We're doing a ton of pick-ups and 2nd unit work: three days in NYC, four days in the Bay Area, plus all those random inserts -- not counting the eight or so days of 2nd unit work in Europe right after principal photog in Fall of 2009.
Many people are asking: Why are we doing so much shooting after principal photography?
There are three main reasons for all this additional work:
- The script was too ambitious for our 17 day principal shoot. We got a ton done, but had to pop a number of crucial scenes from the schedule. These were either scenes we couldn't get (due to logistics) or they weren't as crucial to the story (i.e. if we didn't shoot them, we could still tell the story, even if less-powerfully so). Now that we have the time, we want to shoot as many of these as we can.
- Due to our ultra-low budget, we weren't sure during principal photography if we would be able to go on location for the scenes set in NYC, Ireland and France. Thanks to good luck mainly, we were able to make most of these shoots happen (many frequent flyer tickets and "kindness of strangers" moments later). That meant we essentially reshot a bunch of footage we shot during principal. But thank god -- Oakland just doesn't pass as fake NYC or France. You can't beat the production value provided by these authentic locations. Nothing says Dublin. Ireland like Dublin, Ireland.
- Lastly, there's some stuff we just needed to shoot to make the film work. That might be reshooting a scene or single shot (mainly due to poor, hurried directorial choices during principal photog) or adding a shot or even a whole new scene to help tell the story better. Once we had a revised assembly edit, it really gave us the roadmap for what we needed. These fill in the crucial gaps in the overall story and the storytelling of a given scene.
This additional post-principal photography shooting is not cheap. Day for day it's considerably more expensive than principal, despite a much smaller cast and crew. But the footage is looking amazing and really adds layers of depth to the film, both visually and for the story.
(Which is a great opportunity to remind you that donations to the project are still desperately needed and are tax-deductible. Please give something to support our team this holiday season!).
If you're going to sacrifice this much blood, sweat and tears on something, it's worth the extra effort to make it as strong as possible.