Pre-Production

Introduction:
For the production of Antisocial Butterfly I wanted to push myself to do things more professionally than I have done in the past, but still leave room for spontaneous creative decisions. That being said, I am unable to present the story in script format as I absolutely hate scriptwriting! I decided it was enough to have all the scenes written out on index cards, especially since there was to be little or no dialog. I wanted to make the production very simple and involve as few crew members as possible. Because of this I decided to cast myself and my husband in the two leading roles. A risky step considering I am much more comfortable behind the camera.

I liked the idea of basing a film on a psychological disorder (Vertigo?) In this case Social Anxiety Disorder. Obviously the disorder is the conflict and the treatment is the resolution. Very formulaic and simple for someone like me who really struggles with scriptwriting.

I knew the character would be a very shy girl who would make a turn around in the end and find love as a result. I wanted to make the story cute, simple and sympathetic so that it would be easy for people to understand but still give me the freedom to experiment with various story telling techniques. In addition, I wanted the love story sub-plot to be a bit weird and possibly involve stalking or haunting. I am a big fan of atypical love story plots, like the ones in Buffalo 66, Wings of Desire and Amelie.

Even though I regret the amount of time it took me to complete the story (roughly six months, very part time) a lot of things needed to be worked through. For example the Shy Girl as we called her evolved from a gothette trying to beat the heat in sweaty Florida to a girl with Buddy Holly glasses and skinny jeans.



The original working title was Shy or Shy Girl but I knew I needed something better. In order to find the right title, I played with phrases like Social Garlic, Wall Flower and Social Butterfly but it was Jon who suggested Antisocial Butterfly. I loved it immediately. It was dark and light hearted at the same time which was the very theme of the movie.



I had spent quite a while discussing the movie with Jon and working out its various scenes and subplots. Many scenes were written with a specific location in mind, a location which I was pretty certain would be easy to shoot around. I had written (and re-written) each scene on its own index card and had roughly story boarded some of the scenes on the back of the cards. I vaguely knew the order of the scenes but I wanted to give myself freedom to re-arrange them in post since I feel that editing is where I am strongest.

I finally decided I had done all the pre-production I was able to do and set about shooting my first scene.....