This screen has been my life lately

I’m actually getting to the point where my work is nearly done.  We’ve got picture lock, the ADR has been recorded and added, sound effects are plugged in, and the visual effects and audio just need a tiny bit of tweaking.  Now it’s up to the rest of the team.

Gabriel has promised to compose an original musical score to replace the temp music tracks and David will be breaking out his band to write and record music for the intro and end credits.  Jen plans on reworking our opening title sequence so that the coloring and fonts are less cheesy (my fault – I have no talent when it comes to that sort of thing).  And I’m bringing aboard Len Haynes as our colorist to give the film the right look that Altaf and I are after.

With the end of the semester crunch on, these things are going to come together later rather than sooner. I’m hoping to have another big spike in progress mid June. For now, Monsters will simmer on the back burner.

In the meantime, we’d better start looking at film festivals to enter….

Skeleton crew!  Myself, Co-Director David, Producer Gabriel, Camera Operator Carlos, and that’s it!  We were going to have Altaf, but we lost him due to a work conflict at the last minute.

Four crew members, one dialogue scene, one chase sequence, and one pickup line of dialogue that I realized we didn’t get while editing.  Challenge accepted.

First obstacle of the night:  John’s beanie went missing.  Kind of a big deal since he wears it in every scene and earlier in the footage of the same scene we already shot.  We send David and John to various Wal-Marst (Santa Clarita has three) to procure a replacement.  In the meantime, the clock is ticking, so while they’re away we focus on some close-up shots of Jen’s dialogue.

David won the beanie race.  Apparently there was a sale at Wal-Mart (10 cents a beanie) and they were sold out.  Poor boy went all over town.

By the time John got back, we were just finishing Jen’s close-ups.  We shot a new stunt fairly quickly, and worked the dialogue scene hard.

After the dialogue and a quick trip to Denny’s, we were on to the chase scene.  The business park is a filmmaker’s playground with lots of neat places to shoot.

Not a lot of traffic at 3am

We were getting our first series of shots down….and that’s when security showed up…again.

It was a new guard this time.  He actually *gasp* got out of the car to approach us.

Him:  “Working late?”

Us:  “Uh, yeah, we are.”

Him:  “All right.”

He checked the door to the building we were shooting in front of, then drove off.  We put two and two together – the building we were shooting in front of…was a production company!  It was like having camouflage!

Inside, we saw various movie posters for animated children’s flicks we’d never heard of, plus a life-sized Sponge Bob and Betty Boop.  Cool!

After that, it was shot shot shot shot shot.  Lots of angles, lots of actions, lots of diversity for the opening credits.  And we finally got to use our dummy security car.  I wish we could have found a way to incorporate the dummy security cameras as well.  We were pretty sure they were dummy cameras, anyway.  One was pointed straight up at the sky and another one right into a pole. I swear, with insulting security like this, I almost felt obligated to shoot there.

We got our martini shot and started packing up – and that’s when my camera took a dive.  It was sitting on the tripod and a gust of wind hit it.  *Thud*  SHIT!!!  No worries though.  The footage was still good and the camera still operated, though the LCD flip screen was bent to a crazy angle.  This is when I’m glad I got the “Spill and Drop Protection” plan when I bought it.  Phew!

That angle...is not normal...

My poor baby!

And that’s a wrap!  Post production time!  Have to edit all the footage from today and tie all the scenes together.  After that, I’ll keep fine cutting until we have picture lock while simultaneously teaching myself new special effects software techniques.  Fun!

Where’d the cold and the wind go?

A couple new faces tonight, but enough of the crew from last time to still be pretty cohesive.

The one nice thing about going a while between shoot days is that you have time to edit what you already have and see what you’re missing:  lines of dialogue, actions, inserts, etc.  I wasn’t satisfied with how the stunt edited together, so I got one extra angle to make me happy, and one extra shot of Jen delivering some dialogue for more shot variety.

We finished one major dialogue sequence- a walk and talk – and some more dialogue after the stunt.

We had to cheat the pathway for the walk and talk a bit.  The only available path left to us was on a linoleum walkway.  Crinkly, crackly linoleum.  Who has linoleum outside?  Who does that?!?  Once again, I look into the future and see ADR.

John and Jen - Walkin' and Talkin'

Halfway through the second dialogue bit, Altaf got an idea for a great high angle shot…unfortunately there wasn’t anything to climb up onto (the picnic tables were bolted down).

Enter:  My car.  We had James Keith (my roommate who I’d dragged into this) climb on top of my car with the camera.  The resulting shot?  Awesome!  The footprints on my roof?  Not so awesome!

Our friendly security guard stopped by again when we were back on the alley set.  He pulled right up to us, got out of his car, and went behind the dumpsters where it looks like he swiped a card or something.  It’s apparently some kind of check point to prove that he made his rounds for the night.  Then he got back in his car and left.  I love this guy.

We were nearing the end of the night and the temperature finally dropped to freezing again.  We took a 15 minute timeout to huddle in our cars for warmth before doing one last push of shooting for an hour.  When we started getting ready, we had two problems.

1.  We only had one good camera battery left.

2.  The good battery was in Altaf’s car…which he had locked himself out of…with the engine still running….at 4 in the morning…

This is when it’s a good thing that I have AAA.  And an even better thing that Altaf and I have the same make and model of car.  ”Yes, Mrs. AAA agent, I locked myself out of MY car.  So what if it’s gold now instead of green?”

We took this as a sign that maybe it was time to pack it in for the night.

Still, we’re nearing the end.  One more shoot night should do it.  One last dialogue bit which should be VERY easy to do (jinx!), and the chase sequence.  It looks like we might just go with a skeleton crew to get it done.

Until the next time!

The crew was huge!  Or at least it was to me.  We had ten crew members – I’m used to only having two, maybe three if I’m lucky.  Despite that, I still fell into the old habit of trying to do everything myself:  boom mic operating, gaffing, camera operation, etc.  I think I might have found time to direct once or twice.  

Our camera of choice was the Canon Rebel t3i.  All told, we had four of them on the set:  mine, Altaf’s, Marcus Moreno’s (our set photographer), and a spare brought by two of our actors, John Rael and Jen Brown.

Sound continued to be an issue.  Gabriel Chacon, our producer, brought his huge pile of sound equipment, but just couldn’t seem to get the bugs out.  Thankfully, I had my Rhode Video Mic Pro as backup, and I’d learned some tricks to be able to get good sound out of Canon DSLR cameras, which are notorious for horrible sound.  Still, even with the backup, I foresee lots of ADR in our future thanks to the wind.

The beginning stunt took longer than we thought, understandable since this was a new crew on its first day.  First day crews are still trying to figure each other out and work together as a team.  Plus, stunts naturally take a while.

We finished the stunt sequence and a few of the first pages of dialogue, then switched gears to the last two pages of dialogue.  We wanted to wrap our actress Joan Murray so she wouldn’t have to come back and freeze for a second night.

Joan - Our ferocious Slayer

As we were nearing the end of shooting Joan’s scene, security showed up.  We froze, but with Altaf’s assurance of “just ignore him,” we pretended he wasn’t there.  The guard got out of his car, inspected the nook where we’d setup craft services, walked back to our alley set, got in his car and drove off.  Phew!  

Rule #1 of guerilla filmmaking:  If security shows up, just ignore them and they’ll go away.

It was later that we realized that we’d left our (very realistic) prop gun laying in the middle of the craft services area.  We could only wonder what the guard must have thought.

With Joan’s scene completely finished, that was a wrap!  Still plenty more to shoot, but now that we have a better idea what we’re doing, we’ll work more efficiently next time.

The artist sees all the realms of possibility.  He dreams, he sculpts his dreams in to reality, he shows the inner workings of his mind to the world.  He revels in the joy of expression, hoping to evoke feelings and thoughts in his audience – pain and joy, awe and terror, indignity and acceptance.  The audience is the instrument that the artist wishes to play.  He’s the cutting edge screenwriter, the visionary director, or the passionate actor.