week 5: a little over one week to go.

(until we start shooting).

Four days of auditions done... onwards to callbacks and location scout 2.0 this weekend.

I'm hoping most of the places made it through ok. This picture was taken right after Morakot. The typhoon left the home opposite of the location with the roof caved in.

week 4: the tipping point.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been busy with script revisions and casting. Auditions this weekend.

At this rate, I should be heading back to the States in about a month and that scares me!

Found this bit from an interview between Gus Van Sant and Kelly Reichardt.

KR: ...I’ve become completely sold on the art of acting over the years. It’s great to be able to do nuanced things with an actor like Michelle who is really a master of her craft.I always thought it would be easier shooting with non-actors. If you love what they’re doing when they’re doing it, then it’s the greatest, but if you want to change anything—

GVS: —There’s no control.

KR: In your films, you get people at an age before they necessarily come to the idea that they want to act, and you get something special out of that.

GVS: You mean like with John Robinson in Elephant?

KR: And Gabe Nevins from Paranoid Park.

GVS: That’s just casting. I think you can do it when they’re under 20. Not when they’re 30. I was under the impression doing Elephant that you should cast the real people in the roles. So if you’re casting a plumber, you should cast a real plumber. If you’re casting a racecar driver, it should be a real racecar driver. It was a theory. I tried to do it on Last Days with rock and rollers. It was just way, way different for me. There’s something about being under a certain age, like 20; they have a lot of free time. They aren’t citizens yet... What I needed for Last Days was the 25-to-30 year-old rocker, a real rocker. Which certainly exists, but you find a real person and they’re just not interested in doing a movie at all. We tended to use our friends because they were like the characters in the story.

KR: It’s kind of impossible to have a blanket theory about casting...

BOMB Magazine Interview.

week 3: the clouds above opened up and let it out.

Some images that my Dad took of Syuejia (the city down south where we're shooting), a day after Morakot left the vicinity. Not bad compared to other places in Tainan. There was some minor damage to the locations, I'll upload a few pictures later.

week 3: after some rain... was some more rain.

week 3: onto new horrizons.

Status updates from the front lines.

1. Deeply entrenched in the casting war.
2. The move to new living quarters in Gongguan was a success.
3. Found free WiFi at Norwegian Wood (named after the Murakami book & the Beatles song), and thus no longer a slave to WiFly.
4. Primary locations in Southern Taiwan were safe from typhoon damage.
5. Onto version 2.2 of the script.

week 2: there's a lot to be done while your head is still young.

So the typhoon came and went without much notice (at least up near Taipei where I was). Needless to say, I was incredibly let down by my first typhoon experience. This was then followed up with bad news about one of the locations.

The long short of it was, we weren't able to shoot inside. The main draws to the place was being able to walk inside it... so I decided against shooting there. Not worth the trouble involved to get the permission and only get exteriors.

Thinking back on it, I wasn't planning on using the location too much because I knew we had limited access to the place. Speaking of which, I got bad vibes from the house during the scout when the phone started ringing in there for no reason... and its been abandoned for several years!

Update: Morakot devastates southern regions.
Up to 2500mm (8 feet) of rain!

week 2: a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

So if you ever wanted to catch a glimpse of apocalypse, goto a supermarket right before a typhoon hits. All vegetables are sold out, people are frantically running around to grab last minute food items, and the place has a frantic energy. Looks like I'm going to be staying inside for the next two days.

and it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
and it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

week 2: boy, you gotta carry that weight.

Just got back into Taipei, after a location scout near Syuejia and brief diversion to Taichung to visit family. There's talk of a typhoon coming in this weekend (yay for tropical rain!). The weather's been up in the air (one minute it's cloudy/foggy with lighting strikes and another it's sunny). This would be the first typhoon of the season if it hits.

Watched Empire of Silver, for my birthday yesterday with my uncle. A strange concoction of a film; hemorrhaging story lines, bad CG (the wolves!) and melodrama... what was even stranger was seeing Jennifer Tilly in there.

Starting to interview some people to help out as crew. No#1 priority is to work on casting as quickly as possible. In another month I'm slated to be shooting.

Here's to hoping it all works out.