Project Updates from Josh

As I mentioned the other day, it’s been a rough month on the ‘real life’ side of thing. Work’s been hell, to put it bluntly. But fortunately, friends, progress is slowly being made on Oakdale as well!

I’ve been doing a ton of research into locations. First, I looked into a number of movies/shows that took place in the 1950’s that were shot in the LA area. One, Suburbicon, was shot in Fullerton. Using my detective skills, I was able to pinpoint the exact neighborhood and so we drove out there to do a little recon.

The suburbs around LA are replete with 1950’s era ranch houses, but when you’re trying to get several in a row next to each other, you can run into some issues when you’re an indie film and can’t afford to paint and lightly remodel some exteriors. Sometimes it’s bars on the windows, or palm trees, or satellite dishes. It can be rough.

After that, I dove deeper into the internet research. There are a number of sites like Wrapal or Giggster that are available to the small productions that can’t afford to hire a location scout. I’ve found a number of options that I’ve compiled into a list for the purpose of in-person scouting.

We’ve also made some great steps forward on the music and staffing front. Utilizing my licensing skills, I was able to license the song ‘Little Boxes’ by Malvina Reynolds (Megan’s excellent suggestion). Katie has a very talented friend, Connor, who is interested in working on the project. Both to cover the song and to score the film.

Check out her work here: http://www.connorgcookmusic.com/

We also have a friend from Writer’s Group, Lameese, who approached us and asked if she could do our casting, as she has an interest in it. Glad to share the workload, we agreed. We should have our first casting sessions in 2 weeks. We also had a makeup artist, Liz, track us down after seeing our casting breakdown. I met with her to go over the films, and it looks like we have a hair/makeup person for both films, too!

Then, I sat down with an old friend of mine from undergrad, Sara, who (once we iron out some details) will hopefully be our editor!

So, like I said - despite the sloggy month, we’re making progress and crewing up!
-Josh