Okay so this is the first installment of our very first production blog for our upcoming short film titled AWAKE. The concept for the film all came from personal experiences from suffering from pretty severe insomnia for the last five years.  Now this was a story that I really wanted to tell because no matter who I talk to, they can’t seem grasp all of the fear, frustration, and almost heartbreak that I experience on a daily basis.  I understand it’s tough to imagine going to bed as the most stressful part of your day.  Those are the feelings I wanted my audience to come away with after watching this film.

Now follow along and see if we pull it off.

PRE – PRODUCTION

Pre-production started where I assume most projects start, writing the actual screenplay.  After I completed what I thought was a sensible first draft I showed it to both Ryan and Daniel for comments.  They both gave good criticism which pushed me to make the changes to what the final draft ended up being.  It ran about five pages when I was finished writing.

Now this script is more scene descriptions and action than dialogue so I knew I wanted to attempt to be a little more visually creative when shooting this.  I got my locations and put together a shot list and rewrote a shooting script which basically goes over camera movements.

The next step in the process was casting and Daniel got the big lead role with the two supporting roles being filled by Rie Ma and my father Kevin DeBruycker.  It helped a lot that they both have acting experience from theater.

Luckily we ended up with some very good locations because of some very generous people.  With our actors and locations set, all we did was set our dates and shooting schedule and mentally prepared ourselves for what we’ve been preparing for…PRODUCTION.

-Matt

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