Summary: Gratwick Films is declaring war on traditional distribution! Our declaration of independence has been issued and we have begun selling DVD's for The Perfect House. Andrea has finally left the day job and joined Gratwick Films fulltime. In our first attempt at hitting the streets we made friends with a few homeless kids and donated some dvds to sell for food money. After that, Andrea boldly walked into the world famous Amoeba Records and convinced them they needed to carry our movie on the shelves! In a special edition of Gratcast we delve into part 1 of a three part series about the story behind The Perfect House. Each of the 3 episodes we will share and discuss the details and true stories never before told behind each phase of The Perfect House. Part 1 covers pre-production and how we managed to will this movie into existence. Starting with the script, we discuss how the story evolved from a short story I wrote on a whim into a full length feature film titled 'The Perfect House'. Many of the story influences were based on our resources or lack there of, rather than a specific desire or need to tell a story. Very few people know this, but there was actually an entirely different second story, that we decided not to go with, before we came up with the Chicken story. While we were scanning craigslist for opportunities and collaborators, Kris came across an open letter written by a Director of Photography named Tal Lazar. The letter immediately convinced Kris that Tal was the right guy for the job, in fact Tal is the one that originally suggested the idea of making a spec trailer to help with raising the funding. When it came time to shoot a spec trailer for The Perfect House we were able to raise $500 for the weekend shoot. By this time we had also been connected to our first "name" actor. An actor who would immediately show signs of things to come as she held our spec trailer and our eventual entire production hostage with frivolous unprofessional actions and demands. We even managed to have someone threaten to sue us on a voluntary spec trailer! With a finished cut of the spec trailer we set out to find our composer. The trailer was used as an audition for our top responses from craigslist. 5 different composers submitted a score for the 2 minute spec trailer, each of them had their benefits, but it was the score of Frederik Wiedmann that leapt off the screen and made the decision a no brainer. With a finished spec trailer and new found confidence we set out to find investors and a location to shoot The Perfect House. We searched everything possible and not possible, you don't realize how badly you want to make a movie until you start justifying and convincing yourself you can shoot in some pretty compromising situations. We checked out crawl spaces in South Central, abandon Jiffy Lubes on the west side and a historical building a bit north. None of them were even close to ideal, that's when we decided Buffalo was the place to be, in Buffalo we had the location that I had in my mind when I wrote the story. Now we just had to set a date, turns out with all the schedules in play, money or no money, we had one window we could shoot the movie in over the next 2 years and that window was 4 months away! We locked in the date for the last 2 weeks of June. Andrea and I packed up our belongings, gave up our apartment and headed back to Buffalo just in time for Easter. Little did we know, no one believed a movie was going to happen and in fact thought we had flunked out of L.A. and this was just an excuse to save our pride while moving back home. That's where we leave off at with part 1 of the story behind The Perfect House. Next week: Production. We deal with broken promises for funding, scratched corneas, horrible weather and a flooded location the day before we start shooting. Chapters 1. Intro 2. Week in Review 3. Behind TPH: The Script 4. Behind TPH: Finding a DP 5.
