The problem with guerilla filmmaking is that you have no studio structure and usually more importantly you don't have the money to spend on crew, cast, or even craft services, thus meaning that you will shoot around everybody else's schedule. This is the ultimate antagonist when jumping into a project. I may have jumped into this project with higher expectations. Although I wrote the script well over a year ago, I did not start planning the shoot until January of this year. Being an eight minute long film, I ignored the tedious planning of a production and started putting it together. This film has seen many changes. The first idea was to get local actors in my town of Hickory, and shoot it with a taxi, my house, and a couple of up and coming actors on a weekend during the summer. It was pretty simple and the only money involved would be food, a prop gun, and a taxicab. Then the movie evolved when the two actors I cast were based out of Charlotte, (where the office is,) and a one hour commute from my home. Then I acquired the crew which were all from Charlotte, so I found it fitting to shoot the movie there. With an array of schedule conflicts: We lost one of our lead actors, a director of photography and could not find a fitting location. After that, in a financial production meeting, I realized shooting in Charlotte from 9:00pm until 5:00am would cost me twice as much as shooting in my hometown. Not only would we have to rent a cab for the exteriors, but we would have to acquire a minivan for the interiors. (The script called for just a cab, but with shooting angles, and not finding a studio who could import a cab onto their soundstage, we changed it to a party cab situation which wasn't too compromising to the story.) Then here was the rub... With the minivan, I would have to acquire a taxi top light to better influence the change of vehicles and more expensively a fare machine with C.B to put in it to obviously fake the minivan into what a cab's interior would look like. With no luck from cab companies in Charlotte on using or renting those props, I was looking at a huge increase in budget. (About $500 to be exact.) Then I had rescheduled the shoot for late June forgetting that those are the shortest days of the year meaning we would have the least amount of dark in case the shoot went over. My Producer opted for May 13 th which is a night with a full moon, but a lot sooner than I imagined it would take to get everything together. I reluctantly said yes, knowing I would have my work cut out for me.
My little girl was born almost a month to the day of principal photography, which was the greatest thing in my life, but the worst thing that could happen to the production when none of the crew are doing anything at all to help me get what I need done. I secured the prop gun and minivan and thought I was well on track to getting what I need. I had re-casted the character we lost from the office I work at and felt we needed to get the actors together for rehearsal to see what kind of dynamic they had. Two weeks before the rehearsal date, that actor's father began to become terminally ill. I ignored the problems and stuck to my deadline. I visited Yellow Cab in Hickory to ask some questions about cabbies and their procedures on things when I got a huge break. Yellow Cab offered to rent me a cab for $20 and hour for the exterior shots and allow me to use one of their broken down cabs in their lot to shoot the interiors for the price of dinner for the cab drivers working that night. That was great until I realized that my whole crew and cast would be coming from Charlotte and working all night. I would have to put them up and who knows, some of them are married and may be forced to drive back to Charlotte at sunrise. Either way, it was a situation I did not like to be in. I wanted the Yellow Cab deal. It would give me more control over the production so I ran it by my DP. I could tell he wasn't stoked on the idea and I don't blame him. He wasn't getting paid. I was cutting his movie for his pay for my movie, but had only logged the footage into my computer at that point. He did not give me an answer, but when another scheduled shoot was boosted up to the very day I was shooting Meter, I knew his answer. So with the news of Yellow Cab in Hickory helping us out, I finally decided to shelve this project until August. It will give me time to catch up, be a dad, recast with local actors and be completely prepared for the shoot. I plan on employing Hickory locals only for the production the third time around, so there won't be any kind of strings attached.
I will be honest, I think it's the right thing to do. Although I hate having to push things back and having to go back on my word, I know in the end that this will be the best thing. I need everybody involved hearts' in it or it will show on the final product and at this time, I don't feel that happening. I've weathered the storm, so far. I'd hate to compromise a quality film.
Stay tuned. I will have some media, journals and extras as we approach the August shoot.
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5/1/2006- METER POSTPONED UNTIL AUGUST
-9/20/2006 METER PRODUCTION HAS BEGUN-