100 minutes and the new poster

As of Sunday, December 18th, NICOTINE hit 100 minutes. No, that's not the complete length of the film, because that is still up in the air. I'm still gonna guess 2 hours and 15 minutes. I need to trim. I don't want to trim, because, as I've stated in the past, I love excess. But excess is only good and cushy if nothing is truly redundant. Another thing is just trimming scenes down by cutting in late or cutting out early. There are times where cutting out of any given scene ten seconds sooner will have a different impact than leaving those ten seconds in.

The nice thing -- well, sorta -- was that I was sick for five days. In those five days I didn't cut anything. So looking back at it today felt invigorating to say the least. I had been working on a scene that lasts all of eight minutes, but takes place in a car, in a front yard, at the front door, in a basement, back to the door, to the driveway, etc. It was a lot of cutting around, and each section was/is so short that I had a horrible feeling that the entire film was suddenly going to feel too pieced together. This particular scene was modified from the screenplay a bit because of various elements at the location, which is fine. Added to that I was having an off day when we shot this scene. There were just some days where I felt like I didn't actually contribute to anything; I royally screwed up and wasted several hours and money and didn't make much progress. We eventually continued to shoot what wasn't working and even re-shot quite a bit on a different day. Anyway, back to what I was saying. After five days of being sick, I went back to what I had cut and suddenly the scene worked. Having a break from the work is generally a smart idea.

I will be cutting a trailer soon. I don't like trailers. If I could, I would just rip off The Brown Bunny or Little  Children trailer, but I can't do that. Well, I could.

Rudy Pavich, the actor who is playing Scott, will be putting together the music; messy jazzy Reno-ish lounge music is what we had talked about a bit. It's not really a score, but he's slowly been putting something together. On December 8th he sent me a rough cut of something he was working on. I will probably have that featured in the trailer. My trailer won't explain much of anything, but I prefer that to a trailer that gives too much away.

Now then, here is Poster #4. I have my name on it because enough people wanted to know why I didn't have my name on the poster. It feels weird doing that, but, whatever. This is more of a typical indie movie poster, I believe.

Until next time!

Shaping the Movie

When someone asks me what my favorite part of the filmmaking process is, I generally take a long time to think about my answer. It's all equally stimulating to be honest. Getting the spark for a story, writing it all down on note cards, finding the damn point or reason for why the events happen, writing the screenplay, finding the actors, locations, directing, editing. It's all fun and challenging, but it's certainly in the editing process where you can see it really come to life. It's really your third pass at the film, so when you get to edit it all together, it's such a big relief. First pass: writing. Second: shooting.Third is editing.

As of a couple days ago, NICOTINE is 77 minutes long. At this point I think the movie could be 2 hours and 20 minutes. I'm fine with that, but I'm really trying to keep it under 2 hours. All along the way while shooting, we even took little things out here and there, stuff that I felt would be redundant to a certain extent. The film went from 100 scenes to about 80 scenes. We also re-wrote some scenes and added a couple scenes in that weren't originally written, or extended some scenes out.

Right now I'm not trimming excess material. I will wait until the whole thing is assembled, then I'll see what can be trimmed. Some of the footage that would be considered "filler" is exactly what I wanted, and what I want the movie to feel like, in some ways. It's that random, sort of nothing fluff that makes everything so interesting in life. Yet it's a movie that essentially needs to "entertain" the audience. That's a whole different subject though. Maybe I'll be the only one to find the movie interesting. I'm not sure.

I'm not too worried about the running time, but at the same time I am worried. Why? Originally I set out to write a movie that would be 90 minutes. Somehow that managed to get away from me.

Movie goals for myself: Make a 90 minute movie and write a comedy. Both goals will be incredibly hard.

I will spend a good 6 hours editing on Wednesday. I hope to get to at least 90 minutes.

That's all I have for now.

DONE

It feels great to be done shooting. Yesterday Jeff and I completed a couple simple scenes, plus a some random pick-up's. Those are the best, but the most time consuming. You set-up for twenty or so minutes, you shoot it once or twice and blamo, you're done.

Why the shooting of the film last longer than expected was mostly due to us unable to shoot in a gas station. You're probably sick of me talking about this gas station extravaganza, but it's the real reason. 21 or so gas stations were looked at, Holiday and BPs to smaller locally owned ones to stations that were a few miles up north or down south; I spent an afternoon many weeks back scouring around trying to find this place. Nothing. For the most part the employees were kind and thought it would be great, but upper management had issues. Issues that were never actually brought to my attention, and I've never been able to pin-point the exact problem.

Because this scene wasn't going to be shot, Wednesday afternoon I wrote out a new scene that would fill in that void. I sort of wrote it. I supplied the idea of what the scene was going to be, but Jeff came up with the core. It's different than what the gas station scene was going to be, but it will work and we even hit on a couple "plot-points" in the film with this new scene. There are times while developing a character when you discuss subtext and the reason a character will behave a certain way. I love this stuff, because it gives life to a character's motivation, but most of the time when these things aren't verbalized or even suggested in the subtlest of ways, the subtext becomes entirely lost to a point where the audience member just doesn't understand it. So, we touched on one or two subjects that are on the back burner through-out the film, but not too much. Whether this new scene will work as a whole when the entire film is cut together, has yet to be determined, but as an individual scene in the privacy of Paul's car, there's certainly an undeniable amount of realism. I think it's great.

That's another topic of discussion through-out the making of this film: who's to say what is or isn't realistic when two characters are talking in private, or who's to say what is or isn't said out-loud when a character is alone? This is tough, and hopefully we did it right. I think we did.

___________________

I've been working at my real-world job a lot in the last three weeks. It's been nice. I haven't worked this much since July. I've been such a financial bind since August (because of the movie), that Jenn's been having to help me a bit more. I'm thankful she's been able to. I owe her a nice big check, which she'll get on Monday. I also need to thank Corey and Dave for working whenever I needed to do my movie stuff. Right now, as I edit my film and get it ready for festivals and as I'll be able to help more with making Wedding decisions for mine and Jenn's Wedding in September, I've been getting more stressed and sleeping less. Not because of the Wedding or really my movie, but because of my future employment at the theatre. With Digital Cinema going in sometime in the next few months, there may not be jobs for traditional 35mm projectionists -- so what do I do? I have no idea. I've been apart of Willow since I was 5 or 6 years old, and have been employed at the theatre for 10 years on January 2nd, 2012. Where do I go from here? I'm worried, but I'm almost optimistic about what comes next.

I'm going to get back to editing. I'm about to cut a pretty fun scene together. Super fun!

Editing, Poster and What's Left

Editing is going real smooth. I haven't been doing it as frequently as I should, but compared to the progress on my first film, I'm so much further along. The conditions were different the first time around, so that has a lot to do with it. As of this moment the NICOTINE is 48 minutes and 20 seconds. We're only on Scene 25. Originally there were 100 Scenes, but slowly as the shooting went on, we took things out, condensed some stuff, etc. I'm not sure how many total scenes there are in the film, but I think it's around 75 or 80.  During the shooting we expanded on already scripted scenes; it was the plan too, so they were expected additions.

The biggest challenge of editing is to find a balance between too little and too much. Personally, I like bloated scenes, so luckily I have John to give me feedback. As much as I trust my instincts, opinions and thoughts are greatly appreciated while shaping this film. John gave me some great ideas the other night on the phone. Unfortunately, sometimes there's not additional footage to cut here or cut there. The problem with shooting for a specific editing style, is that you limit yourself for what you can do once you get to the actual editing. There are a couple scenes where the camera is locked and doesn't cut into mediums or close-ups, it's just a two-shot of characters talking, so you just hope and pray that it will work with the film. In retrospect was it a good choice? Does it even make sense to suddenly hold back that way? Did I just break the rhythm by changing the style up? All questions will eventually be answered... unlike in LOST. J/K, Best Television Show Ever.

Poster #3

Poster #1 and #2 weren't really anything, but this third one is a bit more serious. I want to go with a minimal poster. It's hard to name some of my favorite posters, but an original idea I had for NICOTINE was basically the Criterion cover for The Vanishing. I love it. It's simple and ominous and even boring -- in a good way. But if I came up with something like that, it would be selling it as too much of a brooding drama.

I don't know what the "final" poster will be. The above poster I made with the bowling floor is a relatively small file, the image quality isn't great, so I wouldn't be able to blow that up. I might stick with something like that.

What's left? The Gas Station scene, a simple re-shoot of Paul walking inside the apartment lobby and a Paul phone voice-over. I've come up with something to replace the Gas Station scene, mostly because that whole point of the scene was to get to the last couple of lines + to see more of Paul's awkward interaction with people in the outside world. I talked with Jeff about what this scene would be, and we both agree that the gas station scene would be great, but I'm tired of people not really knowing and being nervous about us doing this. Of course I won't say what the scene is, but it will be a good addition to the story.


What's next? Finish editing, music, then doing a couple private screenings with the actors, then a [hopeful] big screening [in January?], then we'll enter this thing into some festivals.

It's all going well. I'm happy with this movie. Very happy.

12%

That number represents how much we have left to shoot. It's been a long process. Just the other day I mentioned to Jeff that we started this back in April. It was in April that I wrote out the craigslist ad looking for actors; didn't think it would work. John convinced me it's worth a shot. We were originally going to start shooting in July, then it was pushed back to the end of August. I also didn't think we'd be going to the middle of October. But, that's what happens when you try to make a movie.

What have I learned? A lot. I don't want to be the cinematographer anymore, or really operate the camera. It's an odd thing to confess. As much as I'm in love with shooting my own stuff and I have the "style" in mind, it certainly takes my focus away from the actors. That's the most important aspect of the whole production, yet my attention hasn't been 100% on them. It's awful to admit that, but it's true. I do my best. I'd like a constant crew,  yet with the insanity that is this shooting schedule, it's hard to do. We all have jobs in the real world, and as sudden as this schedule can be, it's difficult to get people together last minute. Sometimes I like when it's just me doing it all -- camera, lighting, sound, etc -- even though it's more chaotic, it feels much more intimate and personal. That's not saying I don't like crew, I do, and Jenn and Mike and Shaun have been very helpful with several parts of this production. I'm thankful that they've been able to help me.

We are shooting tomorrow night and then Friday and that's it. Shooting will be complete. There are smaller things I need to pick-up; close-ups on certain objects, wide shots of empty rooms, but we're almost done. We won't be getting the music together until November. Rudy is busy will all sorts of things, including slowly writing music for this film. So from Mid-October to Mid-November, I will be editing. As of right now I've cut together 40 minutes of the film.

Lastly, this is a "poster" I put together this afternoon.

It's not a final poster by any means, but I'm trying to figure out what it will look like. Poster designing is tough; too cliched or too indie won't work with me, yet doing something too abstract might evoke an unusual or strange perception. I need to find a balance that's not overly serious or too vague. I'm not using faces or people from the film on the poster. It's not a for sure rule, but anything I could make with the actors on it would be no good. Honestly, many of the posters made by "filmmakers" my age are horrendous piles of poop. Bad photo-shopped images of characters posing in front of false background or even directors that have their name of the poster five times. Yes, we know you did everything in your film, but just because Robert Rodriguez has his name in the credits fourteen times, doesn't mean you should too.

I don't know what the poster will be, but we'll work on that later.

That's it from the hatch for now.

Lost and Found

The past few days are difficult to sum up. I haven't had any "free-time" up until today. Even today was busy, prepping the apartment for a nearly twelve hour shoot on Friday. Since this film began a mess has sort of accumulated everywhere. If we're shooting in the office, we'll move things to the living room, and so on and so on. But literally every single room, except the bathrooms, will be used on Friday, which means I needed to haul ass and figure this all out. It would just be easier if everything was already always clean, but that would certainly be too easy.

Why the title? Well, I lost an SD. Oh don't worry, it was found...just two days after it was lost. It took a third time looking for it to actually locate it. I tore apart my car, the apartment, checked the location I thought it may have been left at -- being right outside the Golden Valley City Hall. Nothing. I was going nuts. I was told I was behaving fairly calm for having lost a $25 card with 30 minutes of fresh footage on it. It's the type of thing where you can curse and scream and yell and get upset, or you just go re-shoot it. It's horrible, but it needs to be done, so don't whine about it. Luckily after a shoot last nigh at Rudy's house in Richfield I decided to go back and search for it. I sat at the bench we shot at, turned the flashlight on, pointed the beam at a tree and there it was. It was found. After two days, it was unharmed, not dirty nor wet, but in pristine condition.

I did edit a six and a half minute sequence today.

I've taken over the living entertainment center since Jenn went to Hawaii. Having two monitors is quite handy. Everything opens up and the canvas is whole lot larger. This sequence is something that I feel will get criticized a lot by some people; I guess this whole section of the film. I think people will say there's no focus, this stuff isn't about anything, it's just a long section of nothing related to what the "plot" is about. But that's exactly what I want for this entire movie. That's part of the whole purpose of this story. I'm please with how this has turned out. It's grainy and some stuff is soft-focus, the audio isn't always clean, but that's what I wanted. I always felt this project would be special (not to sound incredibly corny), and I've been feeling it since the first few days of photography, but cutting together this section and seeing it all flow from beginning to end, I can say I'm happy. Very happy.

I hope I learned a lot from my first feature -- at least from an editing standpoint, well, from every point of view. My first feature was choppy with the editing. Unintentionally too. I had eight or nine separate timelines going, and at the end I merged them together.  That was part of the problem, but also because I don't think I understood what the structure of the film was, I think. I didn't know what the rhythm was supposed to be. I know it was a slow build, but there was absolutely no momentum or conflict in the eyes of the audience. There were a lot of little things, and one major thing, but I touched on those topcis so lightly, that when bigger "suspenseful" moments were supposed to take place, the audience didn't understand why it was supposed to be that way. There was, however, one moment I remember where I felt the audience holding their breath -- a slow zoom onto a door handle. That was awesome.

Back to this project. I'm planning for a major night shoot Saturday. I don't want to say what it is, just in case you're casually reading this blog and want to see the final product when it's complete. There's a lot of planning. It's making me crazy, but it's been blocked all out. It's been mapped out. Everything is ready to go. I hope nothing goes wrong that night. We need to stick to a timeline for this shoot. The same goes for every shoot.

I wanted this film complete by the end of September. That didn't happen. I'm about to re-write a scene that was added in late, but I was never happy with. I'm condensing it down and making it make sense.

Some locations are/were being difficult. We still don't have a Pre-School or a Phone-booth or a Gas Station. I found out yesterday morning that the gas station near my house already decided that they weren't going to let me shoot there, but did they contact me? No. I'm having very little luck with gas stations willing to help me out. It's very disappointing.

I will get back to editing for a bit, then off to bed. Here's a picture from a shoot yesterday. I was a one-man show that day. It sucks a lot, but I'm used to doing everything by myself.

Lobby in my apartment. 

Oh, another thing. My fiance is in Hawaii and took a LOST tour. She sent me this picture. JUGHEAD. Awesome.

It's Been (Good) Nuts

After about eight days with nothing new written, but a lot of progress on the film, I figured it was time to write again. I don't know where to begin, the last 8 days have seemed to blurred together actually. I'm doing a lot of movie stuff at work, which is perfectly fine with me. Without the retros and the use of a trained 35mm projectionist dying out, my motivation to give my all has surely dropped off.

What have we been up to? Over the last week we've seen the movie wrap for Alison Guessou and Earl Milton. Both wonderful actors to work with. It's quite strange that they're finished. On Sunday will be the movie wrap for Andy Josephson, Harold Lance and Rudy Pavich. We were supposed to film some final scenes today with Andy and Rudy, but I need the sliver of the sun setting in the background of the frame. It needs to be there. Not for an sake of consistency either, but a atmospheric photography thing. The sun thrown in the back, with the guys playing basketball in that frosty late evening evening light, where there aren't any shadows, and the softness of the light just sort of creeps its way around. Any chance I have for a scene take place within that perfect twenty-minute window, I will take it.

Wednesday, September 14th was a great day. It was also a day where I royally screwed up with the whole decision making process that directors are supposed to do in one second flat. I don't know what it was. We were scheduled to do a several scenes from 10:30am to 3:30pm. It was just enough time, and it was all going to work. We were on schedule, shooting the first (well, second) Eddie scene, and completed that by 1:00pm. We took a break to break down equipment from the basement and move it all outside. I went to go pick up Christina (who played Kate) at 2:00pm, then came back and we were supposed to just go ahead and shoot.

Mike likes sound. It tickles him.

Prepping to set-up outside.

Christina Schaar as Kate

Photos from Mike Wedel.

Why everything then slowed down was in part because I didn't have a plan, part because the weather was a nightmare (for being 57 degrees / 50% cloudy, yeah), and part because of the sudden amount of traffic outside of where we were shooting. At 3:50pm we were only 65% the way through this sequence. I decided to go through a few more takes with Jeff and Christina and call it an afternoon.

We would have kept going, except I needed to be at Sunsets at 6:15pm, and while this was still over two hours away, I needed time to unload the footage onto the computer and charge up my battery.

We arrived to Sunsets at 6:25pm. Shaun Pakenham was already there, as were my parents. Shortly there Rick and David showed up (Jenn's dad and brother) The nice thing about it being under 60 degrees on Wednesday night, was that nobody was out on the patio. That's good and bad. Bad because I wanted to get a full shot of many people. Good because it allowed us to take up as much space as we wanted. The folks at Sunsets were amazing. Jenn played the waitress in the scene, and I had asked her to find someone inside that could give her a dessert menu to show the actors. But Sunsets said they'd put a full desert tray together. Amazing. Unfortunately, the fun part of filmmaking is about things being cut from the film. The dessert tray will never been seen. It's the thought that counts.

At one point a train flew by. We weren't going to roll, but Shaun convinced me we should go ahead and roll anyway. I'm glad he told me that. It's a great moment and will fit nicely into the film. As soon as we were done with this, that was officially it for Alison. There were hugs all around. Harold, being the great guy he is, offered to by a drink for everyone. Many took him up on this offer. I'm not a drinker, but that's okay. We all sat and chatted. It was a fun and calm night to the entire day.

We stayed for dinner, myself, Rick, Jenn and David. They have tasty burgers.

That night I ordered a power supply for my camera. I'm sick of just using the battery. The one that Canon sells costs about $130, but I found a good one on Amazon for $25. It's lightweight, but it works.

____________________

Because we shot Wednesday afternoon, that meant Jeff was going to have to work Friday. It worked out, as I was at the theatre all day. Saturday, September 17th was originally scheduled for some bowling alley scenes, but because of what happened Wednesday afternoon, I needed to shoot the rest of the scene on this day. Jenn and I left at 9:15 to go get coffee, then went over to John Andring's house. It was supposed to be 73 and sunny. Let me tell you...it was not. People were cold. Jenn was cold, John was cold, Jeff was cold. I wasn't. It's probably because I was moving around the most. We completed the shoot from 10:00am to 1:00pm. It was real smooth. Partially because this time I had an entire plan written out for what I was exactly going to shoot.

After this shoot we had a massive break. I was going to go to LightsOn and get a few things I wanted for the bowling alley shoot, but as I found out, the office isn't open on Saturdays. Which was fine, though it meant I was going to light the bar sequence differently than originally planned. I went off to Tuttle's to bring them a thumb-drive that contained the Bowling alley logo that Jenn made for the film. The folks at Tuttle's were able to get our logo up on the monitors. It looked great, and even though it's hardly seen, it adds to the realism that extends beyond the immediate action directly in front of the camera.

At 12:15 we arrived at the bowling alley. The bar was relatively empty, which meant we had a lot of time for set-up. This took sometime to get right. I started to slowdown at this time, mostly because I had tried to sleep during the day to prep for this shoot, but it didn't work. Extras were already starting to come in at 12:15: Susan, Josh, Allyson and Aaron were already there. Slowly others started showing up. Tom, Bryan, Nancy, Bert, Hannah and Brandy. I'm very thankful they came out.

This shoot started at 2:34am. The scene went by so fast because before hand, myself, Earl and Jeff focused and really ran through the entire thing, broke it down and tried to find the core. Also, because it was late and everyone was tired, and many of them had to wake up between 7pm and 9am, we tried to do it in as few takes as possible. Jeff, who is explosive with his ability to act, was really wearing himself down with the scene. We succeeded with rolling twice on the wide, and the twice on the medium-c.u's on both Earl and Jeff. It looks great.

The scene also went by fast because the whole thing was planned out. The camera positions, the mic, the lighting, etc. This is an obvious requirement before any major shoots, but all my set-ups up until the last two have been easier photographically. I don't want to say this stuff was more "traditional", because it really isn't in terms of how a scene should be shot according to any cinematography book, but there will be more rough cutting between the stuff on Earl and on Jeff.

We wrapped the bowling alley at 4:15am, and at about 4:50am we were packed up. I need to give a lot of credit to Jenn and Tim Janke. Jenn was shot and not feeling well, but pulled through up until the end. Tim was nice enough to stay late to help us out and then close up the bowling alley. He was also dead tired.

Jeff and I went to the theatre, set-up the camera car mount and did some rainy night driving. I was hoping to get Jeff driving up to a red light without the light turning green right away, but that didn't happen. We'll need to get this specific shot someplace else. My folks driveway perhaps, where I can control the red and green lights.

After this we went inside the theatre to shoot a couple things.

Finally made a hood for the monitor. It's nice, especially during exterior scenes.

At 7:40am we wrapped and had everything packed up. I got back to the apartment at 8:00am. At 9:15am I finally fell asleep and didn't wake up until 3:40pm. I'm shot. I haven't been up for a solid 24 hours in a long time.

It was all good. I'm proud and impressed with everything and how it's all unfolding.

More to come!

23/93

As of September 10th we've shot 23 scenes, out of 93 total. It used to be 100 scenes, but I've been trimming some stuff out for various reasons. Redundancy for some small things, and a few scenes weren't completely necessary. I've added in a couple things too, to slightly expand on one storyline. Part of me wants to delete a gas station scene I've written, but I like it because it's a progression scene -- yes, filler maybe -- but it'll give a better flow to the story.

________________

Today we shot three scenes; Scene 11, 30A and 67. Originally it was meant to be four, but I might have found a better location for the last scene we were gonna shoot, so I cancelled it. I tried to see if a pizza place near where Rudy lives would donate food to the production for our lunchbreak, but they didn't seem to know if they could, or what I was talking about. It was interesting. Jennifer Prettyman, the actress playing Liz, suggested I try this idea. She worked on some films where some places donated food to her production, because they're required to donate so much food per year. Maybe another time.


At about 7:40 this morning Jenn and I went to Cub and bought four pizzas for $10. Good deal. At first this morning we were about 20 minutes behind schedule, then shot right up until 12. We ate some pizzas, and I unloaded 16GB (29 minutes) worth of footage onto Jenn's laptop, then charged my battery up, and at 12:45pm we started Scene 11. We were way behind schedule. About 45minutes at this point. Rudy also had to be gone at 1:10, because he had to work. So we shot all of Rudy's stuff first, and at 1:12 he had to leave. We kept shooting in his house (with his permission, of course) and did it all without Rudy. It's not ideal, the way everything went down, but we got it done. I need to invest in a second battery. It's ridiculous waiting around for the battery to charge, not too mention a waste of valuable shooting time.


I don't know what it was, but after about every 12 minutes worth of footage shot, I needed to get out of the basement/house and into fresh air. I was severely overheating. It was rough, and I'm not quite sure what it was. Lack of water probably. It was also 86 degrees, and we had to turn the air conditioning off for the sake of the sound.

Alison arrived at 3:00pm sharp. At that time, because we were so behind and I was dying, we weren't ready. We ran through scene 67 about four times before we found the rhythm again. We last worked on this scene one month ago and today we were going to shoot it. I wish I had more screen time for Alison. Sometimes I feel guilty finding actors for very small parts. For that case, I wish I had more screen time for Andy. But those small parts, if carefully shaped, will without a doubt make the film better. Every part needs to be strong, or the whole thing crumbles.

________________

So far I've cut together nine minutes worth of footage. It's real easy stuff, one shot type of stuff, but that won't last for long. Part of the style is simple and minimal, some of the style is tight with cutting back and forth. I like both methods, and I planned on doing it both ways, so I'm happy with the footage. It's one thing being on the set and having your focus on several things; lighting, photography, character motivation, line delivery, etc, but it's another thing being able to sit back and watch the footage unfold after the fact. I wish I had the luxury of having a big film crew (sometimes), because I wouldn't have to worry about all the technical stuff, I could focus completely on the actors working. But it has all worked out. Like I said, I'm happy with the footage.

Tonight (9/11) will be a day production not planed. We're shooting four scenes tonight and seven on Wednesday. Wednesday will be a long day. Eddie stuff, Sunsets, then a couple smaller Paul scenes. A full day. The more and more we've been working on these bigger scenes, the better I feel. I was nervous with starting this movie. It's been awhile since I made one, but also the various areas of production I needed to concern myself with was driving me insane. I've really been getting a better idea of what a producer is. I always knew what the producer did, but never did that sort of thing. It's been a good experience, but I certainly prefer the directing part.

I will leave you with a photo from 9/10. Harold, Alison and Jeff | Scene 67.

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday

I've never been so pleased and at the same time terrified while working on a scene for a film. Specific details will be left out of this blog, as will some pictures. There are things I want to share, but I won't. Why? It will ruin the fun of seeing the film for the first time. Sure, there are only a handful of people checking out this blog, but I still feel as if I could spoil things for those that are part of the production in some way.

I will just say that for one key sequence, being two feet away from the action of the actors at work was, as I said above, terrifying. Reason one) There's the whole blocking thing, which sometimes I second guess myself on. That's where the actors give a lot of feedback. Much of the time what's said is "Well, how would Paul react to this, given that point A, B, C and D are all going on at the same time, in physical space, and in his head... how would he deal with this, where would he be?" Because having that answer, or an idea of that answer, can drastically help the scene and the actors get into character. Reason 2) Jeff and Rudy are... there are no words for how phenomenal they are: individually, together, playing off of each-other, etc. There's a natural chemistry between the two. In part because they know each-other, but also because they are so incredibly focused on the scene and the moment-to-moment guts of the thing. It's terrifying because it's so real.

Yesterday afternoon was Scene 31 - 36 (minus a couple small things, but those can be picked up once we shoot the Naomi stuff at the end of the month). This went from 12:00, with the first shot around 12:45, then we wrapped this around 5:00pm. I took that time to sit in bed for about 15minutes, then got back up to dump some of the material onto the computer to free up some space on the card. Rudy took off for a bit, then Jeff went to Tuttle's to bowl a few games -- he does have a few bowling scenes, so he needs to be fully concentrated when on screen holding the bowling ball.

Once we arrived at Tuttle's at 6:32, I believe he said he bowled a 179 with a 15 pound ball. Though, as he stated, "I felt like my hand was about to be ripped outta my arm." That's no good. First day of photography for Andy and Harold. Energy was in the air!

The thing that's happening visually on set is sometimes different from what I imagine it being. Whether that comes from laziness or because I suddenly realize I can get all of this dialog said with one take, one medium or wide shot, and no fancy cutting to this or that shot. The bowling alley stuff (Scene 8) was tricky at first. There were kids, a lot of kids, the music was loud and the black-lights were turned on. Yup. Saturday night at 6:30pm, and the black-lights were on already. At first I was going to turn them off, and have the back bank of ceiling lights on, and Mr. Janke said he could, but then decided the sudden change of atmosphere was going to enhance the scene and turn it into something else; something better. Sadder or funnier, something. The actors added a few pieces of dialog here and there, I floated the frame from character to character a little bit, and that was that.

Small file size, not the best quality picture.

The last thing we shot was not scheduled, but we went ahead and did it anyway. The scene wasn't scripted, but it was in the script. Scene 12. We shot some footage around the bonfire at my parents' house. Nine-and-a-half minutes of straight shooting that was entirely improvised by the actors. Then I threw in a scene that wasn't scripted. We've been taking away minor things and adding other small things back in. The schedule isn't becoming more difficult because of it either.

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Sunday

Second day shooting at Tuttle's. Myself and Jenn showed up at 8:32, Shaun Pakenham and Tim Jankie [an actual real live Tuttle's employee] were there before. Earl and Jeff showed up shortly after. Jenn then went across the street to Dunn Bros. to get some coffee. I need my coffee or else I'm awful.

This big bar opening didn't go down exactly the way I envisioned it. I wanted more people around and about and walking here and there. Extras are hard to find. It's one of those things, but it doesn't ruin what the scene is. Jenn set up the Zoom, I set up the lights/camera, Jeff and Earl rehearsed it, Janke was doing bartender stuff, and Shaun sat quietly in a seat in the background. I feel terrible that I didn't have Shaun doing more. But he definitely added to the scene; subtle things, about posture, when to walk out of frame, etc. So it was nice. I like details like that. 

Jenn's been real helpful. I'm quite thankful she's helping. If she wasn't here to do these things, the speed of the shoot would be slower. I'm still not quite used to people setting up lights or mic stands or tripods or anything, mostly because I'm so used to doing everything solo, that once real people want to help, I don't know what they should be doing. It's all still a learning process. Also, I want to be the director for the actors. That's my focus, or at least that's what I want my focus to be. Have I been doing that? I don't know. It's tough to say. You go and shoot, then wrap, reflect, watch the footage, done. Did I answer questions? Did I give all my notes? Did I shoot it right? Nervous twitchy fella type of questions. 

At 9:29am I was informed that we had until 10:00am in the bar. We rehearsed the scene a few times, but now had 31minutes to get it done before the bar was going to open. Sh*t. But it all went well, even though there were some children in the bar that occasionally expressed their excitement for breakfast by screaming and yelling. It all worked out. Now looking back at the footage, maybe the scene was too lit. Exactly what I didn't want to. I think once things start getting cut together it will look fine. But as it stands, it's too lit. 

I'm certainly interested in what people have to say about Earl's introduction. There's a nice awkward clash of style and deliveries between Paul and Burke -- down to earth, uninterested, normal vs. eccentric, theatrical, over the top, odd. Does it make sense? We'v developed a reason for Burke. I already talked about it in an earlier blog, but it's sad. He is loud, but it comes from a lonely place. 

At 10:13 we wrapped the bar scene, then ate some breakfast. I had a killer headache. Killer. Shaun, being the awesome guy that he is, volunteered to run back to his house to get aspirin. It worked tho. 

Jenn and Earl at the table. Gear sits around.

We shot some additional scenes inside the alley, up at the front desk and out in front of the building. They went well. They only challenging thing is the music playing in the background that could not be shut off -- which I am fine with, it adds to the realism -- but it will be interesting to play around with. On set Jenn had me listen to playback. Useful tool.

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We did a few more things, but I am dead tired and about to crash. It wasn't a long day with things constantly happening, but it was still long. Saturday for me was 11:15am to 10:30pm; including set-up and break-down. Today was 8:30am to 5:00pm. I'm now tackling a headache. Tomorrow is a nothing day. Maybe some editing, maybe some sitting around. "Stalker" came in the mail a week ago. I'll watch that in the afternoon maybe. Good stuff. 

Until next time! 

Five Hours +

Today was a good (short) day, but we accomplished four more scenes. Myself, Jenn and Mike arrived at The Foursome at about 8:40am, right before Jeff drove in. Matt, my Dad's business partner, was there shortly after. Like I said before, it's the set-up that takes the most amount of time. I'm not used to location shooting either, so I'm still getting used to the feel of it. But the owner's son and the other employees were really nice about us being around their space.

We did this opening eight times. We just needed to nail the rhythm of a fresh scene. Plus there was a store issue that we couldn't really solve, but I wasn't too upset about it. We were able to cut the music playing in the lobby, but the air conditioning didn't want to shut off. It was odd, but it didn't ruin anything, mostly because this opening part was one shot, so it's not as if I need to do any cutting around. If I was doing cutting in the scene, it would be important to make all the surrounding atmosphere as quiet as possible.

Mike doesn't know I am posting this picture. This is Mike looking at multiple Mikes in the mirror. He's responsible for sound and taking notes. We just started keeping a sound log: Audio File Number, Scene, Take and additional notes. It's a great resource to have once I get down to editing. I will start putting footage together soon. I was going to tonight, plus I was going to go out to Rudy's house to start blocking out some scenes plus chat about wardrobe, but something came up.

After the foursome we went to Tuttle's. We were right on schedule. We did some driving scene real quick, then got back to the bowling alley. We did four quick takes, then that was that.

Jeff and I drove over to Ragstock to pick up two more shirts for Paul. We only had 4, and we needed a couple more. For a bit after this we discussed some additional wardrobe stuff; motivation behind why  Paul would or would not use a shirt in a particular scene. It's those small details that will seem like nothing choices, but where we put a lot of thought into it. But we have to, as we're shooting sequences out of order -- shooting scenes 31 - 36 tomorrow, the next week we'll shoot scene 30 -- we need to decide these things ahead of time so we don't screw ourselves if we suddenly decide to go a different route. We'll be locked into a certain look. Added to that, the make-up will have to be closely watched, just so there is consistency with that.

Jenn will be doing the make-up. So far, she's "Clapper girl", Costume Designer and now make-up. She may end up being in charge of the extras perhaps, which then would technically be 1st Assistant Director. Good thing she loves me! :)

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Earlier in the afternoon as I was prepping for tomorrow, I found some of my old screenplays. I found the second feature screenplay I wrote, Cold Shower. It's such a bloated screenplay, but I love that. I still want to make an epic Altman film of my own. That one is 175 pages, down from 200+, and contains 347 scenes. Nicotine is 102 pages, and contains 100 scenes. Goodness. 

Still Climbing

I haven't made a post in about a week now because I was working last weekend. Some major and minor things have happened within the last seven days.

I talked with the marketing manager at The Foursome in Plymouth. Like the other conversations I've had with other business owners, part of the time was spent talking about the image of the business, and how it would be seen by the public through the film. Not negative, not positive, but just there as it is in the real world. We're shooting here Friday morning at 8:40am.

This morning my shooting schedule was approved by the owner at Tuttle's. I am very happy about that. We go there Friday afternoon for a brief shoot. My total shooting schedule is about 80% complete. It's getting done. Slowly, but it's getting done.

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To save money I changed the date of the shoot at Sunsets from Monday, September 12th to Wednesday, September 14th. The morning of the 14th we'll be shooting for roughly four to five hours with 4 scenes, totaling 7 pages. It's an outside shoot, which we haven't done yet, so I'm sure we'll run into various obstacles, mainly being weather: rain or wind. A good chunk of time takes place outside, so I'll be closely watching the weather as we approach this date.

As for the evening, I'm going to change the time if I can. As the days go by, the sunset is earlier and earlier. As of today the sun sets at 7:56, but on September 14th it will be at 7:28. That's a lot of time. I need to make sure I have the maximum amount of evening light as possible, but without the light changing in the frame. The first shot from Sunsets Restaurant patio will be on Alison (Courtney), as her back will be facing lake Minnetonka. We can shoot her side, possibly a wide two-shot, then come back around and shoot Harold (Peter). We're renting two 750w totas, plus a C-stand that can be hoisted up with a giant 36 x 40 inch bounce board that will angled down toward the action, with a light on that and a soft frost gel, just to give the sense of evening light just as the sun is going down.

The good thing about this shoot, is that the scene is brief, we've rehearsed it, so now it needs to be photographed. If it were a 10 page scene, I would be renting a second Canon 60D, just so I could shoot both sides at once. It's not that, so that's good.

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There are never again "production" photos on this blog. Here is one.

Last night we ran into some problems with the flashcard. It's a 16G, Class 6 card. Ideally we want to be shooting on Class 10. Finally today I went up to MicroCenter and picked up two of them. The MicroCenter brand is cheaper, but does the same thing. That was a $50 purchase. The nice thing about flashcards and the DSLR camera is that it tells you right away if there is a problem. An indicator bar pops up on the monitor and it can, sometimes, stop the recording. While annoying, it's a nice feature. If we were shooting DV tapes, we may be in the process of loading/editing the footage and suddenly find out that you have some random issue with the tape (i.e. dropped frames or time-code issues). One advantage of this camera.

10 minutes of downtime.

This is all for now.

Exhausting Day

It wasn't exhausting in the marathon runner sense, because that would be insane, and not how I would describe it at all. The day certainly started off tired, as I didn't get as much sleep last night as I would've liked. That's a problem of mine and it's controllable too, I don't have insomnia anymore. Anyway, good things happened today.

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Right away this morning I drove out to Sunsets in Wayzata. I don't have any pictures because I forgot the battery for my camera. Yup. What about my cell cam? Well, I didn't think about that. I met with the General Manager of Sunsets, such a nice lady. She's been at the restaurant for 20 years. I love the location; small area is very quaint, runs on its own time, nice breeze off the lake, it even reminds me of a New England type of setting. They are more than thrilled to help out. We're shooting at the restaurant on Monday, September 12th in the evening. I reserved three tables out on the patio. One table for the main action in the scene, then two tables next to it that I will fill with "extras", just so we're not getting in the way of actual customers. We're renting some small lights from LightsOn that will give me the ability to recreate a solid continuos sunset setting.

The whole entire night at Sunsets will be a bit nerve-wracking in some sense. We'll be putting on a show for the customers and anyone passing by. I've never been that much in the spotlight while working on a project, so it will for sure be a new experience. I'm actually not too worried about this. We'll go in, set-up the stuff, shoot the scene, break down the stuff, then get out. All from 7:00pm to about 9:30pm. I tend to schedule things overly long, just in case.

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Unfortunately things won't work out with my bank for shooting a lobby scene between Paul and Peter. It would have been perfect, but that's life. You can't always get what you want. The Bank Vice President did suggest a building near by on Old Country Road 15. It was mighty nice of him to think of the place, but as I drove through and looked at the building, it wasn't exactly what I'm looking for. The business that Peter works at is unspecified, but the lobby needs to be bright and up to date with its architecture. Also, preferably tile flooring and a dark stained wood trim around the area. We're still looking for this place.

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Tux shop. I had much luck with this location today. The Foursome: Men's Clothing, located in Plymouth on Vicksburg. The first thing I asked was for him to explain to me the process of finding a tux. He showed me the area in the building where they take the measurements of a customer, the books they look through, the designers, the mock-tux that the customer tries on as they size everything. It's going to look great. I talked with the owners Son then, and he thinks it will all work out. He just needs to talk to the person in marketing, then have her call me. They can't imagine there will be a problem. This will more than likely be shot at 9:00am on Friday, September 2nd. I ended up spending about 50 minutes in the store. Of course, because I am getting married and I happened to be in a tux place, I spent a little time looking at tuxes too.

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Phone booth at the golden valley shopping center. I think I originally received a wrong number for the Property Owner of this location. I talked with the original person I talked with, the sort of marketing manager of the shopping center. She gave me the number of the man I need to call. I was planning on doing that today, but then it didn't happen.

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That is all for now. Off to the Twins game in a bit! Until next time! 

Sunsets, Burke and 1st Day "Outtake"

Right away this morning I received a call from Harold, the actor playing Peter. He told me the wonderful news that Sunsets in Wayzata may possibly let us shoot a short scene out on their patio. He talked with a manager and the owner about us coming in, and they seemed more than thrilled about this idea. I hope this happens. I love the location, the style, everything. I've wanted to shoot something here for about ten years.

Photo via Sunsets Facebook Page

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Tonight was brief, but myself, Jeff and Earl accomplished a lot and worked more on Burke, and the Paul and Burke relationship. Burke is the most eccentric and flamboyant character in the whole production, so we've been slowly chipping away at who he is and why he is the way he is. While I don't produce character biographies anymore, like I attempted to do years ago, I shared my thoughts with Earl on possible scenarios that may explain Burke's happy-go-lucky behavior. Right now we're finding a balance between too much and too little, and during the last scene run-through tonight, I believe we found it. I don't want to say we nailed it, because to re-create everything exactly on the set as you did while rehearsing, will be next to impossible. We've found the spirit of the scenes, and that's important.

Rehearsals give the actors an opportunity to run the lines, but from a character blocking standpoint, that's an area we'll need to save for when we're about to shoot. I'm a big believer in actors receiving some amount of in-the-moment inner power from being in the room while shooting. The lighting, the atmosphere in general, the temp outside, time of day (and the time of day that it's supposed to be) all has to do with performance, and when we're just sitting on a couch or even just standing in my apartment, it's all great, but it's not fully developed until we can be in the real location.

Aside from running the scenes, we talked about the type of advertisement Burke might be running on tv to promote his bowling alley. We also decided that the slogan for Burke's Lanes would be "Why Aren't You On A League?" That's the comedy element of the entire storyline. His commercials would a 'bad local commercial' type of thing. VHS, maybe in-camera-editing, bad video toaster wipes from the early 90's, bad fonts, and Burke wearing a tacky suit with a bowling pin tie. Earl might find someone to produce this. It's nothing I will do because I am too busy with balancing work and this film. I hardly have time for my "real world" job as it is. I wish I could get a raise and vacation time. I think after almost 10 years of being a super loyal and passionate employee, I deserve something. That will never happen.

The below video is an example of the style I'm going for. It doesn't make sense for how up to date the bowling alley will be in the film, but it could be Burke's refusal to give up his first big ad. If anything, the bowling ad could be on in the background during another scene elsewhere. We could get away with it. They still run those old Pizza Hut commercials all the time. 

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Below is an "Outtake" from the first day of shooting: Scene 6, Take 3. A cellphone vibrated a few times off camera. At 1:30 you can hear the vibration. New obvious lesson: In addition to unplugging appliances and turning off the air, we gotta turn off phones too. I'm posting this so you can hear Jeff and the character of Paul for a short scene. I'm also posting this because while the phone did go off, the scene wasn't ruined, we all had a good chuckle about it. Jeff did a few more takes and that was that. Great stuff.





We now have an extended amount of time off from the film due to the fact that I will be working this entire weekend. I will get more fun stuff done tomorrow!

Eddie & Liz

This morning we worked on and talked about the Eddie scene over at John Andring's house. He lives about two minutes from my apartment, so the drive isn't too far. There is a rather big part that takes place in the neighborhood at night that is going to require a lot of planning and cooperation. It's going to be a tough scene, but I'm not trying to think about it yet. I should be thinking about it though, because I'd like to get ahold of two more cameras and with operators behind them. But enough of that, I'll post some photos from today:

Eddie's "Office" a.k.a that awesome creepy basement;
Night of the Hunter creepy.

In thinking about this sequence, it's been broken down into five parts. 1) Paul drives up to the house, scopes out the neighborhood 2) Paul rings doorbell, Eddie comes from the side 3) the two men talk in Eddie's "office", inside the basement 4) Paul talks with Kate, the lady in Eddie's living room, & 5) Eddie and Paul have final exchanges outside. 

This scene will be photographed on Wednesday, September 14th. Now all I need to do is find someone to play Kate. I'm fairly certain this won't be hard to cast, as several friends have already expressed interest in playing this brief character.

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At a little after 1:00pm, Jennifer showed up at my apartment. We ran through the first Liz and Paul scene for about 45 minutes or so, then we moved the action over to my parents house where we shot the scene. Even though another big scene that doesn't have anything to do with Liz will take place in the house, we shot in a living room. I shot it rather tight. We'll get away with it. 

So far with the production we seem to be averaging eight takes per scene. I think the most takes I ever did for anything project was 25. That's excessive, yet an idol of mine, Michael Mann, has been known to do maybe up to 100. That is nuts, and no-doubt wears the actors down.

After shooting one scene we rehearsed another part that will take place in the lobby of my apartment. 

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4 scenes shot, 96 more to go.

Tomorrow night we will either rehearse some stuff or shoot a few smaller Paul scenes. 

Rehearsal with the Four Friends

Today was the very first time Jeff, Harold, Rudy, Andy and myself ran through the two bigger scenes that involve the four best friends. The previous times we did it was without Andy because he hadn't been cast yet. Now today with Andy it was great to sit back and watch the entire thing unfold, and let me tell you, the chemistry amongst these four best friends since elementary school aura that's in the room feels authentic. As Harold said today, "You know when Justin really likes what he sees because he's off to the side, covering his mouth and almost giggling." That is true. I should probably not be near the action because I'll ruin it with my giddy excitement.

Rudy, Jeff, Harold and Andy

We've been developing a rather big scene three different ways, so now it's just finding the way it should be performed when the time comes to shoot it. I think we all figured out how it will be, but new things can happen on the day of photography. Wether it's talked about and rehearsed, a sudden improv moment or a happy accident of any other sort, it's something I welcome and embrace. 

Speaking of embracing a new idea, today we extended the intro to a scene by about a page of back and forth random chatter among the friends. If there is a "negative" side-affect to adding to too much to too many scenes, it's that the entire film could run a bit longer than originally thought. With the length you could suddenly be criticized for a "lack of focus". In general people will already probably view the finished film as something with a lack of focus. That's in part what I'm going for. So if these minute additional moments add to the whole losing focus debate, then I'm all for it.

The guys play with some cards . . .

'The Empire Strikes Back' cards. Sweeet.

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Tomorrow will be another good day. Rehearsing some scenes with John Andring in the morning, then Jennifer Prettyman in the afternoon -- possibly (probably) shooting at least one scene with her.

The amount of money raised continues to sit at $725, with a goal of $1,000. If you would like to donate $10, 20 or even 50 to this production, please click on the Donate button below.