Indie Filmmaking: Never a Dull Moment

Had a long location scout today -- mostly productive. We found locations that will be suitable for just about everything in the film. Now the work of securing those locations begins.

And did I mention that I blew out a tire on this location scout? I know it's a minor thing -- just frustrating. We were driving through a not-so-great part of town (because, natch, it has all the best looking streets and sidewalks -- in terms of interesting stuff to look at). Anyway, there was some thing with spikes on it in the middle of the road. I didn't see it til the last moment and swerved too late.

Sigh.

Got back to the office after that to a note from Producer telling me that our able Director of Photography had (reluctantly) dropped off the project. His money situation was such that he couldn't afford to do a low budget gig like this right now. Which I understand. But which would have been nice for him to have given more consideration a month ago when he committed.

So a new DP search begins. I made a few phone calls, sent a few e-mails, we'll see what happens. But I'm generally freaking out right now because we're less than six weeks away, have no lead, no DP, very few locations locked down, and the budget is too tight (we now need an extra $1000 we didn't budget for to get the script cleared -- legal stuff to make it easier to get it distributed later).

But that's indie filmmaking, right? :-)

Anyone have an extra thousand bucks laying around?