FILMING
We plan to film in the early Spring of 2008 on location at Paxson Elementary School for both interior/exterior shots over the span of approximately one week. Not all sessions will require all participants to be present, so we'll gather in small groups each day. We will notify each group of participants as to their day/time and will meet at Paxson Elementary on the play ground prior to each day's shooting. Notification will come via an informational flyer with all sessions blocked out in advance and the full shooting schedule will also be available through this site!

Sessions are expected to last 2-3 hours per afternoon.

Look for details sometime in March.

SPECIAL WARDROBE NEEDS
We want students to dress like students! We encourage everyone to pick their favorite school clothes - though this is not "dress up" - so please, we ask that mainly you just dress like yourself! Where special costuming needs are required, they will be providedto the designated participants.

WHY IS THERE NO SCRIPT?
There is! But only one part requires dialogue, that of our title character and the voiceover will be recorded seperately. In fact, any and all noise will be ambient and natural, deriving from the crowd shots. Therefore, all your child has to do is show up! No lines to memorize, no scripts to rehearse. We're going to keep this simple and easy and follow the course plotted out in the script for the comic.

FOOD & DRINK
Snacks and drinks will be provided for every filming session, we want to ensure a energetic shoot! The exception will be for those days designated for the large crowd shots involving entrance and exit to the school.

SO - WHO IS INVOLVED?
We have a list of participants for the cast and at this stage they are confined to a small number of individuals and their back-ups in case availability issues arise. We'll be approaching all cast members shortly after permission is obtained to film at Paxson. As for the technical crew, we have made arrangements with the Fine Arts Department for the participation of several volunteer graduate students to help coordinate key aspects of the shoot, such as, lighting, camera, direction, editing and some post-production touches - visual effects and titles/credits.

HOW WERE THE PARTICIPANTS CHOSEN?
If your son or daughter was invited to participate in the filming for a key role this decision was reached with only one consideration in mind - they looked the part! We invite everyone to take a look at the comic book art by Ming Doyle and we think you'll agree that she really captured the look of our children as if by magic or at least according to the physical descriptions I provided to her in the script. Some of these parts where specifically created with your child's physical likeness in mind. We'd like to stress that these decisions were not a popularity contest, nor did we "play favorites" or choose best friends. Neither did we try to envision a given participant's role based upon some notion of acting ability. The final choice was made by physical resemblance to the respective character they are portraying and of course their willingess and availability to participate.

We sincerely apologize in advance to anyone who might feel left out or overlooked, that was never our intention and we will certainly work hard to make sure your child is on camera during the large scale crowd scenes. Also, any child that has n interest in the the technical aspects of the production is more than welcome to help out! In this case, please contact us directly and we'll do our very best to make your child feel included though we hope you'll recognize the inherent limitations in accomodating every request.

SO, WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?
Our desire to film LONER and transform it from comic book to film was simple:

- To fulfill a promise to my daughter that we would one day make a "real movie" out of the story she helped to create
- To help promote the comic book version of LONER
- To help promote the sale of POPGUN
- To do something fun, creative, challenging and rewarding!

Our short film will indeed see the light of day and will debut on this site once it's finished! As well, we intend to share the final product with Newsarama, the internet's largest, most visited source for comic book and pop-culture news, and Image Comics, the publisher for POPGUN. "Distribution" will also entail short film sites like Atom and media outlets like YouTube. IN other words, we intend to widely promote the film!

Bear in mind then, that is very possible that tens of thousands of web viewers may see LONER and if you are not comfortable with the idea of your child having a web presence, then please let us know!

BRING DIGITAL VIDEO & PICTURE CAMS!
We would appreciate few extra helpers documenting the filming, and encourage participants to bring digital cameras or videos so that they can snap photos and short videos "behind the scenes". We will do our best to include as much as this material as possible on the DVD version of the film as "extras" and "special features". We will have more details about how this process will work in March 2008.