Yesterday I began shooting my first feature film, ROULETTE. It is an ensemble piece with interweaving storylines, and as my first indie, I'm equal parts excited and terrified.
One of the stories involves a young couple, soon to be married, who move into a small house in the mountains situated next to a busy road -- so busy, in fact, that they're more than a little afraid of it. At length, the guy ends up with MS and watches both his body and life deteriorate in the process, and spends his time in his wheelchair watching that crazy, busy road and fantasizing about rolling himself into oncoming traffic. Later in the film, another character from another story ends up getting hit by a car right outside the house.
The house in question is the one I share with my wife. We just moved in three months ago (got married in April), and the road served as a major inspiration while writing.
Anyway, we did our first shoot yesterday. Fantastic cast, awesome crew, and we got some crane shots to die for. We wrapped feeling really good about our work, and about how fantastic the film is going to be.
At 4AM, a high-speed pursuit resulted in a car on that flew out of control right outside our bedroom and crashed headlong into the neighbors' house only a few feet away (we have an old country place, so the houses are nestled together). The teenage girls living there are okay, but their mother was crushed to death. My wife and I woke up to news crews knocking on our door and spent the day watching our house on TV.
I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in crap like "The Curse of the Omen" or whatever, but considering the content of the film, and the fact that the day of the accident was the day we started shooting, I'm feeling a little...weird. And beyond the film itself, I also keep asking myself what would have happened had it been a night that I'd been at work (several of my shifts at XM are graveyard shifts), and if my wife had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. I guess I'm just acutely aware of my mortality right now.
At any rate, I'll be dedicating the film to the memory of my neighbor and her daughters.
One of the stories involves a young couple, soon to be married, who move into a small house in the mountains situated next to a busy road -- so busy, in fact, that they're more than a little afraid of it. At length, the guy ends up with MS and watches both his body and life deteriorate in the process, and spends his time in his wheelchair watching that crazy, busy road and fantasizing about rolling himself into oncoming traffic. Later in the film, another character from another story ends up getting hit by a car right outside the house.
The house in question is the one I share with my wife. We just moved in three months ago (got married in April), and the road served as a major inspiration while writing.
Anyway, we did our first shoot yesterday. Fantastic cast, awesome crew, and we got some crane shots to die for. We wrapped feeling really good about our work, and about how fantastic the film is going to be.
At 4AM, a high-speed pursuit resulted in a car on that flew out of control right outside our bedroom and crashed headlong into the neighbors' house only a few feet away (we have an old country place, so the houses are nestled together). The teenage girls living there are okay, but their mother was crushed to death. My wife and I woke up to news crews knocking on our door and spent the day watching our house on TV.
I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in crap like "The Curse of the Omen" or whatever, but considering the content of the film, and the fact that the day of the accident was the day we started shooting, I'm feeling a little...weird. And beyond the film itself, I also keep asking myself what would have happened had it been a night that I'd been at work (several of my shifts at XM are graveyard shifts), and if my wife had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. I guess I'm just acutely aware of my mortality right now.
At any rate, I'll be dedicating the film to the memory of my neighbor and her daughters.
