I am just getting back from a 5 week residency at the Macdowell Colony where I did more research and some script tweaking and dialogue polishing. I guess that's where my preparation for No Borders really started. For the past few days I have been communicating with my producers, Gavin Humphries and Anna Higs at Quark Films (based in the U.K.) and Shelby Stone at Foxx/King Entertainment. We've been discussing some of the companies (19 meetings in 4 days so far) that we will be meeting with and also budgets for the project and information that we will be handing out at the meetings. I put together the handouts and tried to give people enough information to pique their interest in reading the script without giving them too much paper so that it's overwhelming. The 6 pages consisted of intro/credits, 1 page synopsis, crew bios for myself along with Shelby, Gavin, Anna and my editor Sabine Hoffman, a director's statement and a page of positive critical notices for Brother to Brother. Gavin did two budgets, one at around 2.9 million and the other at 5 million. Shelby has been talking to agents after making our first actor offer for the part of Buddy Bolden. We're still waiting to get a response and Shelby thinks it might take a while to get one. I did No Borders 8 years ago with my first feature, Brother to Brother, so it'll be interesting to compare the two experiences.  First stop in 4 hours is the orientation brunch and meet & greet with the No Borders partners. Last time I did all of the meetings alone as director/producer so it'll be interesting to see the difference with having Gavin and Anna with me. I suspect it'll lift some of the pressure and that they'll be able to jump in when the conversation turns to more producerial type stuff.

More Later...