the jon acosta blog.

on april 24th at 6AM, myself and writing partner William McCanless (owner of bitsywords.com) finally began production on a film that we wrote 6 years ago… this film is called Back Alley Strut.

now, rather than getting into a synopsis of the intricate story and fantastic characters that were created to tell the tale of a long lost degenerate who comes back into his crime ridden past in order to salvage his dignity and take back his lover… oh wait. i think i just told you what the movie was about… okay. let me start over… ;)

by 1:30pm last sunday, my cast and crew found ourselves on st. simon’s island, where we locked down a bar to shoot the opening scenes for Back Alley Strut. filming for a straight 9 hours and into the night, then driving ALL THE WAY back to Savannah, GA and hitting the sack by 3:30am… it was a long first day of production… but the aftermath of what we caught in our lenses has now secured my decision on waiting 6 years to make this film a reality.

even though the entire script culminates to a 108 minute feature, William and I decided months ago to take the film’s lack of budget and “fantasy quality” into our own hands and came up with a brilliant way to still shoot the movie with minimal funds and simultaneously propose the film to investors who will fund the project entirely. here’s how…

we decided to take the first 4 scenes in the film and re-write them into 4 short 7-10 minute episodes that would cater to a specific formula and allow us to maintain online viewer’s attention. the 7 minute episodic formula for each scene unfolded to this:

WTF?! Excitement > Character/Storyline Development > Quick Resolve > Plot Question…LeaveEmFuckingHanging…

i guess you could kind of call this the J.J. Abrams method. it’s not anything new in terms of pre-production script writing, but holding true to this formula on a micro-scale, we were able to make each “scene” feel just like the one before and leave you begging for more at the end.

shooting for two days in Savannah, GA at the offices of E2 Marketing & St. Simon’s Island, entirely with DSLR Canon 7D cameras and Zeiss lenses, we were able to capture 3 of the 4 episodes. Post production will begin sometime next week and sound designing will take place at Downstairs Studios with Owner, Drew Gibadlo, who also played the role of Joe in Back Alley Strut, as well as production assistant & audio coordinator.

seeing our characters come to life after 6 years of prepping and placing life into every word spoken… Back Alley Strut’s pilot production couldn’t have gone any better than it did. now comes phase 2… where the brilliant William McCanless and myself will be leaking teasers, behind the scenes footage, an enormous marketing campaign, and presenting what we’ve created to already potential investors… this film will become the pinnacle of awesomeness by mid summer. stay tuned.

production credits:

director: Jonathan Acosta

writer/actor: William McCanless

sound engineer/actor: Drew Gibadlo

makeup/actress: Janine DeMichele

actors: Anderson Smith, Josh Sinyard, Nicodemus Hammil, Vivian Vaupel,

production photographer: Lauren