It’s been almost exactly one year since we started shooting “Luxembourg Mystery Tale” (LMT). Even if the last blog entry is already 7 months old, a lot has been going on behind the scenes of LMT. Here’s some short news about the progress of the project :
- Since last year we’ve organized 28 shooting days for principal photography of LMT. That’s more days than a normal work month usually has. Considering that none of our team members are making movies for a living and all have a regular job as well as a private life and family life, that’s no small deed! My most sincere thanks go to our actors, extras and production team.
- More or less 75% of the movie have already been shot. We’ll have to add some 10 more shooting days to the production schedule before finishing principal photography.
- Our whole team has learned a lot during the shooting. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve decided to make this movie in the first place. The good old “learning by doing”-method. Like on any other shooting, some mistakes have been made but generally speaking we are quite satisfied with the project so far. Also because the motivation of the actors and team members created a nice working ambiance.
- During the winter time, we’ve done a first rough cut of the scenes we’ve shot. This allowed us to check if the scenes actually worked the way we imagined them to work.
- Whenever we were not satisfied with the takes, we re-shot the whole scene. That happened three times for three different reasons: once an actor had to change his appearance because his job demanded it, once technical problems arouse while shooting a scene and we didn’t notice till we checked the rushes after the shooting and once we poorly planned an elaborate FX-shot so that the takes didn’t fit in with the FX as we planned them to.
- The rough cut of the first 75% of the movie is more or less 70 minutes long, so that we expect the completed movie to have a total running time of 90-95 minutes.
- We also used the winter time to test our post-production workflow by producing two test trailers that we showed together with a first draft of our new logo animation on the first edition of KML’s Filmmaker’s Night.
- 91 people have so far worked on the movie.
- One of our two cameras broke down during the shooting and had to be sent back to the manufacturer for repairing. Fortunately some Luxembourgish independent filmmaker spontaneously agreed to help us out with their own camera. Very nice!
- We finished first FX-shots and they should fit the original footage well enough to help telling our story in a visually interesting way.
- As opposed to our first film (Zombiefilm) LMT is being shot on many different locations. We have been lucky enough not having to make any compromises on our choice of locations. Thanks to the help of a lot of people we managed to get all the shooting authorizations we asked for. The thanks list in the end credits of our movie will be very long indeed.
- We also got around to start working on the marketing campaign. A first photo-shooting session has been organized with some of our actors and with the friendly support of a professional photographer. First concept drafts of the movie poster look very promising.
- No movie without a budget. The initial budget of the movie will be surpassed by more or less 30%, but the financing of the movie is guaranteed. Main expenses have been the acquisition of production and post-production gear, catering and marketing.
- No marketing without a strong web presence! In order to be ready for the launch of the movie, the Obskura a.s.b.l. website is currently being reprogrammed and will be relaunched later this year with several new features.
- A first limited call for sponsors allowed us last year to gather some 20% of our global budget. A second broader call for sponsors will be launched next month. The main difference between the first and second calls is that we couldn’t show much more than a concept for a movie on the first call and that we’ll be able to show actual footage of the movie on the second call, hence giving potential sponsors a more precise idea of what they would get into if they decide to support the project.
- There’s still a LOT to be done before the actual release of the movie. We’re working on it!
- Until further notice the release date is still end of 2009.
- 3 high definition pictures of the movie are posted in the Filmreakter movie picture gallery.
We gladly answer questions and comments in the comments section below.
