Just when I think I'm out...

They drag me back in! Got some zombie news, but you will have to wait till later for that.

So, it's been a while since I have posted. Many moons some would say. For those of you that have been reading you know how crazy production got for "Of Rats and Men". I think I have finally recovered from it.

For me that film has been an endurance test. The fact that things kept going wrong has wore me out. The best way to sum it up for us is something like this "We had our backs against the wall, and then the damn wall fell down on us". The good news is that as a group well all came together and bonded even more. I feel we are a stronger unit now.

Rats is currently being edited, which means it is in "Post-Production". Jerry is working hard to get a rough cut done. We are still looking for music to add, so let us know if you know a band.

I do believe that is enough Rats info for now.

Which brings us back to the zombies. Thanks to a contact at The Relapse Theater (haven't been there, you should!) Krej Productions has been called in to work on a zombie project. Yup back to the zombie well we a go-go!

It should be fun, and I look forward to it. We are going to be filming about 6 1-2 minute shorts at the end of the month. Most of them will be in one shot, so expect to see them at the start of October.

What else, what else? I feel like I am forgetting something.

Oh yeah! Dragon Con came and went. How I miss it already. 4 days of Halloween. It was a great victory lap for the team after the insanity of this summer. Maybe Jerry can post some pictures from it (and "Of Rats and Men" to).

Whelp that's all I got for now. Well not really, but the season premiere of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is about to come on, so deal with it

Keep it real Krej Heads,
Jeff K

"Of Rats and Men" Trailer

I just wanted to say that just moments ago the trailer for "Of Rats and Men" went up online. Please check it out, and give us some feedback somewhere, on here, or YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, krej.tv, something... Just do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPwryOS76Y&feature=youtu.be

Ok, now I'm gonna go back to playing Robot Unicorn Attack for another hour.

"Of Rats and Men" Production Blog #4

Sorry it took a while. Here’s the recap for Sunday.

Sometime late, late Saturday night I got a really bad headache. I’ve been trying to quit drinking sodas for a little while now, but can’t go a day without caffeine without getting a really intense migraine. I really didn’t need to have a headache all day, so myself and young Trenton struck out at about 3 AM to score some caffeine, despite having no idea where we were going. Eventually, we ran across a 24-hour CVS right next to a Huddle House. After we noshed on shitty diner burgers, we headed back to the house where we were filming, and spent the rest of the night chilling (literally, because it was too hot inside) in my car, and listening to an episode of Never Not Funny (a hilarious podcast hosted by genius comedian Jimmy Pardo). The podcast ended at exactly 6:00 (on the dot), right as the food, provided by the wonderful Stephanie Norton, arrived and Kaminski came outside to meet her. After breakfast, we started shooting.

As with Saturday, we again had to rush to get everything with Diane and Steve out of the way, so they could be wrapped by 10:30. And again, we managed to wrap them just in time. We started off with the final scene in the film, a fun scene to shoot for me, because I didn’t have a whole lot to do. So, I spent the entire scene doodling on a sheet of paper, which I hope Kaminski can find and post up here, but I don’t imagine he will do soon, because it is supposed to be a testimonial, which I wrote in character (for no reason) and it is full of spoilers.

After that, we went around and finished up all of the scenes that had Steve and Diane, and we sent them on their merry way, to be brilliant somewhere else. The last scene we shot with Diane was in the garage, which was hotter than the rest of the house (and possibly even Hell) and was an extreme hassle for all involved, but especially Craig and I in our jump suits. But whereas I was a whiny little bitch, and ran out to get some air every time we cut, Craig persisted and hung in there like a champ.

After we left the furnace, I made myself scarce while Trent and Steven shot a couple of scenes outdoors. To be completely honest, I have no idea exactly what happened in these scenes, and I’d like for it to stay that way until the premiere. I like there to be some surprises when I watch the final product. It’s no fun watching a movie for the first time and knowing every single thing that’s gonna happen before it happens, so I always like to be elsewhere while certain scenes that I’m not in are being shot. Lucky for me (and maybe the viewer too), there were a lot more scenes that I wasn’t in in this film as opposed to Tim and Katie, which had such a tiny cast that we all had to be there for pretty much everything.

As I said before, we had to recast Chris into the “Vernon” role, which made the scene he had already shot, a hilarious soap opera spoof, unusable. So, everyone was really excited that our original choice for “Vernon,” Mr. Jan Lefrançois-Gijzen was able to come in and make a small cameo in that re-shot scene, along with his girlfriend, Katie Causey. Given such a quick scene to shoot (it only took about 10 minutes) Jan and Katie really brought the funny in a big (and sometimes uncomfortable) way.

After the soap scene, we shot what was the funniest, craziest, most high energy scene to shoot for the entire project. It takes place in the climax of the story, and features myself, Steven, Craig, Dasha, Chris, Trent in full-on Billy Hutton mode, guns, a rat costume, a lot of screaming, and a LOT of insanity all going on at the same time. It was intense. I’ve never been a part of insanity such as this in my life. I can’t wait to see how this scene looks on the screen, because it was a blast to shoot. There are a few scenes that I am really excited to see how Jerry cuts them together, and this is one of those.

Unfortunately, I was wrapped after that scene, along with Steven and Trent. Trent and I had to head out early so that we could drop Matt off at another gig. Jerry filled in on sound for the final couple of scenes. The first marked the return of Lake to do his final scene with Dasha. Everyone was nervous because it was starting to look like rain, and Lake was running behind because he was coming from North Carolina, where he was doing another shoot. Just before he got there, it stopped raining just long enough for them to shoot the scene, which I hear went really well. Then, the cast and crew packed up, waved goodbye to the house (I’m guessing that part, like I said, I wasn’t there), and headed over to the final location where Craig and Richard Hoard reportedly knocked it out of the park in a matter of minutes. I got the call just after I got home that we filming had been completed.

So, that’s that. It’s a wrap, as they say. Principle photography is completed on “Of Rats and Men.” I think we managed to do something that is interesting and a lot more diverse than any of our past projects, but it still has the core of what makes it a KREJ film. There has been talk of shooting an extra scene or two, nothing crucial, just a couple things to bring everything full circle story-wise, but we haven’t officially decided whether or not to do so. For the most part, we managed to shoot everything we set out to shoot as planned, and in a lot of places, things turned out WAY funnier than we expected. That’s what you get when you hire great talent.

On that note, I’ll go ahead and admit it, we got lucky. We somehow managed to pull together an amazing cast and crew for this film. If it wasn’t for some of the stuff we’ve been doing outside of KREJ (improv, acting classes, etc.), we wouldn’t have never met most of these incredibly talented people that we had the immense pleasure of working with on “Of Rats and Men.” I would like to take this time to thank everybody that was involved in some capacity or another, alphabetically or course (sorry Craig). Here goes:

Matthew Aschberger
Nick Bilz
Brenda Breedon
Katie Causey
Diane Dicker
Brett Grueber
Richard Hoard
Johnnie Holland
Keegan Ingram
Dasha Jordan
Jeff Kaminski
Carla Larson
Jan Lefrancois-Gijzen
Matt Levy
Regina Nicole
Stephanie Norton
Melissa Owens
Chris Parsons
Steve Pryor
Kelley Roark
Lake Roberts
Hakim Robinson
Trolle Selander
Steven Teuchert
Trent Whitmire
Craig Zeiss

I don’t think I forgot anybody, but if I did, I’m really sorry. Keep checking in, because we will be announcing when the premiere of “Of Rats and Men” will be as soon as we set a date, and hopefully, since we’re done with shooting, we can start blogging again soon.

-Grantzy

"Of Rats and Men" Production Blog #3

OK, first of all I want to apologize for not putting this up sooner. We didn’t have internet access at our filming location, and between work and trying catch up on all of my lost sleep over the weekend, I haven’t had time to post this production blog. After many scheduling conflicts the past several weekends, we finally managed to get everyone on the same page and we finished shooting the latest KREJ short, “Of Rats and Men.” It’s over. We can all breathe a huge sigh of relief now, except for Jerry, who has the honor of editing the film.

There were some changes on the cast and crew line up. First, because of scheduling conflicts with our original D.P., Hakim, we brought in Nick Bilz in. Nick was a real joy to have on set. He really busted his ass this weekend and we appreciate that. He somehow managed to come in, and blend seamlessly into our little group, so well it felt like we have been working with him for a long time. He really fit right in, and we hope to have him back in the future.

Our second line up change up came during the previous, when Jan Lefrançois-Gijzen, the actor we cast as “Vernon” regrettably informed us that due to personal reasons, he could not make it in to film his scenes. It was unfortunate, but luckily, we managed to enlist Chris Parsons to play the part. We had already filmed a very short scene with Chris in our first weekend, so that had to be added to schedule again to be re-shot with a different actor. We we’re very fortunate that Jan managed to come in and shoot the short, but very funny, scene and we got to have him in the film after all. I do want to apologize however to Kelley Roark, who was in the original scene with Chris. Unfortunately, I could not manage to get in touch with her to ask her to come in to re-film the scene, but we we’re lucky enough that Jan brought his girlfriend, Katie Causey, along to sub for Kelley. They both did a great job, and I really look forward to seeing that scene on film.

Ok, so here’s a little breakdown of what happened this weekend on set.

Saturday:

I don’t think anybody got any sleep Friday night. Most of us drove done to our shooting location in McDonough the night before filming. Trent and I had to work Friday night, so we didn’t even get on the road until almost 1:30 a.m. We arrived roughly around 3:00 a.m., with sound guy Matt Levy and Chris in tow. We were met in the driveway by Director Jeff Kaminski, who couldn’t sleep. We filed in, and everyone choose a place to sleep, but it was no use for me; I was up until call time. It sucked having to sit around while everyone else slept (or tried to) waiting to start shooting. I never was good at getting any sleep the night before a shoot. I think it’s a mix of being excited and a little nervous.

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait too long for call time. After the numerous delays, we had decided to move our start time up a little to 6 a.m. in order to accommodate a few of our actors, Diane Dicker and Steve Pryor, who had to be wrapped for the day around 10:30 a.m. This seemed like a daunting task, as will all of our past projects, we’ve had a little problem with meeting our pre-decided wrap time. I have no idea what got into us this past weekend, but we somehow, seemingly out of nowhere, morphed into a well-oiled independent film production machine. We pulled a Barry Allen (or perhaps a Wally West) and moved faster than we ever have in the past. Everybody pulled far more than their own weight. Actors we’re nailing it take after take, not a line forgotten. Crew was setting up and striking down sets in the blink of an eye. We were able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. OK, not really, but you get the picture. I guess after being delayed for three weeks, we all had a lot of pent up aggression, and wanted to get this thing in the can.

There were a couple of times though, where we got held up for a minute or two, here and there. One of the most memorable was when one of my contacts fell out during a very physical scene I shared with Craig Zeiss. I had to run down stairs to the basement/our holding area, and grab my contact solution. When I came back up stairs, everyone started feigning concern for my well being, each time calling me by a different famous actor’s name. Needless to say, this became a running gag. Everyone was ragging on me, calling me everything from Al Pacino to Michael Cera to Whoopi Goldberg. Some of my favorites include Larry David, John Goodman, Zach Galifianakis, Betty White, Kevin Smith, and Snooki. I eventually egged them on even more by challenging them to guess which name I was thinking of, Don Knotts, which Craig finally got.

Despite the little eyewear annoyance, I still have to say that that scene in particular, our big finale, is probably my favorite one we filmed. There was a lot to this scene, and it took a good chunk of the day Saturday, as well as a little time on Sunday to film. The majority of the cast we’re involved in this scene: myself, Craig, Chris, Diane, Steve, Steven, Trent, and Dasha Jordan. I think Dasha might have had a little too much fun. We could all see how holding a prop gun, and getting to push me and Craig around went to her head a little. I kid… a little.

We got a lot of other great scenes on Saturday, including several scenes between Chris’ “Vernon” and Diane’s “Wilma.” These scenes were very pivotal to the plot, but there were no worries, as they both nailed each scene. Another really fun scene we shot is a promo for a wrestling event we filmed featuring Johnnie Holland (who you may remember as the landlord from Tim and Katie) and a priceless director cameo from Mr. Kaminski himself. I went to sleep on the couch right before they started shooting this, and was woken up by screams and whoops from the two, not realizing that they had set the green screen up right in front of me, and was filming the scene just two feet away from my sleeping head. It was strange looking back at the footage and realizing all this was going on right next to me while I dozed.

We managed to get Diane and Steve, who were both exceptionally fantastic, out on time, which is a KREJ first. We then went on to wrap for the day very early (another KREJ first), and when we were done we didn’t really know what to do with our selves for the rest of the night. We did get to sit down and watch all the footage on the projector downstairs in the basement. It’s a real bonding experience sitting down with some of the cast and crew watching all of our hard work from the day on the wall in front of us.

I wanted to try and write up my blogs for both Saturday and Sunday, but somehow it is already 5 a.m., and I may or may not have a doctor’s appointment early in the morning, so let’s finish this up tomorrow, shall we?

Stay tuned for Sunday’s Production blog. Same KREJ time. Same KREJ channel.

"Of Rats and Men" Production Blog #2

Hey everyone, it’s time for another update on the filming of “Of Rats and Men”. We’ve got the first weekend out of the way, and after we take a little break next weekend for the 4th, we’re gonna get right back into the swing of things.

Unfortunately, today we had a very late start due to the typical problem that KREJ tends to run into every time we film something… we we’re locked out of the location (You might remember on Tim and Katie, we were locked out of the gate that leads to the cabin, and we may or may not have cut the chains to get in there). Fortunately enough, we weren’t locked out of the entire location. See, the plan was to shoot a scene out in front of a local exterminator’s office, and then go behind the building, which is surrounded by a locked fence, to shoot three more. The plan was for the manager of said exterminators to have someone leave the gate unlocked for us last night. Alas, there was a misunderstanding, and either the person in charge of leaving the gate unlocked for us failed miserably, or some other asshole came along, saw an unlocked lock, and with the impression that they were doing good, did the opposite. So, we had to shoot the one scene out front, and then move another scene, that was meant to be shot in the back, to the front, which, in the long run, ended up working out just fine.

But, there was still the problem of the remaining two scenes that we had originally planned on shooting behind the building. We lucked out though, and came up with a last minute replacement location. So I want to thank Tommy and Lee, my managers at the pizza place I work at, for allowing us to film behind the store, as well as full use of the back door to complete our scenes. And all we had to do for it was take out all the trash for them. A few of the people on the set fell in love with me a little bit when I introduced them to the walk-in freezer, which after two days of filming in the hot sun, was the greatest feeling in the world. Next time, we just need to write a film about two guys who sit at home all day, wearing shorts, and enjoying their air conditioning. Probably won’t be too interesting of a movie, but damn would it be nice to film.

Things went a little smoother today, due to the fact that we only had 4 actors total working today, instead of the 7 we had yesterday. All of today’s scenes featured Craig, Steven, and myself, and we had a short, but really fun scene with Carla, who was a real sport to put up with some of the lines directed to her by Craig’s hilarious character Ron. After the slow start of the morning, things moved relatively quickly once we got the ball rolling, and we only slowed down a little when large clouds started blocking the sunlight for sometimes up to 5 or 10 minutes at a time (At which point we’d visit our old friend the walk in). But we pushed through, got some good footage, including our first scene of this project where we got to experiment some and do a bit of improv. I can’t wait to see what of all the improvised stuff we did ends up in the final edited film. I can think of a few hilarious lines that Craig delivered that I would love to see in there. There was also this great moment in a scene where Steven’s character is supposed to storm around the corner of the building, in a rage. When Kaminski yelled action, Steven, not telling anybody he was going to do this, launches a traffic cone (that I still don’t know to this second where it came from) from around the building, and stomps straight up to me. I had a hard time to keep from laughing, as I didn’t expect it at all.

One thing that I'm really glad that we're doing this time around, is taking a lot of pictures. The entire time that we're on set, whether we're filming or just sitting around waiting, someone is always carrying a camera, and constantly snapping photos. Trent, Matt, and Jerry got a lot of great pics today, and a lot we're taken yesterday as well. Hopefully, we'll be able to post a few of those up on the website or our KREJ Productions Facebook group as soon as possible (become a member if you haven't already).

At around 3:30, we finished all of our exterior Lawrenceville scenes, but unfortunately, the set backs from the whole location fiasco put us far enough off schedule that we didn’t have time to move on the our last location, an office building in Conyers. But that’s ok. That’s what make-up days are for. I do want to apologize to Richard Hoard though, because we didn’t get to shoot his scenes, which is a shame, because I was looking forward to those.

I do wanna say that, despite these set-backs, the heat, and all the general headaches that come from film making, today, Hell the whole weekend for that matter, has been a lot of fun. One of the best times we’ve had making movies here at KREJ. We have a fantastic group of hard-working, hilarious, and talented people putting a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this thing. So, we have to start dipping into our stored up make-up days. But doesn’t that just mean we get another day together, to work hard, and laugh harder? I like to think of it that way.

Two weeks is a long time to wait to until our next shooting day. The worst part about shooting all weekend, and then going back to work all week, is dealing with your regular job responsibilities, while the whole time thinking how much you’d rather be on set. No matter how much crap we have to put up with during a shoot, it’s always a hundred times better than the day job. I’m very much looking forward to shooting again, because next time we’ve got a lot more actors coming in, including Jan Lefrançois-Gijzen and Dasha Jordan, from our improv class, and Diane Dicker and Steve Pryor, who answered our casting call, as well as the return of Craig, Steven, Trent, Lake, and myself. Can’t wait.

Well, until next time,
-Grantzy

"Of Rats and Men" Production Blog #1

What a day. What a day. The first day of production on “Of Rats and Men” is finally over. Ok, so technically it was over hours ago, but this is the first chance I had to get to a computer all day. In my last blog I promised to do a production blog every night after we shoot. So, here goes:

I wanna start by saying we’re behind schedule… 30 seconds behind schedule. We got everything we needed to shoot today, with the exception of one short green screen shot, which we moved to tomorrow. Tomorrow we already have a green screen shot scheduled. It only makes sense to do them both at once. So, this is barely a dent in our schedule. We had a very productive day, albeit a very long day. This is probably the most productive day in KREJ history!

We had a great cast and a great crew. Like I said last time, we had Hakim Robinson and Regina Nicole from Eyes Entertainment return as D.P. and A.D. We also had Melissa Owens, our make-up artist from Tim and Katie return to make us look pretty, as well as getting in front of the camera. Brett “Da Gruuub” Grueber and Johnnie Holland also showed up to give a helping hand, and Brenda Breedon, an old friend from the days before there even was a KREJ, was our script supervisor. We also had some KREJ first-timers join in on the fun. Matt Levy is our newest addition to the crew, killing it today on sound. For someone that never worked on a film before, this kid didn’t miss a beat. Great job Matt!

As for the cast of this thing, holy shit everybody, this is not gonna be one to miss. We have an amazing cast, including people from three different comedy theatre around Atlanta (Relapse, Dad’s Garage, and Sketchworks for those wondering). Today we had the pleasure of working with Chris Parsons, who worked crew on Tim and Katie, and Kelley Roarke, a fellow improv student. They showed up when we asked them to, and waited patiently until it was their turn shoot, and then killed it. It was definitely one of the funniest scenes to shoot. But not to knock everyone else, because everyone brought their A-game today. We also shot the first of a couple scenes featuring Lake Roberts, a terrific actor who is currently appearing at Dad’s Garage in “The Change: Another Teenage Werewolf Musical,” (see it before it’s run ends in early July). After today, we’re really excited to shoot his other scenes, which unfortunately won’t be until the next shooting weekend.

We also got a lot of Steven’s (who is a trooper for standing outside all hot ass day in that rat suit) better scenes shot, including the introduction of Trent’s Billy Hutton character, which trust me world, you’re not ready for. We filmed all day in the blistering hot sun in Lawrenceville, and ended up wrapping for the day in Atlanta, with the first scene of the film, featuring Steven and myself. For the first time today, I realized that it’s been exactly a year since we wrapped production on Tim and Katie. This means that I haven’t acted on camera in an entire year. There were a few hiccups when, by the time we got to my scene, I was struggling a bit to remember my lines for the first few takes. I eventually pulled myself together, and we managed to get through it. I promise tomorrow I will try to step it up a notch. (I know “Do or do not, there is no try.” Yoda!!)

As the days go by, I realize more and more how much I love producing. It’s a lot of hours and a lot of work, but for me the payoff is totally worth it; I get to put my name on something that I’m proud of. In Tim and Katie, I was credited as a producer, but it didn’t really go much farther than hiring Trolle Selander (who will return on “Rats”) to do the Special Effects and help make a couple of creative decisions here and there. But this time it’s different. I’ve been handling everything single thing I could get my hands on, and I’ve been loving every second of it. Our biggest goal in “Rats” is to make the most professional project we’ve done yet. Everyone single person is pulling their weight, and it’s going to show in the final film.

I just wanna send out a huge thanks to everybody who helped out today, and day one is officially behind us guys. We’re all really excited for tomorrow, where we’ll be filming in two actual locations, and working with Carla Larson, Richard Hoard, and Craig Zeiss, who has a very good chance of stealing every scene he’s in, like a f-in criminal man. I know I’m gonna have a hard time not breaking with this guy. There’s gonna be some good times on the set tomorrow. Let’s hope tomorrow goes as well, and as problem-free as today.

Well, it’s way too late, I gotta get up way too early, and I still have way too much left of this quesadilla. I’m gonna shove this delicious Mexican treat down, and then pass out as if someone chloroformed me.

Dueces,
-Grantzy

It's almost time...

Hi everybody,

Man, has it been a long time since I’ve done this. I do apologize for not throwing my two-cents in here on a more regular basis. All of us here at KREJ have been extremely busy on pre-production for our latest short, “Of Rats and Men,” which longtime followers (yep, still telling myself that someone is reading this) will know this to be the prequel to a feature-length script called “Rat Bastards” written by one Jeff Kaminski. (That’s right Tarantino we spell it like Americans!)

And boy has there been a lot of pre-production to do on this thing. One of the big things I’ve been working on is locking down one of the major filming locations. This will be the first time we use a real business for a location in the history of KREJ. Mostly we’d use friends’ houses and woods and stuff, but this time we’re using a couple different legit locations. One of those is a local branch of an exterminating company, and the other is an office building where one of our actors work. We’re excited to have gotten permission from these people and we thank them.

I had to lock down the Director of Photography and Assistant Director as well. I’m happy to announce that we’re again going to be working with Hakim Robinson and Regina Nicole from Eyes Entertainment as D.P. and A.D. respectively. We’ve previously worked with them on our last film project “Bored,” which I promise will be coming to you in one form or another very soon.

I’ve also been doing a lot of work organizing everything as far as emailing actors and crew. A lot of scripts and schedules and whatnot being sent back and forth. We are still waiting on a few members of the crew to be locked down, so we still might need some more help. If you’re in the area and would like to help, check out the KREJ needs Crew group on Facebook, and if you haven’t already, join the KREJ Productions group there as well. That group used to be the Tim and Katie fangroup, but we switched it over to an all-KREJ, all-the-time kinda thing. So if you were a member of the T&K group, you don’t have to join again, we already got you. We recently posted a few pre-production pics from “Of Rats and Men,” some pictures of people in costume, and a few from a couple table reads and rehearsals we’ve done so far. We also got a couple of really nice group shots with almost everyone in the cast.

Speaking of the cast, we’re thrilled to be working with a lot of new talent that we have somehow managed to aquire this time around. Of course, you’ve got fan favorites Steven, Trent, and myself returning, but a large portion of the cast are people we’ve never worked with before, and that’s something that’s very exciting for us. I’m telling you, we’ve got a really funny group coming at this thing, and I know they’re gonna get out there and make with the funny. A good bit of the performers are people Steven, Trent, and I have met recently in our Improv class at the Relapse Theatre in Atlanta. A few others, are people we’ve known for a little while, and even a couple of people that just answered our casting calls. We got really lucky to bring together all the talent that we have.

I also wanna give a couple of shout outs. First one goes out to Stephanie Norton. Some of you might know her as an Executive Producer on Tim and Katie, others might know her as Kaminski’s mom, we know her as the person who feeds us when we’re on set (and God are we grateful). Stephanie deserves a huge shout out because she saved our ass on this one. As some of you might know, we had a company (that to my understanding predominantly makes animal/mascot costumes for Furries) enlisted to create the rat costume for one Stevie Teuchert to wear for his role. Last second, due to some beef they had with someone else, they decided to say, “oh yeah, we’re just gonna not do that.” We we’re willing to shell out our hard-earned money to these guys, and due to reasons that have nothing to do with us personally, they ditch us. Not good business friends. So anyway, who swoops in to save us at the last second, but Mrs. Norton herself. In just 5 hours (the other guys quoted us a month), she managed to bang this thing out, and man it looks a hundred times better than we ever imagined it. I bet it looks better than the one the other guys we’re gonna make us, cause we had the options to customize a couple of things. It saved us an ass-ton of money on the thing too.

The other shout out goes to our own Jerry, because he took a random stupid idea I had, and weaved it into gold. In this film, wrestling play a decent sized role in the story. We decided early on that we we’re gonna have one Johnnie Holland (who you might remember as Mr. Roberts from Tim and Katie) take on the role of a pro wrestler. I threw out the idea that we take a picture of him and make a t-shirt for my character to wear in the opening scene of the film. Again, he took the idea I had in my mind’s eye and made it a hundred times better than I expected. I guess what I’ve learned here, is to quit having such low expectations for everyone around me. Hmm, I guess I’m an asshole. All’s that’s left to do now is get in touch with the guy who’s supposed to be having the shirt made for us, so we can have it in time.

I mentioned earlier that I haven’t blogged in a good while (which explains why this blog never seems to end), and I plan on making up for that during the shoot. Every night, after we wrap, I’m going to do a new blog reporting of the events from that day’s shoot. It’ll be like a short diary from the set. Very short seeing as how we’re only planning on shooting for four days.

All of this work we’ve been doing, and I still got a to-do list almost two pages long. I still gotta call the people at the locations, call the t-shirt guy, get a hair-cut, wait til my costume arrives so I can make sure it fits right (then have it altered if it doesn’t), re-read “Rat Bastards” to refresh myself with it, take meetings with a few different people for scoring and music and stuff, record an actual song, figure out this whole damn carpooling situation, make a shit-load of phone calls, and then I just gotta send about 37-thousand emails. Fun. Oh well, at least I got stuff to keep me busy these next few days until we shoot.

But, it hasn’t been all “Of Rats and Men,” for me. I have, whenever I can find the time, been working on a couple of other writing projects. The first being a very very rough draft for a feature length script we would love to tackle next summer, entitled “How Not To Make A Movie.” It’s very loosely based on a true story involving us fellas at KREJ, and our experiences in the business of show. The other is a very gritty buddy cop short entitled “T.J. Freelove.” It’s a story I’ve had in my head for well over 2 years, but haven’t written a word on it. I finally got behind the keyboard and started banging it out, and at this point in time, I’m roughly half-way through it. It’s got some very fun characters, and I know we’d have a blast shooting it. We’d like to shoot this sometime in the near future, possibly after whatever we shoot after this (I hear the stable boy has been cooking up a thing or two in that old noggin of his).

Oh piss, It’s 5:15 in the morning, and I’ve been pre-productioning my ass off for the last 5 hours. Time for sleep. Night. Bye.

-Grantzy