Hellespont, Here I Come

Hellespont, Here I Come.

Kickstarter video filming starts tomorrow

We all know making a movie’s a lot of work. Even those of us who have no desire to make one. But it’s been interesting to learn how much work goes into preparing to make a movie.

Today was fun, because I got to wear knickers and knee socks, and dwell on the fact that tomorrow we’ll be filming the first bit of footage that gets us on the road to making Swimming with Byron.

It’s the first step of preparation, really, because it’s a video for a Kickstarter project. Our project requires location filming, and to get there, we have to raise the funds. So, unlike many crowdfunding projects you see, ours doesn’t have any early footage to show. We hope it’ll show the idea and the passion.

And knickers. 

Double-blogging

We have our movie site up at www.swimmingwithbyron.com, so there will be some double-posting. Please follow us on Facebook @swimmingwithbyron, on Twitter @swimwithbyron, and on the webpage.

It’s all work in progress, but that progress will pick up pretty fast in December and January as we move towards our February Kickstarter launch date.

At this point we’re posting some tiny teasers about the filming of the Kickstarter video. Here’s the first:

Swimming with Byron starts pre-production

Photo by Eric Trimble

Swimming with Byron is officially in pre-production. We shot our first piece of footage for the Kickstarter campaign yesterday in Austin’s Ladybird Lake.

I couldn’t sleep the night before. Eric Trimble, the cinematographer, and I had planned out the shot. I storyboarded the whole video, and then Eric did some more detailed storyboarding. He rigged up my zoom lens with a pull focus for a part of the shot. I’d recruited a team of volunteers. We had the cameras we needed.

But the weather turned dodgy. This was our last chance to get the scene I wanted in open water. After this weekend, with temperatures dropping fast, we’d be forced to do it in a pool, and that would have been feeble as hell.

99 Followers

I just saw that I have 99 followers on this blog.

Should I offer a prize for the 100th? Who’s it going to be? When’s it going to happen? I’m busting with anticipation.

A big thanks to all of you who are reading. I almost put “by the way” at the end of that, but it’s “by the way” at all. We all sit in rooms and write alone, with the hope – that hope we try to pretend we aren’t really feeling – that someone’s out there reading. Getting to 100 followers and who knows how many readers doesn’t put me in major blog category, actually, but I like all of you, lots.

Look soon for a linked blog to the production company I’m forming to make my first full-length documentary film, Romantic Places. I have to change that title. As I re-read Byron’s Childe Harold, Wordsworth’s Prelude, Shelley’s Frankenstein, the other Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” Wordsworth’s “Westminster Bridge,” and so many others in preparation for the film, I’m hoping a phrase will jump out and say “I’m your title.”