Human Cartooning: Gearing Down to Gear Up

***MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Ningen Manga Productions will be in attendance at Horrorfind Weekend 8 being held in Baltimore, Maryland on August 10 - 12, 2007.

Members of the Women's Studies cast and crew will be on hand. Also, attendees will get their first look at the film as we'll be premiering the Women's Studies teaser trailer. Details and tickets for the event can be found at www.horrorfindweekend.com .***

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Though we've been shooting Women's Studies for almost a month now, this week begins what is essentially two months of non-stop production on the film. At this point, we've got about 80% of the movie's scenes scheduled and hope to have the remaining 20% done so by month's end. (Knock on wood.)

Up until now, we've been shooting outdoors and during the day which from a lighting set-up point of view, isn't too hard. Basically, all we have to do is pray it doesn't rain and bring some bounce cards to throw light in the right direction. As we get into some of our interiors though, the size and scope of the production grows a little bit. Having the month of "warm-up" to work out the kinks of production has been extremely beneficial. I'm very excited about this weekend's "church shoot" of a pivotal and rather involved scene from an Art Direction point of view.

This past Saturday, we were lucky enough to have a very lazy day of shooting elements for a montage sequence at the Ross-Prentiss Women's Academy. One of the joys of filmmaking is finding those moments where you can slow down and take your time instead of having to worry about getting all your day's shots in. It was a beautiful day to be outdoors, and the cast and crew was happy to have the slower pace.

That same evening we shot two short indoor scenes with Mary which help to establish her character. Again, it was nice to have two small lighting set-ups to help us prep for this weekend's much larger one. Yet it's the smaller details and smaller scenes which often add the most texture to a story, so I'm very jazzed about the footage we shot.

The day was so lazy that not many pictures were taken, but here's a few snapshots.

The cast relaxes in between shots. From left to right: Laura Bloechl (Iris), Cindy Marie Martin (Mary), Tara Garwood (Judith), Mundy Spears (Sharon), Tiffany James (Melissa).