So, this past week I was shooting what was easily my most difficult and fun to produce feature yet. Stopped Dead is a road movie. A suspense/drama and a bit of a dark comedy. The core cast and small crew was great. The people who came out to help for one day or another all gave their best and I appreciate it. We had about 12-14 hour shoot days for 7 days straight, which means everyone was exhausted.

At the same time, I had to stay up 2 hours longer most days to set up batteries on chargers, email people for the next day and get tapes and the RV (our rolling set) ready for the next day. The following morning I had to get up about 2 hours early to check on locations, repack equipment and check responses to the emails sent the night before. I'm not complaining, this is just what making a movie takes and I love it.

The problem is this: Real life comes to a total and complete stop. Whenever I saw my wife she was either helping with movie stuff or we were about to pass out from exhaustion. Last night we had a normal conversation for the first time in over a week (well, I say normal....). The actors and crew were all going through this too. Travel time to and from locations, helping out as crew and just no time for the day to day.

Now, with all the editing still left, some real life things have cropped up that NEED to be taken care of. The "Check Engine" light on my main ride came on 2 or 3 days ago. Squirrels have broken into my house and my yard looks like it's been invaded by triffids. There are 3 sinks that need fixing in my house and I have a trip to NY and probably 2 to L.A. all sometime in the next 2 months....oh, and an issue of Cult Goddess Magazine is due out in a little over 2 weeks.

So, while a nice sigh of relief can be breathed because I'm passed the movie that dominated my life these past few months and totally had me consumed this past week, relaxing isn't really on the menu. If I haven't personally thanked you for your help already or you're waiting to hear from me about something, please be patient, but also don't feel bad reminding me of stuff.

Thanks to all my friends.

Jason

PS, the squirrels get to live in the house all weekend because they could have killed them Friday, but to catch and release them we had to wait out the weekend.
PPS So, as you see we shot a month later and about 1/3 as long as we had planned.  Hopefully it made the movie better.