Thorny News

When Jac thought that he had a plan for the rest of this year, and maybe next, with plenty of work with a big feature in pre production, another big feature planned in need of a good script, a good number of productions to edit, when all of a sudden, like a gigantic meteor ready to hit a planet to transform it completely … something grandiose and extremely gripping came his way.

It looks like Jac has his work cut out for him… Is that the correct expression?

The situation can be described as exciting and exceedingly crazy, at least from my point of view. I had the chance to get a well informed sense of how things are going.

Well… in a given day he has four documents open in Word, three scripts and a pitch, he also has two films open in his Premiere Pro timeline and he’s working with all those documents and films AT THE SAME TIME, if that’s not multi tasking, I don’t know what it is.

I told him that it is crazy, he said that it is not. Actually he feels better working that way because he doesn’t get stuck. For some reason, working in one script stimulates his brain to work on the others.

He’s cutting CruXtreme V – The Playmates. So, he goes over all the shots for one scene, they are all assembled, but now he has to cut them. Some are very similar. So he chooses one, then another, then another and at one point he needs to think about which of the selected shots he wants to use and how, so he needs to distance himself a little…

So he goes to one of the scripts. He looks at the scene he was writing before, it was going well until he hit an obstacle that got him stuck… he looks at it again, he is, still, stuck, so he goes to another script and reads what he was doing and bang! He finds where to take the story from there so it will flow. He writes the new ideas until he reaches a point where he needs a new idea…

Back to the editing room, checks the material, it’s obvious to him what he has to do, he eliminates one shot that, although it was pretty, it didn’t flow with the rest, something about the position of a hand, so he cuts and selects more shots, puts them together, trims them and now he’s ready for the next part of the scene… Again he puts shots together, he trims them, he’s not happy, he needs to distance himself again…

Off he goes to the script, he found the solution, it’s flowing, he continues, he’s inspired, he completes two scenes, they work! But what’s next?… He needs to think again…

Off he goes to the other script where he finds that the problem persists… he needs to think about what to do with the problem… needs more distance… maybe he’ll leave it for the next day… unless…

Off to the editing again, cut, cut, select, select, that piano music is cool… that shot… hmmm that shot… does it work?… And so on.

It sounds crazy to me, but it’s not unusual for Jac.

In the middle of 2014 He was working in two scripts at the same time, Justine and Pygmalion, and he was editing Olalla.

Olalla was released at the end of January of 2015, Pygmalion was produced in August of 2015 and Justine was produced between November and December of 2015 after Amy returned from a trip to Mexico, to show Olalla at a the Feratum Film Festival and a visit to the US!

So, the big meteor I’m talking about came down on Jac’s already busy routine a couple of weeks ago to make things more exciting. Soon after, he learned of another big development, another meteor or asteroid… and now, on top of all the work he has to do, a lot more has fallen on his lap… top.

He has to have a script for a pilot for a TV series by the end of the month, right, next week, he got news that there’s some interest in the series he’s been plotting for a while and the whole proposal has to be sent before the end of next month. But he needs to have the script for the pilot to work on the proposal.

He also has to finish the script for 69 Année Érotique this coming week to work on the scheduling. Most of it is done… he’s finishing the third act.

He’s practically done with a Pitch for The Film I’m Not In Liberty to discuss yet, but it is a Grand New Project, so he’ll be shooting a scene for the pitch on Wednesday and/or Thursday and on Tuesday he’ll be sending the Pitch script to Amy for her to record it.

The new script for The Film I Can’t Discuss Yet will take time, of course. Jac is working on it with the pleasure that comes when he works on a new tale. He is carefully developing the characters, their motivations and their arch. The three main characters have to be strong and beautifully drawn and the way to do it right is planting the roots when you introduce them and stay true to them throughout the story.

Those three characters for the new film are going to end in a nasty situation, of course.

More about this and other great happenings later.