1st Day of Photography & Rehearsal with Jasmine

Today was the first day of actual principal photography. The scenes were slight and there weren't going to be any problems, but a sense of nervousness was still at the surface. I hadn't really directed anything this big since I worked on my first feature, which was years ago; 2006 to be exact. So, yes, it's been a while. I suppose I did make my crazy Willow Creek retro film, which was a lot of hard work, but now it was about to get real again.

Like all movies, the set-up takes far more time than the actual shooting of the scenes. The scenes we shot during the day take place at night, so that meant all windows had to be blocked.

Work light stand, painters pole, chrome grip head, mic pole and foam board.

Oh yes, classy sh*t. 

Giant sheets of paper cover the windows.

I don't have any production photographs because I was too busy shooting my movie with the camera I use to take all these pictures. Sorry. Also, we just gosh darn forgot.

Today I had the help from Mike Wedel and Jenn Lillemo. Mike was responsible for recording and monitoring sound with the H4n (he also bought the beer we used in the first scene), while Jenn was responsible for the clapper (she also brought a plate of brownies for everyone today, plus she voiced two characters during scenes we shot with Jeff).

As you can see below, just because it's a clapper doesn't mean it can't be fun.

How much did we shoot today? 3.75 pages. 3 scenes down, 97 more to go. Now as I'm looking back at my schedule and what we shot, I'm realizing I skipped over a scene we were supposed to get. I had blocked out shooting time from 2:00pm to 5:45pm. We shot from 2:30 to 5:00. I felt accomplished, yet I forgot another scene. That's fine because tomorrow was supposed to be a 6 hour day of rehearsals and wardrobe discussions, but that has been cut back to 4 hours (give or take), so we can use that additional time to photograph one more scene. 

Speaking of tomorrow, two scenes we're running in the afternoon will be Burke scenes. Earlier in the day Earl sent me some links with awesome bowling ties for Burke. 

I love this. Burke is a bit flamboyant with his love for bowling. I can't blame him. Earl, being the awesome guy that he is, insists on buying his own wardrobe. What a guy!

_______________

After photography we took a break and ate food at Pineda. That was not smart. We couldn't move we ate so much food. Jenn then went out to get coffee for everyone.

________________

This was the first day Jeff and Jasmine met each-other, but the meeting went very well. The two are open and have a lot of energy, so it wasn't awkward. Jasmine, being a non-actor, was very worried about rehearsals. I wasn't. We're working with a great group of actors, some have been at it for a while, while some just started, and others were curious about trying it out. It's nice and diverse. Everyone is very supportive. After all, we're all in this thing together. 

During the readings Jasmine was flirtatious, natural and low-key. She has nothing to be worried about. Yet it's not easy to read a written line out-loud in a way that's spontaneous. There needs to be an organic inflexion while reciting these words, yet everything is written, it's mostly calculated. It's not easy. At least I don't think it is, yet I'm not an actor. I don't know how they do what they do.  

I was very pleased after we ran through these scenes several times. We discussed various reasons for why the scenes take place, we took some stuff out and added some fun flavor in. We found the rhythm without over-doing it. These scenes won't be shot until the end of September, so we'll run over them again.

________________

Today was the first day of recording with the Zoom H4n. It's also my first experience with recording the audio separate from the video. Tonight I will upload all the sound and play around with syncing the two sources tomorrow night. I'll no doubt learn things along the way. I love audio and sound design, but I'm not entirely confident in that department. That's the primary reason we started with the scenes we shot. If we had to re-shoot them, at least they wouldn't be big back and forth multi-character scenes.

Until next time!