July 2009

We shot our 48hr film in a whirlwind of a weekend. We drew Mockumentary as our genre. Prop: Apple, Required Character: Louis/Louise Grimes, Required line of dialog: “How much money are we talking about?”. The writer’s went to work at 7pm, Friday night, focusing on a superhero mockumentary and sent the script out at 2am. [...]

Another film is done! After working on this one for the past few months, I’ve gotten the final “oks” from the producer and executive producer. Everyone is very very happy with the final product and we’re already getting excited about submitting it to festivals. I’ve shown it to a “test audience” and they really like [...]

Last week we had a great “meet & greet” meeting for the 48hr project. All the writers got a chance to meet the actors and talk about what the plan is. Of course, I forgot to take pictures. Things are getting busy. This past week I was able to meet with some of the actors [...]

  As I was making some tweaks to The Scorpion and the Frog I scrolled through the timeline and came across this image: Lol! What a creepy photo. It is especially strange since the movie is a drama with light comedy elements and not a horror film. This strange four-eyed image is from a special [...]

I didn’t realize it, but I guess the attendees can post follow up comments or ‘reviews’ after the seminar. So far there is a lot of great and supportive feedback. Seems like people really liked it. Check it out:   Martin Lindsey The presenter emphasized something that I could appreciate as an engineer. Preparation is [...]

Last night was my seminar on Directing Basics. When I strolled into the Mercury Café an audience of 7 or 8 people had already formed. I was told there were a lot of RSVPs, but I only expected 5 at most. By the time we started it was at 24 people. I only got photo [...]

Thursday night was the first 48hr film project meeting. We met the rest of the team, divided up jobs and talked about the plan. I’ll be directing. The whole thing sounds really intense. We get the idea, genre, and a prop on Friday at midnight, writers then have 6hrs to create a script. I’ll come [...]

Just received the press release for the talk I’m doing on Tuesday, July 14th. Here’s a little snippet: Local Indie Director to Present at Chicago Filmmakers in Action’s July “Basics of Filmmaking” Workshop Aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters can learn filmmaking basics on the cheap Dan Finley, a local independent filmmaker, will provide an in-depth breakdown [...]