Cripes, it’s been a long four and a half months. We started working on Inhumanwich! back in mid-August, spending September writing the script and getting organized. Then we hit the wall, and hard: because I completely failed to factor in reality when putting the story together, the many, many exterior scenes I wrote couldn’t be filmed right away. As regular visitors to this blog (hello, all two of you!) already know, we opted to delay filming until February, meaning by the time we got to the outdoor bits, it’d be March, and our actors wouldn’t have to run around in single digit temps.

All this extra time has been good, allowing us a chance to form an actual plan, get things right, and raise enough cash to make the shoot both comfortable and semi-professional.

But, oh, that long gap became unbearable. We’re used to putting things together on a TV schedule, which means a concept-to-finish timeframe of two or three days (maybe five or six if it’s really complicated, and as little as a few hours when necessary). Granted, this often left us with material that looked rushed and uneven, but no matter; we got our near-instant creation gratification.

Readjusting to the long game has not gone smoothly. Anxiety blended with anticipation, drowned in impatience. I struggled to keep busy. Tinkered with this blog, made another one for Argo One, fiddled with the Facetweets, did some shopping and wish-list making, hunted for paperwork, fretted over the tiniest corners of pre-pre-pre-preparation. My mind took left turns, ignoring the meat monster altogether in order to plan “The Next One,” my handy nickname for an ever-changing roster of potential follow-up projects. Focus has been a problem.

(The other guys handled things more effortlessly. Robb toiled in his effects factory; Ryan and Matt filled their days with other projects; the rest went along with their lives like adults; Christine played it cool, as she always does, mainly having learned long ago to tune me out.)

But now it’s January. Finally. Auditions are a mere week away, with a full pre-production slate (costume shopping, set building, location finding) certain to keep me busy throughout the rest of the month. We’ll end January with our cast read-through, then plow into Februrary ready to shoot.

It’s 2011 at long last. The year we make a movie.