Two days ago I finished designing the website for Spirits, and I thought it made sense for this first blog post to be sort of an introduction. And not just an introduction to the film, but an introduction to me as well. My name is Frank Romano, and I’m the writer and co-director of Spirits. While there is some information about me on the website, I want this blog to lean more personal and casual, providing an honest, behind-the-scenes look at the film’s development (or lack thereof, but let’s hope not).
So, I guess we’ll talk about me first. I’m an entrepreneur and videographer based out of Chicago. For the last nine years I’ve managed a video production company with two partners. I am not the CEO, but I’ve overseen and produced the product, helped design and implement the customer experience, and managed multiple employees. Prior to an interest in video production, my interests had always leaned in the visual arts direction. From a young age I was an avid artist. I worked in many mediums from acrylic paint, colored pencil, graphite pencils, pastels, and even the more experimental. I took my talents seriously in high school and college, producing some of my best (and last) “fine art” works. But I also loved to write. Any academic opportunity to explore fiction writing I took advantage of. And I was often writing as a hobby, whether it was an outline, a short story, or the first ten pages to a novel I’d never finish. So, you can imagine how filmmaking — standing at the perfect intersection of visual arts and storytelling — would appeal so strongly to me.
Despite my avid interest in the subject, I don’t have much narrative filmmaking to my name. Most of the reason for this is that I’ve spent the last decade running a business. I can show you outstanding corporate video projects and thousands of happy customers, but I haven’t produced any award-winning short films. While some may see this as a setback, I actually feel it’s one of my strongest assets. I’m not precious about the process. I know what it means to be forced into a hole, using creativity to pull your way out. You never have enough money, you rarely have the best location, you’re always losing light, and the deadline is yesterday. Conditions like these don’t scare me. I thrive under that kind of pressure.
Spirits is technically my second feature-length screenplay. The first I wrote in college and it’s too terrible to mention (so I’m not sure why I did). Yet, despite these two notches on my belt, I hesitate to call myself a writer, as I wasn’t paid professionally for either of them. However, I was paid professionally for writing voice-over scripts, corporate brand film outlines, and countless two-column AV scripts. So, everyone can go to hell — I’m calling myself a writer.
Spirits, like most of my ideas, had a long gestation process. I generally have about ten or so films I’m constantly thinking about. It’s a rolling list, but the top three-to-five are the most active, developing in my head almost all the time. They’re like these giant puzzles I’m always trying to solve. Sometimes they start with a character, but most often they evolve from a visual, an idea for a premise, or a relationship I want to explore. In the case of Spirits, the seed was a visual, then grew to a “what if?” and continued to evolve.
I don’t write anything down. I’ve tried in the past, and all I end up doing is immortalizing bad ideas. If the idea is good enough, it sticks, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t put pen to paper until I’ve figured out a few key things: I need to know how the film opens, I need to know — roughly speaking — how the film gets from the opening shot to the midpoint, and then I need to have an idea how it might end. Most of the second half I don’t have figured out yet (nor do I want to) but it’s that first half I need to have a strong idea about. A year and a half ago, I got to that point with Spirits — so it was time to write.
At the time of writing this post, I’ve just completed the third draft, which was an extensive overhaul. And for the first time since starting the writing process, I feel very confident in the way the story is executed. Confident enough that I’ve distributed the script to a handful of trusted readers. That’s not to say that no one else has read the screenplay until now. I have a small group of people who’ve provided invaluable feedback on previous drafts (Nick & Isaac on the crew being two of those individuals), but this is the first time I’ve sent out the screenplay to ‘outsiders’ / fresh eyes. We’ll see how confident I am when they’ve gotten back to me…
Nick, Isaac and I — having full intention to make this film — have also produced a Pitch Packet for potential investors or studio partners. You might ask, how do you go about getting meetings with those people? And your guess would be as good as mine. At this stage we’re in uncharted waters. So it seemed like the right time to make a website for the film, somewhere I can send people interested in learning more. If nothing else, the website (and more importantly, this blog), will be like a central hub for the production process. I intend to write as often as I can. I will keep those interested informed. And with any luck, our readers will be able to chart an independent film from the earliest stages of pre-production to a final, finished product.
The Filmmakers Blog 