Over the weekend, select members of the crew for THE HAAN BLADE shot several segments for the teaser; and are doing more tomorrow. I know the woman, Jessi K, who is doing the still photography, and as a result heard one of the lines that was uttered during the shoot.

It was not something I had written and my first instinct was panic. My reaction was based on the simple fact that it was not a line I had written. Regardless of the reason for the anxiety, it was gone as soon as it came as a result of my acting experience. Because most writers are not also actors I decided I would share this here, in hopes that you might avoid stress while your screenplay is being filmed.

Allow me to give an example. Look on my acting bio page, you will see I was in a short film (you can watch it there and yes the chick is me) called Love Thy Neighbor. For the scene in the classroom I had two lines. The director wanted to get more angles and footage, however, and had me adlib. He needed to work through his creative process to get the shots needed, to do that I had to go through my own creative process; as an actor.

Thanks to my experience (like that above) I was able to see why the director, Dave Skousen, for THE HAAN BLADE, asked his actors to improvise.

If you are seeing your screenplay for the first time and notice things have been added or removed etc., don’t be surprised/upset/insecure. It’s part of making a movie – part of the process.

While writing, the script it’s your story; during production, it’s the director and actors story; during post-production, the story is handed over to visual effects, editing and a slew of others.

In my humble opinion, the best part is when the film comes out into theatres (or wherever you choose to screen it) because now…it belongs to all of you. As my producer loves to say, it takes a lot of people to make a movie. I would add: enjoy being one of them.