Things are moving along at a record pace. Our crew is insane in the amount of work they’re putting in just to get things ready for the shoot. The good news is that we keep having people ask us if they can help with the show.  The local community is really working to make sure we get this made and we get it made well.

As usual there are some things that are taking longer than expected. Our Production Designer Stephen and Art Director Dan have been working like mad to make sure this set is going to be gorgeous. I can’t wait to see the finished results. Stephen says that we’ll have the set mostly ready by Sunday. I’ll be more than impressed when that happens considering where we were after last weekend. We’ll post some pictures soon of the progress on the set as we get them in. I’m also pushing Stephen to write something up about the process. Should make for an interesting read to put it mildly.

Shot lists are taking a lot longer than we had planned. Our DP Iskra and I have been pouring over each episode making sure that we get shots that will look great and really help the story. It’s taking a long time but will be so worth it. I can just see our AD Loren’s face when she sees the shots we’re putting in. I think she may want to kill someone. But I’ll be hiding, so we may need to find a new Gaffer since Chris will probably be the closest warm body.

I’ll be spending a lot of time between now and Sunday going over the shots we already have and also working on revising the shot’s we haven’t diagrammed yet. Oh yeah, and I should probably start work on a lined script since our Script Supervisor Nancy is out of town right now.

Sunday is going to be insanely busy. We’re going to spend most of the day rehearsing and blocking on the nearly completed set. Cast will be in for a fun day of really getting into the feel of the set. Somebody said I should make them sleep there. Don’t think I’m not thinking about it.

We’ve got wardrobe and makeup tests going on that day, too. Our Costume Designer Jason will be sewing away to make some adjustments on the costumes. Our Makeup Artists Ben and Lauren will be working on some of the effects makeup that we’ll need to make sure we get the effects looking as good as we can. We’ve got some simple effects but we’ve also got some tougher shots and those two have some great ideas they’re working through.

Debbie, the Sound Mixer for “Cell,”  is also coming in Sunday to check out the power and the sound issues we’ll have in the space. I know she’s concerned about latency. The room can be pretty live for sound, even though the crew has done a great job getting the set’s platform to be fairly quiet.  We’ll have to get creative on how to kill that room. And let’s not even talk about the crickets. It finally rains in Texas and apparently that’s started a population explosion of crickets. Yes, we will be setting off bug bombs in the building before we shoot.

We also lost access to some of the equipment we’ve been counting on but Brian has done an AMAZING job pushing hard to find everything we lost. We’ve almost got it all back, but I’m gonna miss that spider dolly we had. We’ll make it work with what we have though.

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Second, at this point every day is pretty full with rehearsals, business talk, meetings and the like. This week has been no different, but it’s led us to some great news!Yesterday we had rehearsal again for 3 of our principal actors. We also has Jason come in to start getting measurements for costumes and to start pulling wardrobe. Even Natalie made the 3 hour drive to Austin to get her wardrobe squared away. (Not gonna lie, I’m feeling a little guilty that we really didn’t have the time to get to her part in the script.) Jason had his camera so he took some shots of us hanging out at the house for rehearsals. I’ll post some of those up here pretty soon.

Some big news on the crew side of the fence.  We’re very happy to have Iskra Valtcheva on board as our DP. Iskra was a finalist in the 2008 Student Academy Awards for her DP work and is already really well respected in the Central Texas film community, even though she’s only recently out of grad school where she got a MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas. We’re very excited that she’s going to bring her great eye to “Cell.” If you get a chance to look at her reel, take a few minutes. She does amazing work behind the camera and she’s a great person as well. She’s going to add something great to this project.

Another crew position we’ve filled is our Script Supervisor. Nancy Smith from First Look Script Analysis has just come on the crew as our Script Supervisor. I’ve known Nancy for a couple of years from the Austin Screenwriter’s Group. I haven’t been to the meetings in quite a while being swamped with pre-production but happened to run into her last night at a party thrown by Robin Blesch and WPFG Studios threw to celebrate the Texas Motion Picture Alliiance and passage of the new Texas Film Incentives. Anyway, we started talking and I mentioned we needed a Script Supervisor and she jumped on board. How great is that? Nancy’s a very talented, award-winning  screenwriter and I’m really happy to have her watching over things for “Cell.”

Kevin McCarthy has also just added a Facebook Fan page for “Cell.”  We’ve also got one set up for Lovable Varmint Productions. Go check it out and become a fan.

We’re also working on forums so you can join and start discussions about Lovable Varmint and about “Cell.”

We’ve had some great feedback about our blog posts so keep those coming. Leave a comment and let’s start talking. What posts do you like the most? What do you want less of?

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Take a second to watch some of The Lone Filmmaker. He’s been working on making a feature film ENTIRELY by himself. I haven’t seen them all but the ones I have seen are interesting about the process as well as some of the specifics about making film.