We met up with Jeremy tonight at Fiddler’s. He brought his friend Phil. First order of business was having them both sign an NDA as per our lawyer’s advice and also as required by our paranoia and desperate need to keep this entire thing very hush-hush.

We filled them in on the project and told them what our plans were. It’s funny, every time I talk about this project I feel a little more foolish. It all sounds so terribly far-fetched. It’s kind of the same feeling I got when I was preparing to shoot Alone in My Head. I remember telling people about that project, and the second they found out I would be shooting on digital video, their minds went to this awful place. They immediately assumed that my film was going to be a member of that shameful mass of poorly composed, illy lit, uninspired, backyard-diversion films. I can’t really blame people. The world is flooded with such things and it’s very difficult to imagine something with more potential when you see it so rarely. I haven’t quite found a good defense against these kind of reactions. No matter how much I know that we are capable of exceeding people’s unfortunately justifiable low expectations, I am still filled with a sense of doubt - or doom in moments like these. I’m just so terribly aware of how easy it is to screw it up. People do it all the time. Obviously.

Skepticism aside, we started to look through the portfolios they both had brought. Jeremy had some very detailed and well shaded renderings of hands from one of his class projects. They were impressive. I was a bit concerned that most of his work showed a tendency toward extreme photo-realism (which is great for what he’s working toward, but difficult for our purposes). I’m also curious to know how he is with drawing from imagination. Most of his pieces are drawn from a model or are still-life. He seemed confident that he’d be able to loosen up a bit for the storyboards and assured us that he doesn’t have a problem drawing from his head.

Phil’s portfolio was promising as well. He’d been a cartoonist for his college newspaper for the duration of his education there. Most of his work is pretty minimalist and echoed comic book style art. His samples were a bit more “cartoony” than what we’re looking for, but I think he can find his way into a slightly more reality based style. He seems pretty versatile.

Both of them were very friendly and enthusiastic about the project by the end of the meeting. Neither had a problem with multiple sessions per week, and they were happy to do it for the experience and the credit. I really liked them both. They were very cool guys who we all found very easy to talk to.

We’ll be getting together with them later this week to do some test drawings. I’m feeling pretty good about this. I think we may have found our artist…even better, I think we found two

11:20 pm

tags: alone in my head, artists, DV, Jeremy, Phil, storyboarding