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.

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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.

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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.

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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.