A Cutie Pie & Spielberg style reshoot
Virtual Crew,
When I was in film school, my directing teacher showed us his feature film.
It took him SEVEN YEARS to get it done. I’m sure 100% of us overly-confident students thought he was crazy to take that long.
Now I eat crow.
What does eat crow mean anyway? It doesn’t matter.
The Write & Direct film school has been wildly responsible for RECKONING delays.
But something else has played in. What?
A little precious named Reverie Bleu Boudreau.
The below pic was from this AM. I was holding her in editorial while watching footage (don’t worry, nothing scary).
Reverie is now six weeks old. We adopted her in Pennsylvania. My wife was there for her birth! It’s a beautiful story. Details worked out in ways that only God can work them out.
“All good things come from above.”
Sometimes we try and associate bad with God. But that’s not how the science behind it all works. “Jesus wept” is the shortest sentence in the Bible and it packs the most meaning.
A conversation for another time.
Our birth mom was pressured towards abortion, but she said NO. We’re so grateful. However, it’s a sacrifice for a mother to choose adoption. It’s hard to understand until you really go through it.
Now that cutie pie is home and growing pudgier each day, I’ve jumped back in the saddle.
Back in the saddle? Eat crow? Even my vernacular is now 19th century.
This was yesterday…
There’s an unavoidable issue all filmmakers face:
Sometimes after the work required for production, you land in editorial only to think, “The movie would be so much better IF.”
Many of your favorite films had this happen. Take JAWS.
Did you know Spielberg re-shot a scene in Jaws on his dime?
He didn’t like the original footage, but the studio said no to a reshoot.
So Spielberg paid for it.
You see…a film owns part of a filmmaker’s soul.
We’ll do crazy things to get it right.
Yesterday I went out to get an “if.”
SPOILER ALERT.
There’s a moment when Ghost shoots a good guy. It’s terrifying. It’s the one person Rose was counting on to do her job for her.
Did you catch that? Do her job for her.
Rose’s flaw in RECKONING is this: Even though she saw God work once, when evil regroups and comes back at her, she doesn’t want to do it again.
And we get that, right?
There’s nothing worse in life than to think we beat something, only to have it hit us again. Sometimes even harder.
But Goliath was only the first Philistine David dealt with. They kept coming back. If you recall, another giant almost killed King David decades later.
So back to RECKONING:
Rose sees the shot happen and bolts. In the original script we follow Rose as she flees to town.
But I found myself really wanting to see Ghost. What did he do next?
You know? I wanna see him to step onto the porch and look down at the victim. It’s a sinister moment that makes a thriller a thriller.
So fine, we went back to the cabin and got the shot.
But there was a problem. I also wanted the audience to see the victim.
But my actor is now back in Texas.
Freaking directors…always wanting the impossible.
We had to get creative on set and use logs to build him.
I think it worked.
Moral of the story? Don’t quit, and use available logs to fix everything.
No, the moral of this story is that I’m so sorry you’ve waited this long for a movie that doesn’t even star Tom Cruise.
But thank you for sticking this out with me! I cannot wait to start cutting scenes together and giving you sneak peeks.
Until then…
Kyler Boudreau
P.S. Don’t forget that my online film school launches in a couple months. You can get people in FOR FREE. Just email me for the code. They will be forced to invite you to Oscar parties when they’re famous.
