Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Your Milkman Behind The Scenes Series

So as some of you know, I wrote, directed and produced a little short film this past summer called 'Your Milkman'.  Its intent was to explore elements of my thesis, and serve as a platform to make and learn from our mistakes.  I wanted to both learn for myself and to educate others along the way with it.

From our very first pre-production meeting, we began documenting the process.  We took photos, recorded videos, shot interviews and captured audio recordings of all our meetings.  After nearly ten months of pre-production and many large hiccups along the way, we were finally ready to shoot the film.

After two incredibly productive overnight shoots, we had the film in the can.  Now 8 months after wrapping principal photography, we're just wrapping up post production.  In a few short weeks, we will be ready to release the project to several film festivals.

A big thanks goes out to Eric Kessler and the folks at Kessler Crane.  With their help, we've been able to not only make our film, but also put together and host a series of production logs documenting our trials and tribulations of the production process, and really show what it can sometimes take to pull off an independent project.

Although we couldn't include everything that happened during our journey, this ten part series covers a broad spread of the pitfalls we faced and the explanations as to how we overcame those obstacles.

The first episode can be see below, or the whole series can be viewed here.



Producing both the film and the behind the scenes project at the same time was a little more difficult than we originally anticipated, but I'm proud to have walked away from the whole project with both a completed film and a comprehensive documentation of the whole process.

As things wind down with post production, I've been able to do some self-reflection on the goals I set for the project and am incredibly proud to say that I'm walking away from this film with more knowledge than I could have ever hoped.  Although it can take years to hone the craft, I feel as though I've been able to take a leap forward towards that goal with this project.  For everyone who has helped us get to this point, I can't thank you enough.

Between the talent of the crew and cast we assembled, the obstacles we faced along the way, and just the shear difficulty of even attempting a low budget period piece, I feel as though I'm a more educated and experienced filmmaker and I can't wait to begin working on the next project.