Movie Update and a Title Change

Been real busy and not had time to post much. But there is news. First off we are still on schedule to shoot starting 9/8/2007 and should be done by the following weekend.
The actors have been rehearsing and though some are not all off book I am pleased with the way things are going, though my Lucy can be a bit of a pill at times about commitment. Being my daughter and 13, she knows everything and I am the stupidest person on the planet. This is natural behavior but it will be a challenge to get her performances. I know she loves to act and to be in the limelight but she is still at the stage where acting is memorizing her lines and going a little over the top. But she is dialing it in and I have every confidence in her. It is really me that I am worried about. We have tested the cameras and I trust Mark to do the right thing by the show. (Mark If you think we need a bit of ¼ CTO on the 1200 PAR then so be it. I need to let go and let you do your job)
I am still rooting about for props but that will all come together soon enough.
As for the music, I contacted EMI about the license to ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ and they quoted me $750.00 for one year. I will pass on that thank you very much, too much money for too little return. So I continued my search and found some music from a group that is one of my friends on my Myspace page. They are called Vocal by Locals, click the link and go listen to the song ‘Fearless’. Even though it is not my original intended music, I think I was kidding myself that I could actually secure license for the original thought but I went down that road regardless just to be sure. I sent Vocal by Locals a message asking if they would let me use their song. They responded rather enthusiastically and wanted to talk on the phone. So I called last week and chatted with the woman, her name is Lessia. She was very sweet and told me about the group.
It seems that she was a classically trained pianist who in her teens after having played in various venues around the LA area decided she really loved writing music more then playing something others wrote years ago. Jump ahead to the last few years and she put together this group of girls aged 13-18 for a weekly Sunday singing writing performing workshops. They were called the Crew. Being in Santa Barbara, the girls crossed all social and economic strata including the daughters of a noted Musician and Actor. The girls performed publicly a number of times and Lessia recorded a number of the songs. If you listened you have to agree it is pretty nice stuff. Well the Crew disbanded for the most part and Lessia changed the name to Vocals by Locals for the recordings. It gets better. A producer told her that the Groups story is pretty cool and if she could get a script or at least a 2 Page treatment in her hands that she could get the attention of a major studio for further development for a feature about the girls and the music. Lessia tried but was not really a screen writer and asked me if I could help her out. Now I am not a writer of the caliber to do her story justice and further if they were thinking about a development deal my use in my show might queer the deal. Lessia was having nothing of that. Her only issue was that the girl singing the version on the site was problematic and she would have to rerecord the song. But yes of course we can use it. (This is the point where we changed the title to “Fearless”)
I told Lessia that although I was not a writer I knew a few with the chops to pull this off and I would try to find someone to write her treatment. The first woman I asked had just had a baby and really did not have the energy to do any writing but the second woman said sure. I hooked them up and they will start in earnest in a couple of weeks. I hope when the get the Oscar, they remember to thank me.
I Lessia, true to her word, sent me 3 versions of the song and promised that she had another on the way and oh by the way she had written it for the daughter of the famous actor who had been working with the song and that that would be a fourth version and if that were the one that was chosen Dad would likely see my flick. (His dad played a scuba diver of some note on TV and also picked the wrong week to give up Sniffing glue)
I think it is really cool how a simple contact and request of a stranger made all these connections for so many people. Some times things just work out.
But Shit… Now I really got to pull this off.