If you’re a beginner scriptwriter or director, moreover you’re self-trained, don’t be afraid to ask questions and bother the ones who are more experienced in this field. Snobs are everywhere, it’s okay. But the good people are always there to help you out with your questions and give advice, no matter how busy they might be.
Spring came, and with it, good news arrived – my friend Andrey Kiselev managed to get in touch with the original movie director Lance Mungia. That was phenomenal. Andrey gave me real contacts of the director, so we started a dialog. Lance turned out to be a truly caring, sympathetic person. He gave me a bunch of useful advice, me…. a stranger from the street, per se. I am deeply grateful for that. Besides, Mungia gave, in fact, his blessing to the project saying ‘it’s gonna be interesting to see what comes out of it’. That was so awesome to get this boost of positive energy, in particular, before the filming start.
April, 2017. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking. I totally forgot to tell you that in December, 2016, I learned I was gonna be a father, so … the baby was supposed to come into the world in August, 2017, which means that the movie was to be done before this time.
Let’s recap: in April, 2017, I had a ready-to-go screenplay, a few close companions and an agreement with the ‘After Us’ post-apocalyptic community. What was left to do was to build up a technical basis and find locations.
When you work with no budget, all you can promise is fame and food. Don’t be modest to use that. Actually… when making a film, you have to be ready to do anything, whatever it takes to get permission for filming, find right people, a right cameraman, whatever. Anything – including set-ups, fraud and mutilation threats. Nonetheless, please, try to do your best to attract the most of the professionals to your project. You will be amazed – even the ones you thought out of reach to get, celebrities beyond your touch, they can reach out to you and agree to participate in a low-budget (no-budget) story. We are all humans. We are all people.
Actors
I got lucky. Well, the heart of the team was pretty artistic, per se, and all kinds of people were able to act in my film, even the ones who could hardly be entitled as cinema-world fans. It is rare these days. Oleg Golishnikov fell into the Wanderer (a certain Max Rotanski), and Andrey Kiselev turned into an eye-catching villain Jester. However, I managed to have drawn attention of some pros, too. First off, Sergey Ryabov – a theater actor from Saint Petersburg – related to the call. He managed, anyway, to come to Moscow despite his age. Pevtsov school’s senior student, Artem Maslikhov showed up a couple of times in videoclips and shorts of mine. He was also welcomed on board of our team. There were lots of guys who would help me out at different quests’ projects when we needed crossover characters to be played.
I’m not going to go so far as to say that everything was going nice and easy. Of course not. The original star character of my fantasy was supposed to have been a smiling man of considerable age and not less considerable strength. He could have swung a sword pretty realistically and thrown evil bastards down on the ground. A Kong-fu Panda, if you will. I can vividly remember this now. I would go to all martial arts clubs and schools I could, just to find karate-, and kendo- and aikido fighters but…. I had disappointment to face. Martial artists would either recoil in front of the camera, or they just told me to go jump into the lake. They said, like, “We are serious people, and you’re… fooling around here”. There were the ones who just dumped me. In the end, Artem Maslikhov got the role and the screenplay had to be remade once more.
Next task: we were to find locations.
This is not the last time I’m going to go back to quoting this wise saying I once read in a filmmaking book. There it is: ‘The director’s job is not only to cope with all off-schedule and unexpected matters while filmmaking but also to turn them to advantage for the movie’s sake’. I still feel uncomfortable when people call me “a director”. Directors are the ones who are capable to make a beautiful, technically well-thought-out, well-done film. They study to do so. I, in my turn,….well, yeah, I’ve learned how to deal with problems.
To be continued...
My project in the web:
Site: http://fidelfilm.ru/
Intagram: https://www.instagram.com/lastvegasfilm/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sixlastvegas/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkC8NsDJaEX4L0YblWqjtQQ
Vk: https://vk.com/vegas_film