Pictures of the Reuter House

This is where we will be shooting all of our interiors for the Villa. It is located in Travis Heights.

Wrapping up Locations & Casting

Today I meet with one of the producers, Bobby, to make sure we have all of the locations locked down. So far I know we will be shooting all of the interior and exterior Villa/Vineyard locations at The Duchman Vineyard, Tuscan Hall, and The Reuter House. For Blake's restaurant we will be using Justine's located in East Austin. We be shooting in New Braunfels at the Comal Spring and in Luling at the Watermelon Thump Festival. For some of the bar/hotel scenes that open the movie I am sure we will be in downtown Austin but I am not sure where yet. The big question mark right now is a wine cellar. We need something here in Austin that looks like a personal wine cellar.... the owner of the vineyard's personal stash. Every place we have looked at does not fit what I want.

I will be in LA for casting at the beginning of May. There are 4 leads and 4 supporting. So far we have one supporting role cast. Patrick Bauchau will be playing Alexander, the worldly and magnetizing bachelor who owns the vineyard. I have 3 actors in mind for other roles but we have yet to iron out contracts. We will most likely just be casting for the roles of Blake, Michelle and Catherine (the 3 leads)... we have an actor lined up for Samuel (the main character) but he wants to meet me in person before committing. I will say this about him, he is a talented, young and up-and-coming actor with a lot of experience as a lead in several major feature films. We will also be holding closed auditions here in Austin. Possibly before I go to LA. It has been difficult to get to this point as we had over 5000 submissions and I have narrowed the field to about 20 actors for the role of Blake, 10 actresses for Catherine and 10 for Michelle.

BABY ON BOARD

Our DP is expecting a new edition to the family soon so we have pushed the shoot to June. This will give Reuben's family some extra time before traveling to Texas for a month.  

Locations are just about wrapped up and I am very happy the majority of production will take place in Austin. I think the furthest we'll travel is to New Braunfels.  

We have also extended the shoot from 2 to 3 weeks. The more I thought about a 2 week shoot, the more I realized the limited number of days would require more hours resulting in burned out actors and a burned out crew. I don't want to run the production into the ground and I think the added days will give us some time to be more creative instead of just blow through a shot list. 

We started the process of casting this past week. The response was a little overwhelming. 5000+ submissions in a couple days. My goal is to hold an audition here in Austin in the next couple weeks and another audition in LA, mid April.  I would like to have the film completely cast by the the first week of May so I have at least 1 month to work with the actors. 

More to come