Director's Diary - Day 10

Where to begin?

Have you ever ran backwards on a treadmill? It's invigorating and the work it does to your quads, is fantastic. I actually love being fit enough that I can flip around on a treadmill and look cool running backwards. But it's a freaking lot of work.

That's what pre-production on a passion project feels like. HA.

Like, I am getting to take these calls with pretty cool people, with incredible credits, who genuinely get excited about the story, like THEY GET IT, and then they pitch some pretty awesome ideas, ways they can play and contribute...

And then I get to PAUSE and be like, "but yo, I got not a lot of money to pull off something this cool, I mean, it's a lot of money for me, especially since it's coming out of my pocket, but it's not gonna be half of what you are used to getting paid."

This script breaks my heart a little more each time I share it.

So as exhilarating it may be to flip around, squat a little lower and pump my arms on the treadmill in reverse, sometimes I stumble. And other than that one time my toe caught the edge of the 30" box on a jump and I split open my shin... nothing feels lamer than attempting to run backwards on a treadmill and your foot slipping and your knee buckles and you have to grab the rails with all your might, straining your shoulder muscles, LAME.

So that was one of four calls yesterday... Three of them went swimmingly. One did not.

Treisa Gary may be joining as The Guard, which is wild, I mean, she's exactly what I saw in my head. So cool, my call with her was so fun. Her story about working as an accountant and then being told that she belonged in front of the camera, was heartwarming. I dig her.

A sweet as can be, Best Girl Electric, is joining the team and now I can breathe a little easier. Man, building our electric crew was giving me night sweats. This part of the production is so important and rounding up the right people was a bit strenuous.

The freaking incredible Anton Tremblay sent over an Art-rough pass, this thing is LEGIT. I cannot wait to share the final image, Anton's inquiry into every aspect of what I am envisioning, now makes perfect sense. He's really great at piecing together the image in my mind and bringing it to life. I wonder if that's a skill easily taught. Like in film school, do they have a class where one student describes a room while another blindly designs it?

Things that make me go hmm.

By the end of yesterday, I was depleted. Felt the loss a little more than the wins and then kind of beat myself up a little trying to figure out if I somehow could have prevented the loss altogether.

I took it so personally. Perhaps if I refrained from the budget discussion altogether. Never the less, I walked away from work a little after 8pm.

I did not get everything on my checklist done, but I did need a reset.

Today was a little bit better, I started by knocking out all of the to-do's that I didn't finish yesterday. We had our team call and it was fantastic. I got to share the good, the bad, the ugly and then I sat back while Lauren and Silver shared some serious budget updates.

These ladies killed it in tracking and monitoring the numbers. There's a pie graph, I know exactly where the spend is going and how much of the budget it is absorbing. I am amongst Rockstars, for reals.

I haven't worked out in 2 days - so irritating, both internally and externally. I struggle with brainfog when I don't move. So I will move movement to high priority for the next five days, hopefully it'll resuscitate the habit.

Because the one thing I know, is that no matter how lame it feels stumbling on a treadmill backwards, or how good it feels to successfully flip around and run strong - the most important part about the experience is getting on the treadmill and starting it.