ErinLaing.com

Shooting starts tomorrow and Erin is currently dans le jus, as they say. So I’ll be blogging on her behalf as much as possible during production. It is the most exciting time, after all, so I’m going to do my best to convey that on the blog.

Here’s a shot of Erin and a few members of the cast from Birthday Girl. The photo was taken at a cast & crew meet-and-greet over the weekend. I’m not a very good photographer, so please excuse the blurriness.

Erin’s been doing rehearsals all week with the actors - and from what I’ve seen and heard, the performances have been incredible.

We just found out that we are not allowed to use Scrabble in the film. The game was at the center of a very important scene where the playing of the game between two of the characters revealed a lot about their relationship. Because we are working on a very low budget, we could not afford what is called E & O’s (errors and omissions) which distributors require if they are going to broadcast your film. The only way around this is to be absolutely certain that we do not use or show any brand names or copy written material. If we did go ahead and use brand names, companies could technically sue us and we would have no insurance to protect us.

Normally you can get away with this by covering up or slightly modifying recognizable labels. Not so with Scrabble. Everything from the board, to the stars on the board and the little wooden plates that you keep your letters on are copy written. Which means that I can’t use the game. At all.

I despise the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, along with numerous others that restrict creativity rather than encourage it. But that’s a debate that’s been going on forever and which is not likely to be resolved any time soon.

Instead of scrabble I’m going to use a crossword puzzle. (Has anyone seen Wordplay?) Sometimes these bumps force you to think of other creative ways to tell the same story.

I think this might work even better.

Here are some great costume ideas sent by Sabrina. I’m not a fan of all the colours but I love the look.

Most kids will be on set in their normal clothing. This white dress will belong to the hostess of the birthday party.

We finally locked our location. It’s a great home with the perfect look, inside and out.

I’ve made a blue print of the interior. This way I can indicate the various camera angles scene by scene and have the AD make sense of it all from an organizational perspective.

Matt Forsythe, illustrator and comic book creator, is doing the storyboards for Birthday Girl and I’m loving them. It’s a bit of a challenge because we don’t have our location so Matt’s doing the storyboards based on our ideal space. There’s about 32 scenes in the film and between 90 and 120 frames. Matt started off doing the storyboards directly on the computer but decided to switch over and do them the more traditional way.

I’m going to be working with Ziad Touma of Couzin Films. I’m thrilled at the idea of working with Ziad. He’s exceptionally talented, intelligent and possibly one of the nicest people I know. I decided to go with Ziad in the end for many reasons one of which is that he’s offering something new as a director and as a producer. The production value on his first feature Saved by the Belles, blew me away. The film is eccentric, risqué and simply beautiful to look at. I knew of his work and his great reputation from others in the industry so I’m pleased to be collaborating with him on Birthday Girl.

We’ve started working on storyboards for Birthday Girl. I think they’re going to be great. Once they’re all done I’ll probably do an edit with them in Final Cut.

I’m looking for a very particular exterior. The driveway and the steps leading up to the door are integral in the script… I did these sketches very (very) quickly based on existing homes.