Another Hollywood Meeting

I'm going to be careful writing this. Don't want to jinx anything by being a little too optimistic.

Yesterday, my ex-partner and I "took" another meeting with the Hollywood people. As reported in my recent update, A Parallel Universe, this second meeting only included Rob (my ex-partner), yours truly, and, of course, the Hollywood peeps.

The day after our first meeting, one of the Executive Producers at the production company emailed us. Here's what he said:

I wanted to drop a line so we could prep you for a few things we would like to discuss for our meeting next week:

1) Please bring in a one page bullet point synopsis on how you see the show. We have some ideas but we want to hear your ideas first.

2) Please bring in an excel budget or at least a breakdown of the numbers and how you see it all unfolding.

3) We also want to know what you and everyone who would appear on the show expects to make fee wise which walks hand and hand with the budget and understanding the numbers.

4) Finally we will need to discuss profit share and so on since we would be financing the entire show we would want to know what you excpect on both the front and back ends.

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday.

Since our first meeting I learned a bit more about the company we're dealing with. Their courtroom show, the one where they first met and cast my ex-partner, is called The Hollywood Judge. The feature film they now have in (limited) release is called Gardens of the Night and stars Tom Arnold and John Malkovich. The limited release is to qualify for Academy Awards consideration. I've read some reviews that believe Arnold, in this dark and disturbing film, deserves Best Supporting Actor consideration for his role.

Okay. These guys are definitely the real deal. So how did yesterday's meeting go? Well, afterward, Rob and I stopped for some lunch. While eating, my daughter texted me and asked me to rate Rob's and my confidence (in terms of how well the meeting went) on a scale of 1 to 10. I asked Rob what he thought and fully agreed with his assessment. I texted my daughter back: "Strong 7 to 8."

If you're wondering, the budget numbers we needed to provide them are for the (adult) shows within the reality show we would produce as part of the overall project. A portion of the proposed series includes behind-the-scenes of the making of those shows-within-the-show... if that makes sense.

There's more stuff we have to get to these people by this Friday. According to them, we may have a definitive answer as quickly as next Tuesday or Wednesday.

My fingers are crossed but I'm not getting too excited-- Been here and done this before, a few too many times.

The pretty girl at the top is Faye from a year or so ago. We were shooting in a studio in downtown L.A. The light coming in from the windows, which made up most of the wide wall behind her, was streaming in some fairly intense natural light. I asked the video's gaffer if he could let me use one of his HMIs plus a shiny board. That's how it's lit. I could have used my strobes but, hey! I spotted that HMI just standing there. Here's a BTS shot (below) of the lighting setup. That's the gaffer, Joel, talking with Faye while I diddled with my Canon 5D, snapping off a few shots of the set. You can see the HMI on the right and the shiny board on the floor in front of Faye. As I recall, I also walked-in the reflector, mounted on a stand and arm and seen in the foreground, for some extra fill.