30 hours until we start shooting, and so much is happening so fast. Bad news is that we lost one of my favorite locations, but some of the good news is that all of our locations are still great. We did a tech scout today, which is when the heads of each crew department visit all the locations to make sure all the practical needs can be met, and everyone agreed the locations looked and felt great.

I've got an interesting bet going with a few people on the production team. I'm betting that I can keep our "2nd meals" at 3 or fewer for the 15 day shoot. What's a 2nd meal, you may be asking? Every day is supposed to go 12 hours. By law we have to feed people "lunch" at the six hour mark, and if we go longer than 12 hours, we have to feed them at the 12 hour mark. That 12 hour mark meal is called "2nd meal." If you give it, it means you've gone into overtime, which no one likes.

I believe I can keep the production from doing more than 3 second meals in our 15 days, even though our schedule is tight. I'm betting $100 with a few people who believe I'll do more than 3.

Kevin Sorbo and Kristy Swanson got in tonight, and the three of us went out to dinner. It was great. Both of them are really sweet and cool, and it's obvious we're going to have a good and productive time together. When you're going to be in the trenches with people for three weeks, you typically want to like them, and we've got that covered here. Kevin and I are buddies anyway, but tonight was the first time I've met Kristy in person, and she was terrific.

Tomorrow we do some wardrobe fittings to make sure they like their clothes, and I'm meeting with my cinematographer Todd Barron to prepare a shot list for the first week. A shot list is when you literally plan out all the shots you plan to make for each scene, type it up, and give it to the production staff so they can have a decent handle on how long things will take.

More to come...

Today was my best day of pre-production. Great news all day.

Kristy Swanson is officially booked as Wendy, our lead female character. We're getting quite a cast. Kevin Sorbo plays Ben, the hot-shot investment banker who gets a glimpse of what his life would have looked like had he followed his calling to be a pastor and stay with the right girl. Kristy Swanson plays Wendy, the right girl. John Ratzenberger plays Mike, the angel who gives Ben the glimpse and acts as a guide through the process. And Debby Ryan, big up and coming Disney star from "Suite Life On Deck," plays Kimberly, the older daughter in Ben's "alternate life."

Had a little scare with Disney, as they wanted to make sure it wasn't a "right-wing fundamentalist" movie before they released Debby, but they read the script and were fine. Hearing that news this morning got the day started right.

We're also finding some awesome locations. The opening and closing scenes of the film take place in a bus station, and we're going to turn a huge warehouse into a de facto bus station, which will look very cool. Most times the locations you find force you to compromise in some way, but occasionally you get the cool experience of finding locations that open the movie up even more and give you better opportunities than you thought you'd have.

Woke up this morning to the news that we've cast our Wendy! The great thing is we got someone who will bring a little name value to the project and has a ton of experience. We'll make an official announcement about all our cast as soon as they're all official.

It all happened very fast, which was cool. Got her the script a few days ago, she said "I'm in" last night while I was sleeping.

Auditioned a girl today for the part of the 6 year old. Sometimes it's good to cast locally (saves money and is easier), sometimes it's better to find someone from L.A. who has more experience and fly them in. The girl today doesn't have much experience, but she's absolutely adorable and could be great. We'll make a decision there in a couple days. I should have the whole film cast within the next 3 to 4 days.

The locations are all coming together; spent some time today with the production designer and art director going through the house where we're shooting all the family scenes. We had to make sure that every scene could be shot there without any problems. For instance, there always has to be enough room for lights, the camera, and all the actors, obviously. So you're not only looking for rooms that have depth, but you're looking for places where you can place the camera that will take up as little room as possible, even if that means the camera being outside the room (shooting through a doorway or window).

Whenever you don't have depth in the film, or enough distance from the camera to the subject, the film always ends up looking cheap.

One thing cool about the house is that it's owned by a couple that LOVES my Dad's books, and they share the values of the film, so they're letting us pretty much do whatever we want. We've already chopped down three huge evergreens in their front lawn, and we're choosing colors with which to paint their interior walls. Most of their walls are white, which never looks very good on film. I'm trying to depict the home life as warm and inviting, so we're looking for light, warm colors. Light browns, greens, oranges, etc.

Gonna make a few more tweaks to the script based on locations we're finding, and then next week is going to be crazy as the crew and cast start showing up.