Ladies and gentlemen, our guest blogger for the day is none other than the man responsible for getting this whole machine cranked into life, our Executive Producer, Mr. Doug Adams! If not for him, I'm certain I'd still be rewriting Business Plans and Investor Prospectus' in search of startup capital. During production, Doug was the oil that kept the gears running by running all over the state securing whatever we needed and sometimes staying after a shoot to straighten stuff out.
A brother in the trenches as we've been held hostage by many a setback, he has always been obsessed with doing more to get this thing completed. A blog you say?? No problem!
-DP
How did I get involved with The Photon Effect? I guess it all started several years before the script was even written, when I witnessed first hand what director Dan Poole was willing to do to shoot a movie. I've seen his stunts in his Spider-Man fan films, but to be truly appreciated you have to see it in person.
The in person experience was working on a trailer for his prospective film "Natural Forces". From what I remember about the story, it shared a couple plot elements with TPE, but had a different theme and characters. Anyhoo, I went over to his house, not knowing he was shooting this trailer, and he asked me "Hey, wanna film me repelling off a fire escape?" I told him I would, if only to be around to call 911 if he breaks his neck!
At the time I was completely ignorant to the filmmaking process, so I thought we'd get there, spend lots of time planning the stunt, shooting one take of it, and heading home. Yeah, not so much. He must've repelled off that fire escape a dozen times, which included grabbing a mountain bike with his feet part of the way down, and speeding off on it after hitting the ground. I was amazed at the consistent effort being put into every single take. Being around that energy is infectious, and after that experience I knew I wanted to be involved in filmmaking, one way or another.
My desire grew in 2004 when I first saw the spectacle that is Comic Con International in San Diego. Not only were there people in attendance who were making it in Hollywood, but they all knew Dan and were fans of his films. Dan was talking about making another fan film, this time featuring The Avengers, but everyone was telling him he should instead make another attempt to film something with original characters. I thought that was a great idea, and if this new project were to happen I wanted to be a part of it.
What could I do though? As I mentioned before I didn't know a lot about filmmaking, and my experience as an actor was very limited. What I did have was a nice bit of equity in my home, an amount that coincidentally matched the initial budget Dan had in mind for shooting a feature length film. Now this was obviously a risky venture, but since I knew the kind of following Dan had with his fan films, I considered it a calculated risk. On top of that, I was becoming very jaded with my previous employer, so the idea of being a part of a startup business was even more appealing. So one day when I was at Dan's house I told him I wanted to finance his movie, and get started on a script.
If I remember correctly that was the summer of 2005. Throughout those 6 years there were more times than I can count where I had doubt that TPE would ever get done. The biggest doubts were during shooting when it felt like we wouldn't make it through the first weekend, and in post production when we had delays that lasted about a year at a time. Deep down though I always knew Dan wouldn't let his dream of completing a feature film fail. And that faith was rewarded late last week when The Photon Effect became available for sale through our website.
I want to thank every single person that made the movie possible, especially to Dan to worked his fingers to the bone in every single phase of the production. You did it!
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