Monday, May 30, 2005
This is a first for us today: an all-day shoot. We're talking 13 hours or so. Not continuous shooting, but still...
Dan and I got up at 8:00 and set to work getting our location set: our apartment. Basically, this entailed cleaning it but also moving a few things around too. By 10:30 a.m. we had our cast for the day assembled: Me, Brett, and Christian. Our crew, Tony and Dan, as well.
We did just about all the apartment stuff, except when Buddy is apparently "dead." The sound is great, because we have thick walls and turned everything off, so I don't think we'll need to re-do audio much for this stuff.
The lights get pretty warm on everyone, but I think the heat inspired some great performances!
We were able to manipulate the sun to have it move over my eyes to "wake me up" by having Dan stand out on the balcony and use a poster board to shield the light, then slowly move it so the light traveled over my eyes.
The waking scene took a bit due to all the movement involved, to preserve continuity. But worth it totally: Tony said the footage looks great!
I had to spit water at Christian about ten times. We shot from multiple angles, a few of which were unexpectedly cool due to happenstance, like having the psychedelic light in the background, right behind my head. The last take was the best: a close-up of Christian where I REALLY soaked him. We broke for lunch then and finished up little things for the scenes before taking a few hours off so friends and family could be visited. Dan slept. Brett and I hacked to keep awake and alert.
Our night shooting went well. John McGuire was all nervous and self-conscious, something I found quite unexpected. At first he was also quite critical of our script until we spun the magic for him. He quickly resolved to our way of thinking.
We got a good chuck of shooting done at night. Picked up from where Jimmy hangs the phone up to our scattering from view in Room 15 following Lance's revelation.
All told, it was a long 13-hour day of film stuff, but spirits were high so it was never a problem. Christian pointed out that he, Brett, and I are gelling very well, playing off each other, and giving great performances on-screen.
Who could ask for more than that?!
Doug's Production Diary 14
Doug's Production Diary 13
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Long day!!
Dan and I got to work on thumbnails for the boys' apartment/waking up scene pretty quickly on. They are, of course, great thanks to Dan. Those took much of the morning, although we did have brunch while Tony worked.
Melissa was around for most of the afternoon but then she went home. I am really looking forward to a day of relax so we can spend time together. I think things will work out smashingly for us, but life is so busy and hectic right now I don't want her to think I'm blowing her off. But I don't think she does: she's really cool and awesome.
Anyhoo...got down to the biz around 7:00 p.m. when everyone involved was ready: Dan as Doug, Jay as post-performance Silver Man, me as director and Tony on camera.
It was fucking awesome!!
We shot it El Mariachi-style even more than we did the other day, to get a lot of great angles. All the shooting from multiple angles this way will help a ton when editing to have a nice flow and it will look like we had more than one camera and spent some time doing this.
I gotta say, Dan looks quite scary and menacing in his costume, and both he and Jay did really great. This scene is gonna rock!
And talk about timing; just as we finished, the sun went down completely and that was a wrap.
One final note on creative innovation: we realized after shooting almost everything that Jay was not wearing a backpack, as he had been earlier. So we re-shot the scene of him entering the alley. In the midst of that, he struggled a bit to get the backpack off and tossed it in Dan's way. Dan came in, paused to step over it, and continued on. It went off okay, and we were all happy that we could come up with this solution to our problem quickly and easily.
Doug's Production Diary 12
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Kind of a "day off" from the movie. We attempted to get hold of Foley for pictures, but it didn't pan out. There was talk of having the night off from Lure, but no. Brett and I did get done early though and tried to reach Foley again but could not.
It's at the point where work (at Lure) is like a day off in that while I'm there it's like a forced break from film stuff. In other words, waiting tables is easy.
