We are beyond thrilled to tell everyone we won another grant from the South Carolina Film Commission, so we will be making another short film. This grant is one of the smaller indie grants through Trident Technical College rather than the larger production grant from USC, so it’s going to be a tighter squeeze to get things done, but we’re excited to see what we can do.
The screenplay is based on a short story Jocelyn wrote called “A Spirited Discussion,” which won sixth place in an international writing competition. She adapted the story into a script we are tentatively calling High Heels and Hoodoo, and it features a frivolous party girl who goes to extremes for one last conversation with her dead grandmother. It has a very SC Lowcountry feel, since it’s set in a Charleston graveyard and one of the characters is a Gullah root doctor.
We actually found out we won the grant back in July, but we were waiting to announce it until we finalized a title and decided if we were branching off into a new website or keeping all our film stuff in one place. We still haven’t decided either of these things, but we were anxious to share the good news, so here we are!
We’ve been scouting locations trying to
find a graveyard with just the right creepy look. Fortunately, there are a lot of those in Charleston. Unfortunately, most of them do not allow filming at night. So we’re still searching for the perfect spot. We’ve also spoken with our amazing casting director Richard Futch about several actors we’re interested in for the three parts.
The SC Film Commission is providing the wise and wonderful Roberta Munroe as a consulting producer to all six grant winners. We are so excited to work with her again. She’s guided us in creating a “look book” to really nail down how we want things to look visually, as well as chatted with us via Skype about budget and production issues.
We have the talented John Reynolds on board as our director of photography. He’s been the DP for several of the SC grant films, so he knows what kind of low-budget insanity we have in store for him. We’ve also been lucky enough to get Ashley Brook Perryman to agree to do hair and makeup for us. Ashley is a big name in the Charleston fashion scene, so we're thrilled to have her on board. In a change up from last time, Brian is being brave and taking the director reins into his own hands. Earlier this year he directed a series of commercials for his paying job, and they just won a STARS Award for "Best TV Campaign" from the North Carolina Home Builders Association, so hopefully he knows what he’s doing.
So we’ve been absent from the Saying Goodbye site because we’ve been busy getting ready to make the new movie. But even with all that preparation, the planned shooting dates of October 21st-23rd seem to be heading our way at an alarming speed. Stay tuned for more details!