Overwhelmed and overloaded

Producing stress

OMG. if i knew how much of a hassle producing was going to be, i wouldn't have signed up for it. and i know i'm just getting a little taste of what real producers do, since our film is only 10 mins, but even this is driving me insane. i now have tremendous respect for all producers everywhere - they do all the crap work for pre-production, production AND post-production, and they hardly get credit outside the industry. we've all heard of famous actors, directors, sometimes writers. but producers? never. i hope they earn lots of money (they probably do), because doing all this crap for measly pay is not fun at all. not that i get paid.

I'm so over this whole producing thing. can't wait to start filming and be done with it. it's just that producers are the ones who are overall in charge of the film, and anything that goes wrong will probably be blamed on us. so much stress with everything weighing on my shoulders!

We did our casting callbacks on Sunday and THANK GOD we found three amazing actors - the cutest little kid with floppy blond hair and adorable eyes, an old funny british man, and a versatile boss. seriously, i'm so glad we locked them in and got them for the miserable pay of $25 per day. so that part's settled. hope they don't disappear the day of filming (because that's happened before).
also, THANK GOD i finally secured a mall. it's a little on the expensive side, but we really didn't have any choice. so we went to check it out, and our director of photography and production designer really liked it, so YAY that's a huge load off my shoulder.

But then we found out yesterday that our office, which is our main filming location, FELL THROUGH. total insanity followed. now i have to spend the entire day tomorrow calling any and every office in LA to beg for them to let us film (hopefully for free). sigh even though there aren't any exams or tests in this program, this whole internship/producing thing is more stressful than any pop quiz.

I need to go do something fun. soon. if not i'm gonna go crazy, because my entire life has been revolving around this film.

Weekend

We did a service project at the Dream Center on saturday. it's a really cool place that has a few hundred outreach ministries across LA, and we met some people who actually stay at the center and reach out to people on a regular basis.
So even though i think they weren't expecting us, we ended up going to a small community and helped clean the streets, gave out free food and stuff, and played games with the poor kids. it was kinda sad to see this... poorer part of LA.

Then the rest of my weekend was consumed with FILM SHOOTS. three shoots in two days. so tiring.
Helped josh with sound (holding the boom mic again) on sat, helped maggie as an extra in her film the same day, and helped tas (my roomie) with errands and set design and sound on sunday. didn't even have time for church.

But we did have an awesome '80s dance scene during maggie's shoot, which turned into a crazy dance party afterwards for two hours. haha. let loose all the stress. it was funny to dance to no music/sound during the shoot though, since the sound would be added in post-production. we were at a 'party' and had to pretend to be talking, so we all had to converse and laugh soundlessly, and pretend to be dancing to an awesome song when there was actually no sound. funnyyyyy.

Work

Work has been the same. I just wish I would get paid. money is a wonderful motivator, i've realized this. oh well. at least i have a new goal in life now - FINISH SHREDDING THAT RIDICULOUSLY HUGE PILE OF PAPER before i get done with my internship.