Something's coming, something good

First of all, a fun Hangers pic to tease you:

This is the randomly awesome stuff I live for. Hangers, by the way, is on a tremendous roll in post-production. After only a month, the film's in its fifth rough cut, and we should have picture lock by the beginning of July and a completed film by August 1. Nothing like a fast turnaround, to which I credit director Blake Clouser and editor Luke Daley for their diligence.

In speaking about distribution and exhibition options with Blake earlier today, I realized how exciting it's going to be taking the helm on Happily After. I haven't worn the director's hat since college, but in the past three years working as a cinematographer, a producer, a writer, and so on, it's a wonderful feeling to have the tools at my disposal to take that next step. There's a strange confidence that accompanies it all.

And in all this, I realized I haven't actually spoken much about Happily After to anyone. So, I thought I'd devote today's blog to a quick outline of what to expect from my directorial debut.

Happily After is, at first, the story of a new relationship between quirky heartthrob Tristan and pretty people-pleaser Trisha. At turns comical and sweet, the script lulls the audience into a falsely romantic sense of security until a twist of the knife about sixty pages in...leaves me with very little to talk about without giving away the ending. HA! I can tell you that the film, while being rather talky in parts, is a very visual experience. No color is without meaning, no framing or camera move is without purpose, and if I could boil the style down to one word, it would be...voyeurism.

The trickiest part of the film will most assuredly be not giving away the twists and turns in the performances of the actors, while still allowing them to stay true to their characters. What I find so enthralling about films like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense is that all the pieces are there for you, and the twists only tie them all together rather than introducing new pieces out of the blue. So many similar scripts succumb to that deus ex machina mentality. It will take extensive prep work to make sure that's not the case.

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