You deserve an update, especially because so many of you have supported me and the film from the very beginning but I’ve been struggling to find a way to summarize something so incredible and life-altering into words. Forgive me for what sounds like a platitude but the most important thing I learned from this whole experience (and what I wish I had understood my entire life) is that no matter what happens, you have to stay positive and keep moving forward and trust that everything will work out for the best.

Within 24 hours and with less than two days before the start of production, we lost our leading man, our cinematographer, and our gaffer. I don’t want to go into why or how because the truth is, the reasons didn’t particularly matter then and they certainly don’t matter now. All I knew is that I was ready to make this film and I had to keep going and a strange calm descended on me.

When I got the news, I called up my friend, Jess Dela Merced, an extraordinarily talented cinematographer (and a very accomplished director and actor in her own right.) It was around 2 AM in San Francisco, where she lives but luckily, she picked up the phone. I explained the situation and asked if she would step in at the last minute and shoot my film. There was a pause. “Yeah. Okay,” she said. She got on a plane that afternoon.

At that point, we were still worried our key grip, Harry Ycaza, would drop out because he came on board with the original cinematographer and gaffer. Harry’s very gifted and experienced and we were having a difficult time finding local crew members in Detroit. Moreover, Harry was supposed to bring the camera from New York. The camera, an Arri Alexa (the same one they used on the latest Bond film, Skyfall), rents for about $1,500 a day. We wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford it, but NYU owns one and gives thesis students a free two-week rental. (We were planning on getting the third week at a steep discount from a friend, Guy Jaconelli of Video Evolution in Connecticut, but his camera was unavailable for the first two-thirds of our shoot.) Without Harry and without the NYU camera, we would have been in deep trouble.

Needless to say, we were thrilled when Harry decided to honor his commitment to the production. His flight kept getting delayed but he finally managed to arrive in Detroit, with the camera and lenses in tow, at 2 AM. He, Jess, my friend Eric Yoon (who came on as our gaffer in such a rush that he didn’t have time to do laundry before getting on the plane and my mother ended up having to do it for

him later), the rest of the amazing cast and crew, and the fabulous camera began production less than 5 hours later.

That first day was unbelievably smooth. Despite the haphazard way it all seemed to come together at the very last minute, we worked together beautifully. It felt like a first date with the love of my life. You know, when it’s easy and comfortable but exciting at the same time and you feel as though you’ve known the person for ages even though you’ve just met. We didn’t just “make our day” (meaning: shoot everything we had scheduled.) We actually wrapped 2 hours early.

Even though we were wrapping early every day, that first week was exhausting. I had never directed for longer than four day stretches so I was physically and emotionally unaccustomed to the brutal demands of a feature film schedule. Because Jess and I didn’t have any pre-production time together, each night after we wrapped, we had to meet to discuss how we were going to shoot the next day’s scenes. On top of all this, I still needed to find a new leading man.

I knew that I wouldn’t have time to sort through submissions on casting sites, so I asked friends for suggestions. I even emailed the NYU Grad Film list serve. Since I was already in Detroit and in the middle of production, I couldn’t meet with any of the actors in person so I asked them to videotape themselves, which is always a risk. Of all the submissions I got, an actor named Sean Kleier stood out to me. He was perfect. In fact, not only was he tremendously talented and a joy to collaborate with, he was actually much better-suited to the role than the actor who was originally cast. The entire production was filled with these kinds of miracles. Every time there was some kind of crisis, we ended up with something or someone

even better than what we lost or what we could have imagined.

There are a so many other incredibly talented and hard-working cast and crew members whose backstories about joining the production are less dramatic but whose contributions were just as important. While I can’t name them all here, I could not be more grateful and honored to have worked with such an exceptional team. And of course, none of this would be possible without your generosity. I cannot thank you enough for believing in me and in this film. I can’t believe I finally get to say this, but… We did it!!!!

So the hard part is over. Well, at least one of the hard parts is over. I just hired a fantastic editor, Josiah Signor, who is a few years ahead of me at NYU and whose own feature Bastards of Young, was selected for a fellowship at the 2010 IFP Narrative Lab. We should have a rough cut in time for the beginning of the festival season and hopefully, a final cut, final sound mix, color correction, and score by late December/early January.

Thanks again for being part of the team.

I couldn’t have done it without you.