A short narrative about a short narrative

This is a blog in two parts:

This is our new priority list. I am going to get a huge poster of it made and hang it where ever we are shooting so that we can remember what we are here for.

1) We are here to learn first and foremost. We are here to make mistakes, take responsibility for our mistakes, figure out how we made them, write them down so we don't have to make them in the future.
2) We are here to have fun. What in this script is not fun? How can you not have fun with unicorns and mongeese and strippers and angst?
3) We are here to finish the movie. Not half of the movie, not a few scenes. We need to finish the whole thing one way or another.
4) We are here to make a good movie. This is going to require your best. Your very best. None of us has ever done anything this big before, none of us could do it alone. Give it everything.


I want to give you all a short recap of what has been happening with us. Sorry it has been a long time since I have written, but it has been hectic beyond belief.
So, Brad, Jed and I had storyboarded the whole script, thought up shots, figured out how to visually piece the whole thing together, made a format map for our multiple format conceit. We were worried about the length of the piece since it seemed that it was going to end up at an awkward length, about 45 minutes. So we decided to do an anamtic. This is a device where you basically scan the storyboards, or make small simple animations into a timeline – insert some scratch dialog – and boom, you have a sketch of your movie. But our storyboards were drawn so poorly that this would seem incomprehensible to any audience. We decided that it would be advantageous to do our anamtic with a motion picture camera, incorporate a series of test (format, color, blocking etc.) into it and we would have a clear picture of how long our movie would be.
This is where our major troubles began. First, during the production of our sketch, one of our major actors quit (the antagonist). And then our Production Manager quit. Then we made our sketch and were embarrassed to watch it. We knew that even without performances and production design there were some major flaws in our plan, in the script, in the cinematography, everything. One of the main probles was that we were interested in one dimensional characters - playing with how memory compresses people into stereotypes, explorations of serious material colliding with flippant metaphors and childish interpretation. Instead of coming off as a twisted children’s show, we realized that our main character was just an asshole, our antagonist was just a lonely, worthless person, and our love interest was a drug addict whore with no personality. Indeed we knew this before we began to shoot our sketch. But it was hubris to think that we could do the exact opposite of what a “good” narrative was supposed to do and make it engaging. Indeed our scathing critique seemed like bargin basement student rubbish.
So this is where it started to get intense. Brad, Jed and I started rewriting the script. Our unholy optimism made us think that we could do this in a weekend, but the first 20 hours were required for brainstorming and note taking. We didn’t even write a single change into the script!
And then it crossed our minds that we could write the script and storyboard the movie at the same time. It didn’t work at all. We got two pages in after 8 hours and decided to quit before we killed each other.
So we have been locking ourselves in a room, typing and typing, expanding ideas, moving things around, suggesting character changes etc. And it has been working. This script is good! Really good! But it has been slow. And we aren’t even completely done yet. And we think it needs three more scenes to make sense. And that is probably going to make it a feature.
Now, this whole time we have been preparing for the shoot that was supposed to take place this weekend. But Ashley, our Art Director was away in Thailand for a month and has just gotten back two weeks ago, and Geerah, our other art director has just gotten back from a month in Texas. It turns out that a few days is not long enough to prepare for a shoot (this project is art design intensive, it being a kids show and all).
So we pushed the shoot, no doubt freaking out our actors even more. We sat down today and agreed that we were going to make this movie, against all odds, and that we were going to work ourselves ragged to do so, because the only other option is to quit, and we aren’t going to quit.
We still don’t have a PM, we still don’t have a locked down schedule, we still don’t have a lot of locations down, and we still don’t have a full script. But I have heard a rumor that this is not the first movie to have things go wrong with the production.
I don’t want to make it sound like there is no hope. I have nothing in my heart but hope for The Trouble With Unicorns. It is crucially important to get this out into the world. There are 6 dedicated talented and smart people working on this day and night and at this point we don’t have any option but to make it happen and make it happen the best that we can. We are not prepared to compromise anymore. We are shooting for the moon.

Morgan - writer / director