My first experience as a PrimaDonna production assistant (a PDPA, if you will) was on Dating Danielle, almost exactly 5 years ago this weekend. I have a lot of great memories of those 48 hours, but one of the greatest has to be the spirit that developed between cast and crew, as we all bonded while shooting on one of the hottest days of the year.
August is funny that way… Continue reading
While I’ve enjoyed my recent forays into performance (from Site 13 to Glamour in Glitter to my appearance at Texas Comicon), at heart I’m really a behind-the-scenes guy. I love the process, the work of making movies that most moviegoers may never see.
So I’m thrilled to be getting back to the other side of that camera for PDP‘s next project.
That title is a lyric from a favorite Warren Zevon song, “Lord Byron’s Luggage” (a song that’s also noteworthy for successfully building a rhyme around the term persona non grata). It seemed an apt description for how I’m feeling as I look back on 2011.
It’s not a bad view, as these things go. Continue reading
Over four weeks of rehearsing The Love List, we had a list of our own to work on. And with each run-through, we refined and tweaked it, checking and re-checking each item.
It goes without saying – so of course I’m saying it anyway – that the dress rehearsal is one of the last, and therefore most important, steps in that process. It’s where we take all the pieces we’ve created and collected and put them together to see how they work as a whole. Set: check. Props: check. Costumes: check. Blocking: check. Lines memorized: check. Sound and light: check. MaMaLu Olivo as our stage manager: check. It’s our best chance to see how the show will play before we bring the audience into the theater. Continue reading
Yesterday’s Express-News had a very nice write-up from Deborah Martin about one of my favorite Stone Oak Youth Theatre activities: the San Antonio Stage Script Study Group. She did a great job covering the origins of the group, so I encourage everyone to visit the link to learn more about what it is and how it came to be.
To sum up: the group’s a book club, with an exclusive focus on plays. Each month, we meet to discuss, analyze, and share our experiences of a play, and at the end of the meeting, one of us gets to choose the next month’s play. On the last Wednesday in June – having already read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Uncle Vanya – it was my turn to lead the way. Continue reading
Of course, there’s still work to be done before the film is ready. But with two more days of shooting in the can, principal photography on Three Yellow Roses has officially come to a close. Continue reading
Given the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey nature of production schedules, it’s pretty standard for effect to precede cause when you’re putting a story on film. The cast, crew, and locations you need for Scene 3 might only be available before those you need for Scenes 1 and 2, so it’s often a necessity to work out of sequence. So it’s been with Three Yellow Roses.
Having filmed a steak dinner on our first day of production, Tuesday evening brought us to Green Fields Market to film the shopping trip before said dinner, and another trip taking place some time after it. Given that one of the themes of the film is the relationship between past, present and future, it seems fitting that our production schedule brings them together as it does. Continue reading
In the tongue of our trade, the last set-up is known as the Martini Shot. When we were working on La Vida de Noche, as Pete and Wes were setting up our first shot, I wondered if there was a similar name for that first set-up.
After last night, I may have to start calling it the Steak Shot.
As you can likely see from my last couple of posts, the year to date has been one for expanding our creative horizons. And while I’ve been working on building my résumé as a practicing screenwriter, my boss has also found a new venue for her passions and mission… Continue reading
Writing is really, really, really difficult. Have I mentioned that recently? Difficult. There, I mentioned it again. DIFFICULT!!!
– given the post’s title, is it completely redundant of me to say this is from Steven Moffat?
It’s weird to see such a comment about writing coming from someone who’s so damn good at it. But as a writer who still classifies himself as Aspiring and therefore can’t believe he shares a calling with the guy who gave us the likes of “Blink” and “The Big Bang”, I hope I understand where he’s coming from. Continue reading
Lee Hurtado, Writer 