The 12 day shoot

seems to be the "standard" for independent genre pictures. By and large that seems to be the shooting schedule that Corman used. And strangely, that's what our insurance sort of dictates. 12 days of million-dollar liability is $604. But if you go to 13 days you double your insurance payment to $1200 (that's from 13 to 24 days.) So you may as well shoot in 12 days and save six hundred bucks.

The problem I'm having right now is a problem of fear. Specifically I fear the weather. We're shooting in March and we have a number of exteriors to do. Blech. If I schedule them, and get insurance for those days, then we're locked into those days. Even if it's snowing or raining.

Rain I think I can handle -- it looks nice on the ground and actually doesn't show up on camera that much. But snow would suck.

Once you get the insurance rider it basically costs the same amount again to change even one of the 12 days you have insurance for. Maybe we should just bank on buying insurance twice? That might put my little mind at ease. Yeah, we'll just budget $1200 for insurance and if we have to change an exterior day we will.

Now the big question is: do we schedule the exteriors to be shot first? Or do we put them later in the month where it's theoretically less likely there will be snow? Nah, we'll do them first because we need the plates shot for our visual effects.
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This is my new favorite piece of key art for all time... today. It's from Hollywood Wizard. The name of the company is kinda silly, but they do some nice key art. More key art from them will be coming -- from a picture I worked on.

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Don't think I'm not ripping off this Video Copilot tutorial directly for making a shot in Day 2. Because I am. I may even use his footage! Ha! Well, probably not, but those missile trails are coming with me.

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SciFiChick.com.