Not Just Another Stoner Film

I've been wanting to post a bunch of stuff over the last week, but Jaro and I have been working hard on getting this short film off the ground. Today and tomorrow is the shoot, as long as the weather holds. The last seven days has basically been getting the actors together, going through the script, hard, going around looking at locations, running from security guards with beat sticks in the air, playing with f-stops, explaining to the actors ok this is what we want, they do it, stop them, ok this is what we really want, watch them and do it again.

So I have two full time jobs these days: My work at Move One, where I edit short informational videos and print business cards, and I get home, have an hour to eat, and then do the film thing until 2 or 3 in the morning. I can say one thing: this shit is hard when you're going full tilt running on 4 hours of sleep and its just non stop.

Be that as it may, it has been an awesome experience so far, and I'm going to post short excerpts and photos from the shoot once (if?) we get through the next two days. The editing and music process will start soon thereafter, and whenever it is a polished project I will most likely put it up for all to see. It depends on what happens and if we take it to small short film festivals over here and what comes of that.

But I'm jumping ahead. Here is the short plot synopsis:

One day someone wakes up to find he is a bag of weed. Or, depending on your viewpoint, the weed gains consciousness. The latter is probably the most correct. Anyway, this is not turning out to be a short plot synopsis. So he gains consciousness to find two guys talking, and after a brief interval, a pissed girlfriend comes around and throws the weed out the window, to where he is swept into a trashcan and found by a philosophical homeless man. Unlike the prior two guys, our homeless hero is able to hear the weed and begins to tell him a story about life and purpose, going to a cemetery, where he is left to find out where he is going in his life. By freak coincidence, the nemesis girlfriend finds him again, and learns a little about herself while in the presence of the sack.

I know what you're thinking. Oh christ its just another stoner story, and maybe it has a little of that, but this film is completely shot in the point of view of the weed, with only long shots. So there's a lot of dialog, tons of blocking, weird camera angles, long periods without cuts and lessons on life. Oh yeah, and it's shot in Hungarian. The only English used in the film is the weed's lines (which are minimal).

Jaro and I had to choose some of the most complicated attributes to put into our first short film.

Which makes it all the more fun.

So more to come on this exciting adventure.