had shot was for him to convert it to DVD. Then, for me to edit the footage, I had to convert it to WMV, because I was working with a PC. Now, I know you're saying, "How can you edit on a PC? Isn't everyone editing on a Mac?" Well anybody with a MAC is editing on a MAC. I don't have a MAC. I have a PC. My intention was to edit the scenes as much as I could (in other words make my cuts) and then hand it over to a professional editor and have them color correct and whatever else they do. When you make a meal, it's all about the ingredients, so you have to have quality ingredients if you are going to have a quality meal. It's the same with film, if your footage is good, you are probably going to have a good film. I used Windows Movie Maker, a free program that comes with the Windows XP operating system, to make my cuts. The problem with cutting on Windows Movie Maker is you can hear a pop anytime you make a cut. The audio had to be taken care of with a different software program.

I had been introduced to Audacity, a shareware program that allows you to edit audio, free of charge. It converted it to .wav format, which is bulky, but you can convert .wav to .mp3 through iTunes and other programs.

In order for Javier to deliver the footage to me, he needed to spend time dumping the footage to his computer and converting it to a DVD. That took time and time cost money. He said he would do it for $100 for each day of footage. I only had $100 to spare at that time, so I asked for the second day footage. I chose that day, because I wanted to create a trailer, which would attract viewers to the youtube website I had set up, as well as to attract investors to the project. The second day shoot had the opening scene, all the voice overs, the discussion with Tom about Murphy and the introduction of Murphy. It also had a physical comedy draw of a knee to the groin. With that footage and audio, I put together a trailer and uploaded it to youtube.com/1hitwonderthemusical.

The response to the trailer was very good. I was averaging a 4 1/2 out of 5 star rating and the comments were encouraging. My subscribers were excited to see the progress from the original posts of the consumer-end video footage. I decided to also put it up on MySpace. The MySpace quality was actually better than the YouTube upload. You would think that a site that specializes in videos would have better quality than a site dedicated to personal connections, but the opposite ended up being the case.

I took the link to the IMDB Pro site and posted a message on the project message board letting any potential investors know that I was about 1/4 of the way done filming and was looking for additional capital to finish the production. I got bombarded with negative criticism from some blowhard filmmakers who thought that the trailer was amateurish. What was amateurish was their criticism. If you are trying to raise money for something, let's say a lemonade stand and you put a picture of how the lemonade stand would look in the newspaper.You give a recipe of your lemonade with an email to contact you if someone is interested, I doubt you would get emails stating that your idea was amateurish. You would get no response or you would get responses from people that were interested. I don't know why someone would be critical of someone who is trying to raise money. I began defending my trailer and, when the dust settled, there were over 100 responses to my original post. They say there's no such thing as bad publicity and this was surely the case. I got a post from a independent film distributor who wanted to see my film when it was finished.

Allright, so I didn't get the money that I was looking to raise, but I drew attention to the trailer and I got a lead from a distributor - more than I could have expected. I've learned that you can't put all of your eggs in one basket, you have to spread around you seeds if you are going to be successful. Some people say that I speak in cliches. I would agree with them. I think there is a lot of truth in cliches. There are some contradictory ones, but, for the most part, they are on the money. So, I didn't assume I was going to raise money. I tried to, but at the same time I knew that I had to keep planning to shoot as if I wouldn't get dime one (which of course is what happened - Murphy's Law).

I came up with another $100 in the middle of December and was able to get the day one footage. I spent the next 2 months editing the 16 hours of footage. I was cash strapped, but I was still moving forward.

Joe Songco had introduced me to a co-worker of his named Gregorio Smith. Gregorio is another independent filmmaker who also runs an independent film night once a month at a place called the Parish Diner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I had edited the Bar Scene, where Gil, Tom & Murphy are all together for the first time and sent him the footage through email. In the body of the email, I asked him if he would be willing to show it at the film night. He said, "Sure". I called and emailed my close friends, relatives and cast and asked them if they would join me in watching the screening of the short. I got a small crew of about 10 people and we had a great time and a lot of laughs seeing the results up on screen. I thanked Gregorio in person and had a new found confidence with the project.

I took the 8 minute short and sent it to The Tribeca and Very Short Movies film festivals. I paid $100 in total for the two entry fees. I would have to wait to see if I got accepted into either.

In mid February of 2008, I had enough money for another shoot. I had been very lucky with the weather for the first two shoots. The third day of shooting was no exception. We picked up where we left off February 15th of 2008. We banged out the rest of the scenes in Gil & Sonja's apartment. We even squeezed out the George the Clown scene in a corner of the bedroom that wasn't filmed during the Gil & Sonja scenes. That day, we had a new PA named Edwin Ruiz, who Javier considered to be his right hand man. Edwin was actually very integral to the scene where Gil leaves and knocks the note under the bureau. Originally, I had planned to have Sonja sleeping on the couch and Gil knocking the note with his bag behind the couch. Edwin's suggestion to have Sonja not be there and Gil writing the note on the table worked like a charm and I think the results speak volumes. I think this is a good indication of my director style. I am very open to new ideas. If I think you are going on the wrong track, I'll listen to your idea and then I'll tell you how I feel. Since Edwin was a PA, I really didn't have to listen to a word he said, but I value everybody's opinion who is involved in the production and the results were extremely beneficial.

We filmed from 10 to 5 with a lunch funded by me. The total cost of the day was $460: $250 for Javier, $150 for Edwin the PA and $60 lunch.

From February 2007 until February of 2008, I had spent $1,270 for 3 days of filming, $200 for the footage from Javier, $300 for auditions, $140 for Festivals, $100 for ads for a total of $2,010.

I got rejected by both film festivals that I had submitted to (Tribeca and Very Short Movies). I was a little upset by Tribeca because it was in my home town, but I imagine the competition was stiff. I submitted to Telluride at the last minute and had to spend a wopping 90 bucks to get in. I knew it was a bad decision. I wanted to save my money on production of the feature and drop all aspirations of getting the short into a film festival, but the lure of a major like Telluride was too great. I also submitted to the Fringe Festival again. Now that I had some quality footage, I felt that I had a much better chance of getting in. The entry fee was $40.

Javier came over to my place to drop off the footage and informed me that he was going to sell his camera and buy a new Panasonic DVX HD camera. He said that his rate was going to go up to $500 a shoot and that the PA's rate would stay the same. But I could still shoot on 3/30 with the old camera. I gave him the $100 that was necessary to get the 2/15 out of hock and thought about how the new quality in footage and higher price in capturing the footage was going to effect the movie.

On the one hand, I was getting better quality footage, but on the other hand, I was going to be editing a film that had different pixel qualities. When you are an independent filmmaker, you constantly have to think about how you can turn your weaknesses into strengths. Instead of getting upset about my dilemma, I realized that I could create almost an alternate universe for the characters. Since, I hadn't shot any of the band scenes yet, I was going to be shooting them with the HD camera. This would allow the quality of those scenes to be greater than the other scenes that I had already shot. The effect would be that when Gil is playing in a band that the quality of his life would be perceived as greater. I also thought that I could reshoot the dream sequences with Gil and Sonja with the HD camera and shoot them outside. This would also signal to the audience that the quality of Gil & Sonja's relationship was greater when they were first courting and early in their marriage. The other issue was the higher cost of Javier's services. Since I was already cash strapped, I was going to have to spread out the shoot days to every 1 - 1/2 months. I started editing the rest of the Gil & Sonja Apartment scenes with this new information in mind.

My instict was right. I was rejected by Telluride. I should have saved the money. Oh, well. Whaddayagonnado?

I had gotten my tax refund, so I had a little cash to spend on the next shoot, which was on March 30th.

I started to think about music, which is weird because the movie centers around a band. I knew that I was going to put I'm a Man, Mailman and Murphy's Law into the production, but I was up in the air about music from other artists. Matt said that his band was willing to let us use any music from Stereo Stereo in the film free of charge. I had listened to some of their stuff and decided that "Static" would be good for the end credits. I think that is the best place for an artist to put their music in a movie. Second would be the Opening. I guess their are some exceptions like Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild". That was pretty kick ass at the beginning of "Easy Rider". I also reached out to Palomar's Christina Prostano about using "Beat beats nothing", but got no response. I was still waiting on licensing agreements from Chappel/Warner Music for the use of "Little Guitars". It was pretty important that I get it. The bar scene's climax was centered around the song. I also asked a musical client of Javier's called Hero if I could use "Mogadishu" for Murphy's entrance down Maiden Lane and up MacDougal to Cafe Wha? They were more than happy to let me use the song for free in the movie.

The song "My Light" was written by George D'Errico, Joe Songco and myself. We had intended it to go to an established singer. George worked for Disney Records and the thought was that we could record a demo and have someone in the music publishing area license it to one of their artists. After recording it, I heard the first verse: Been walking through this world for a long time, I just can't seem to get ahead of it. I immediately thought, "Well that's the character Gil (and the real Gil for that matter). I'm not including the cost of recording the song in my calculation because it was recorded for a different purpose. I was able to use the track for free, so the cost was 0.

I went into a practice studio which is called "The Studio" and is located on 30th street. I had the technician set me up with cd recording equipment that cost me $20 p/h and $25 p/h for the room. I was there for 2 hours, so the cost came out to $90. I recorded score on guitar and keyboards. I just played whatever came to mind. I am not a schooled guitarist or pianist, by and stretch of the imagination, but I know my scales and chords. I experimented with chords on the guitar and have no idea what I played, but hopefully, it sounded good to the listener.

We shot on 3/30 at a couple of Ripley Grier Studios locations. Ripley Grier is another studio company similar to Roy Arias and has 3 locations in New York City. I had searched the net for locations at studios that looked like the reception area of a hair salon, Gil's office and Vanessa's apartment. I couldn't find any place that had a reception desk. So, what I did was find a studio that had an upright piano. I turned the piano around and told Javier that I didn't want him to shoot below the black on the back of the piano. I think it came out very well. The top of the piano is glossy like a finished desk. The only give away (if there is one) is that there is a gold crease in the middle where you would normally fold the piano top up and down. I had also booked another studio within the same location for Vanessa's apartment. Alicia asked if we could shoot the scene in the same location that we had just shot the hair salon. I took a look at the room and decided that it could definitely be done. I found a pink clock and put some flowers that Edwin had found in the room on a small table in the corner of the room. Alicia even had a pink phone. Talk about color coordination. I learned that if you don't film one corner of a room, you can probably use it in another scene because the audience hasn't seen it, yet.

Vanessa's second scene was supposed to be a visual of her on the phone, but I changed it to voice over and laid it under the scene when Sonja comes home and realizes that Gil is not there. John Fico was up next on the mic and I had him do all of his voice-overs. They were the TV announcer, radio announcer, the angry husband, Murphy's Dad and Larry. So, we were able to cut down the time having to come back to the location after shooting the office scene. Bonus!

I took the cast out to lunch at Lenny's and they dined on sandwiches, which I gladly paid for. I met up with Javier and Edwin and we drove down to the midtown Ripley Grier location to shoot the office scenes with Matt and Rutger. We surprisingly didn't have to pay for parking and after Javier and Edwin got a bite to eat, we shot Bob chewing out Gil and giving him the heave ho. I told Rutger he could take off and then I shot Matt doing his cold calling.

We packed up and I asked Javier to shoot Matt one more time, but without sound, walking down the street. I ended up using that footage for when he was walking home for work the first day.

Total cost of the shoot: $470 ($250 for Javier, $150 Edwin and $70 for lunch).

I picked up the footage from Javier in Queens on 4/15. I gave him the $100 for the conversion to DVD. He showed me some sample footage from the new HD camera and it was phenominal. He said that he was unable to record clear slow motion on his old DVX camera and the HD one was excellent in capturing slow mo.
So at this point, I had paid $2,900 towards the production ($1,740 for filming, $400 for footage, $300 for auditions, $270 for festivals, $100 for ads and $90 for music).

I got rejected by the Fringe Festival again and got served papers by the housing authority for back rent. Ah, the joys of filmmaking.

The economic stimulus tax rebate direct deposit was not sent to me on the day I had thought it was going to come. Apparently, if you file with Turbo Tax and have the payment for their service taken out of your refund check, it is considered to be a mailed return as opposed to a direct deposit return with the IRS. So, I had to wait to be mailed a check for $1,500.

Since, the apartment management company was adamant about getting their money and the tax rebate check was not coming until the end of May, I postponed the May 17th shoot until Javier came back from Peru, which was scheduled to be in July. My wife, who had not liked the idea from the beginning, was now up in arms about me spending what she deemed rent money towards the production. Dreams die hard.

Clinton came back from his tour, so I'm going to have dinner with him on 5/15 (payday) and we'll formulate a strategy for the music. I want to make sure he's up to the task of singing. If he thinks (and I think) he can handle it, I'll let him do it, otherwise I'll have Corey Wright do the recording of Murphy's Law and Clinton will lip sync. The more I think about, it makes more sense for Corey to do the singing and have Clinton lip sync, because he will be lip synching either way.

So, we met again on 6/16. We lucked out again with weather. There had been thunderstorms in the forecast and we only ended up getting about an hour's worth. I first met Javier and Dave the new PA at 42nd street and drove over to Clinton's girlfriend's aunt's house in Brooklyn to shoot the scene where Murphy comes home from jail. Traffic was really bad, but we muddled through and got there about 1 1/2 hours later. We shot the scene and headed back to the city to shoot the Cafe Wha? scene. Traffic, again, was bad, but we got there with no time to spare before Clinton had to get to school. Clinton's girlfriend, Clinton and I took a cab uptown and it ended up costing $35.

I told Javier and Dave to shoot some establishing shots of NYC (Apartments, Bars, Washington Square Park, e.g.) and said that I would call them when I was ready to meet up with them again. I headed back up to 42nd Street and met up with Anna-Marie. She was to be Mrs. Johnson. We cabbed it back down to Minetta Lane in the West Village and tried to get in touch with Javier, so he could shoot the Mailman scene. I tried and tried, but to now avail. It started to rain, so I told Anna-Marie that we would just try it for another day. I headed back up to 42nd Street and there was a message from Javier that his phone had died and I should try to call him on Dave's phone. I was glad that I finally gotten in touch with him. I thought maybe he got arrested for taking pictures of NYC. After 9/11, who knows?

The rain had stopped and I met up with the 2 man crew again at Union Square Cafe along with Heather, Alicia and John Fico. We shot the outdoor walking scenes with Sonja and Vanessa. John "The Guido" was perfect as the annoying guy on the street. We had to contend with a rather loud ice cream truck's engine. All the dialogue will have to be done in a looping (ADR) session. No problem. I'm just glad the visuals came out well. I decided that I wanted to shoot a piece of "Restaurant Phone" with John and Heather. Heather thought I was crazy, but I think it will come out well when I put all the pieces together.

I settled up with Javier and Dave. The damage was $400 for Javier, $150 for Dave, $30 for gas, $45 for cabs and $20 for lunch. Total bill: $645.

So the total so far was: $3,545 towards the production ($2,385 for filming, $400 for footage, $300 for auditions, $270 for festivals, $100 for ads and $90 for music).

Joe Songco, Corey Wright and I recorded "Murphy's Law" in the course of 1/2 an hour and it cost me $40.

I finally heard from Christina Prostano of Palomar. She was concerned because they now had a person handling the music licensing and using their song free of charge, would most likely be an issue. So, I just decided to look elsewhere.

I also finally broke down and bought a MAC! When I was on Grand Jury Duty (Which will be another screenplay I write in itself) I met a woman named Heidi and we got to talking about filmmaking. She used to edit and I told her about my production. She said that her cousin was looking to sell her MAC for $400...and that it had Final Cut Pro on it! I was in heaven. I saved up for about a month and bought it from her cousin. What a steal. Between the computer and the software, that thing runs like 3 grand! Now to figure out how to use the damn thing. I've been a PC guy forever.

I also bought a Lacie hard drive (on the advice of Javier). It cost me $200. It has 500 gigs of storage space, which will help me immensely, now that we are shooting in HD. I partitioned the drive from my PC, so there is an issue with the amount of space I can use for MAC files. I only get 50 Gigs and the 450 are partitioned for Windows files.

So, we shot again on 8/16/08 and the day definitely started off on the wrong foot. I certainly learned my lesson that, although it's beautiful in Battery Park and Battery Park City, there are a lot of cops there. I mean hundreds. The scare of potential terrorist attacks on the Statue of Liberty has brought many an officer to the Battery Park location. On the Esplanade along the Hudson River, there are also Park Authority Rangers, or whatever they're called, looking for film permits. After about an hour and a change of location, we started shooting right in front of the Park Authority building and someone asked who was in charge. I told the representative that I was and she informed me that we needed a permit. I played dumb and just told her that we would move along. We moved along to another spot along the esplanade. Javier asked me how long the rest of the scene was and I told him "2 minutes, tops". He asked if I just wanted to shoot it there. I said, "What the hell. Let's go for it." We shot the rest of the scene and got the hell out of dodge. Never again will I shoot in BPC unless I raise some cash and get a permit. By stealing those shots, we saved about $2,000. Score!

Again we lucked out with the weather. It was a beautiful day all day and they had called for midday thunderstorms.

Like the character Gil, I don't own a cell phone. Javier suggested I get a prepaid one for shoot dates. We hopefully only have one more shoot date, so I'm gonna pass on that suggestion.

It was Heather's last shoot day, so we called it a wrap on her and gave her a nice round of applause. I watched that on Project Greenlight when they wrapped Bonnie Hunt in "Stolen Summer". My actors have been so awesome that showing my appreciation through applause is the least I can do.

As I look back at the original script and the current state of the production, there is a vast difference in the role of Sonja. In the script, Sonja was more of a necessary evil to drive the story. But, after watching Heather interact with Matt as Sonja, I realized that there was a woman that needed to be explored. She has real concerns and fears and may have just forgotten why she fell in love with Gil, because she is so caught up in trying to keep the household afloat. I think Sonja's flashbacks and Sonja's fear of losing Gil allow her to see that Gil's music is what brought them together. Prohibiting Gil from advancing his music in return for security, is really prohibiting Gil from being happy. I think without the flashbacks, this conclusion comes out of left field. So, again Heather, Bravo!

I worked Matt really hard in the hot sun, walking downtown. We were really going Guerilla this day. I told Javier to take shots of Matt walking, but to be aware of the cops that were all around. I actually enjoyed it. It was like a covert operation. Javier? Not so much. We tried to film Matt going into an old place of employment of mine, but security told Javier to cut it. The security guard was not the director, but I think Javier was well advise to cut there. No need in causing trouble. We just went around the back and got a better shot of Matt entering the "depths of hell" entrance. We got a cool shot of Matt walking past the famous Bull on Broadway. We got him walking past the rear of it, which was very à propos for the character. Can't wait to see the footage!

We went over to Bleeker Street to get some shots of Matt walking towards Tom's. A cop pulled up behind us and I was sure that we were in trouble. He just wanted to get around. Whew! Got to come up with some voice over for Matt during this sequence. I think I want to comment on the sorry state of affairs with the NYC Rock Bar scene. Many a club has closed because of rents being raised. CBGB's being the most notable.

Next up was the running scene where Gil hears the song on the radio. I told Javier and Dave that I needed Matt to run for 44 seconds. "44 seconds?!" they both said. I wanted a wide shot of him and then he runs right past the camera to end the shot. Dave had a great location idea of ? Street. We shot the scene of him running and we only got 30 seconds. So we had Matt coming down another block and making the turn, which gave us the additional 14 seconds. We shot a midway shot of Matt as well, which will be intercut. We went right past a Fringe Festival production that was going on. Those Bastards!

Matty earned his lunch, and I decided to splurge above my usual $10 allowance and we sat down at a tavern on Bedford. We dined on Burgers and Beer and talked about the production. They screwed up Javier's order, so we had to wait a little longer than I had wanted, but we were right on time to go up to 30th street.

When we got to 30th street, C.Lowe (Clinton) was waiting for us with his Apple Laptop out listening to "Murphy's Law". The dregs of humanity were also outside. There was this junkie that showed a great deal of interest in Javier's camera, so we went across the street to film the "You guys are stoned scene".

"You guys are stoned" is actually a childhood memory of mine, which was actually, "You guys are drunk". My cousin Steve is about 10 years younger than my cousin Mike, my brother Kevin and me. The 3 older relatives were partaking in a little underage drinking and Steven, realizing this, proclaimed, "You guys are drunk!" The older generation of family members was not amused. We all thought it was funny, though, and it stuck in my mind when I was writing the screenplay.

We did a quick take on the street and went into the lobby of "The Studio" and shot the guys going into the elevator. I took off my wig and told the guys that we needed to act like pros when we went up to the studio. We were going Guerilla, since I hadn't said anything to the desk about filming.

We had to wait about 10 minutes to get into the studio. That was a first. We were actually slightly ahead of schedule. I think we were getting the hang of Guerilla Filmmaking.

When the previous band let out, I told the guys to not take out any equipment or anything relating to the movie until about 15 minutes into being in the room. The rationale was that there is usually an engineer that comes in and asks, "Everything ok? You need any help with anything?" I knew this from practicing there before. Right on cue, about 10 minutes in, a very nice gentlemen asked, "Everything ok? You need any help with anything?" "No, we're ok. Thanks", I replied. After he left, I turned to Javier and said, "Now you can take out the camera". Javier was impressed by my prediction and we got started with lip and play synching to "Murphy's Law". It came out really well. Now I'll have to sync it up.

Dan Tibbets was up next and when he came through the door, I asked him if he had mentioned anything about the shoot to the front desk. He said, "oh...yeah...I asked where the film shoot was" Doh! All that underground behavior for naught. Thank God the guy at the front desk replied to him, "Oh, am I going to be on TV?" We all started laughing and realized that we were all ok to finish the shoot.

Dan was hilarious as the Engineer. He plays a very good "straight" man. He had such a stern face when Murphy and Tom start goofing off. I told Javier we should just leave the camera on him the whole time. Murphy dropped to the ground during his closeup and I was worried about continuity with the other takes. I think we'll be ok.

We finished up the day at the Studio with some ADR work. I gave Dan the ADR of the 1st prospect that Gil calls. Since it was shot on a consumer camcorder, the audio was pretty bad. So, Adnan Islam will get the credit for the character and Dan will get the voice credit. All is right in the world.

I shook Dan and C.Lowe's hand goodbye for the day and thanked them for a great day of work.

I had told Arthur Kohn from work that I had a part for him as the DJ and he was very excited to play it. He was waiting downstairs as I got down there with Javier, Dave and Matt. Matt took off and said that he would try to get us Iggy's for the Rock Club scene.

Spyro showed up in his convertible Benz, which totally made "the Machine" come alive. The junkie that had been there earlier was still there and still interested in Javier's camera. Spyro had to change into his slacks in the convertible with the top up and, apparently, the junkie was giving him a hard time while he was doing so.

Javier was filming Spyro driving around the block from the back seat, while a tried to find a location for the Arthur's scene. I found a pay phone and a decided that he would place the bet from there.

Javier had gotten his shots with Spyro, so I shook Spyro's hand and let him go.

We went up to Javier's car in the parking lot and had to wait for a rather large Indian family to stop taking pictures of themselves leaning up against a Hummer, which wasn't theirs and was parked across from us. We quickly shot Arthur's scene in the car and we called it a wrap.

Totals for the day: $400 for Javier, $150.00 for the PA, $58 for the studio, $86 for lunch, $33 for parking, $25 for parking, $5 for drinks, $40 gas and $8 for cab, for a total of $805.

So the total so far was: $5,000 towards the production ($3,190 for filming, $400 for footage, $300 for auditions, $270 for festivals, $600 for computer equipment, $100 for ads and $140 for music).

Javier and Dave came by with the footage and dumped most of it on the Lacie Hard Drive I had bought. He said that he couldn't put all the day's shoot on the Lacie, because the storage space under the MAC partition was almost at its max. We decided that he would dump the rest to his hard drive and I would buy another Lacie and format it on the MAC, so there will be much more space for the .mov files that he was giving me.

I started thinking about the music again. I want to use "Coke" from Flickerstick when Gil talks to his guitar. The lyrics fit perfectly: "The celebration ends without a sound and your friends they're not around. And you find yourself alone talking to yourself again..." I made a bid of between $500-$1000 with SONY to see if I can get it. I don't know why these people take so long to get back to you on music licensing. You think they would want your money. I still haven't heard back from Warner/Chappel on "Little Guitars". If I don't get "Coke", no worries. It's a wish list song. Hell, I might not even be able to afford it.

Hero is going to let us use "Lonely Sunday", which fits perfectly right after Gil gets fired. I'm going to use the end of the song when Murphy and Tom leave the groupie apartment. I wonder if we'll get a soundtrack deal out of his in the end.

Thinking about setting up shop in Times Square wearing Tom's wig with a television and playing the movie and selling DVD's.