don’t be a jerk

Part II of my 72 Hour Film Shootout experience. You can read Part I here.

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I’m pretty nasty and wrecked when I wake up the next morning. I pop a couple of Excedrin and a red bull and head over to Rickmond’s wife’s shop with Neil.

We get there before Rickmond. He’s characteristically late, but I ain’t bitchin cause it’s a kick-ass (and free) location.

Here’s a rundown of our equipment:

• 1x rickety, eleven-year-old first-gen, Canon XL-1 with XLR adapter. I thought this thing was on it’s last legs 4 years ago, but it still refuses to die. (mine)
• 1x average quality Audiotechnica boom mic (mine)
• 2x China balls from Ikea with 100 watt lights inside them. We don’t want to go much higher than that and risk burning the paper. (Neil’s)
• 3x stingers (Neil’s)
• 3x 600 watt NRG lights with barndoors and pic stands (from our buddy Vince.)
• Assorted gels and diffusions, 3 large bounce boards, a boom pole, a bag of tools and adapters, a really crappy 13 inch bedside TV (to serve as our reference monitor), 2 sand bags. (from our buddy Abe)

From Alternative Rentals:

• 1x Fluid Head Tripod
• 1x Shure audio field mixer
• 2x C-stands. They don’t actually rent these out. We just figured they had to have some and we asked nicely.

With the exception of the stuff from Alternative Rentals, all the other equipments is pretty old and makeshift. No need to spend a lot of money. We had no idea what we were shooting when we gathered the equipment up, and Neil and I refused to spend any more than necessary on a what was undoubtedly going to be a very rushed and possibly shitty movie. To bad we had to rent the tripod though. Going hand-held and POV, we’re never going to need it.

The actors show up. I give them scripts. For the next few hours, the actors memorize lines and rehearse. The rest of us start lighting and dressing the set.

Being that it’s a store, the whole front wall is made up of large floor to ceiling windows. We don’t have duvetine, so we tape them over with heavy duty black trash bags. They don’t completely block out the light, but they do a good enough job, and we’re pretty certain that we’ll never be shooting in that direction.

We have no DP. All of our go-to people weren’t available, and we weren’t willing to hire one for this. Neil, Hannah, and I are going to be the cinematographers here. We’re not to thrilled about that, but since we’re shooting POV, the film will be a series of long, continuous shots. Editing will be a cinch, and the setups will be minimal.

That’s good thing cause it literally takes us hours to dress the set and light the first setup. Which isn’t a huge deal cause the actors are rehearsing and memorizing the entire time.

Our story could easily have been done as a 5 minute long continuous shot, which would have been really cool in many ways, but, seeing as how the actors only have a limited amount of time to memorize and rehearse, I’ve written in “break” points where we can cut the action and move onto another take, to be spliced together in editing.

By 2pm we’ve set up lights, rehearsed, and eaten lunch, and we’re ready to go. Damian tells me that he’s gotta be out by 7:30 to go to work.

Goddammit.

It’s okay though. We’re rehearsed. This really should go pretty quickly now that the actors are solid. We literally need to shoot no coverage. Only 3 scenes over 2 physical setups. It’s all about the camerawork and performance now.

Now the sound mixer doesn’t work.

If we were too lackadaisical about this whole project, one way it showed was in how we didn’t fully test the equipment beforehand. I had done a full camera test two nights before and Hannah had gotten a chance to mess around with it on the previous night, but we never actually hooked up and tested the Shure mixer.

Rickmond can’t get the mixer to stop distorting and blowing out the sound. Neil futzes with it, but to no avail. It’s 2:30pm at this point, and we still haven’t shot anything. I give them 5 minutes to fix it, and then we simply toss the Shure aside and plug the boom mic directly into the camera.

This means that now were are now not using the two pieces of equipment that we actually paid to rent. Sheesh.

Either way, the sound seems to work now, but now we can’t modulate the volume during the screaming scenes. Ah well.

We finally start shooting. I have several key moments that I want the actors to hit, and key camera movements that I want Hannah to hit, but aside from that, I let them play. We’re set up. We can do this a million times.

Oh wait, we can’t. Damian has to be out by 7:30.

Still it’s going well. As the camera op in a POV piece, Hannah becomes the 4th actor in the scene, and has a great time with it. I give her a lot of leeway with the camera and occasionally adjust her to make sure that her movements are adequately motivated.

I used Damian in the previous film that Neil and I did. I know a crapload of young Asian American actors in their 20s-30s. It’s nice to have a middle-aged Italian guy that I can throw in there every once in awhile. He’s fun to work with.

I’ve worked with Vivian and Tim for years, mainly in theater, and I know what to do with them both. Vivian is crazy but endearing, and Tim is a good combo of 6′+ rico-suave and high school nerd. For instance, I don’t know when the last time was that he dated, but 90% of his MySpace friends are hot chicks.

Just like in our old theater company days, I found it easier to write these roles knowing whom I was writing them for.

I also know that these guys will pick up on their shit really quick. I don’t mind working with less experienced actors, just as long as I have the time to do it. Sometimes it feels more like teaching a class than directing. If we’re on a 72 hour schedule, I want actors that will get their shit memorized pronto and understand my directions the first time around.

Tim’s character is named “Aaron” Vivian’s is “Kristina” Why? Because the costume designer on Neil’s last project was named Erin Tanaka, and she had a sister named Krystina Lei. Basically, I couldn’t initially think of names for these characters so this was good enough for me.

Neil’s ex-girlfriend, coincidentally, is also named Kristina. He bemoans the fact that this film and its totally flipped-out crazy Kristina character will probably ruin his chances of ever getting back together with her. Whatever. Man up, Neil.

Damian’s character is simply “Priest” I wasn’t going to waste any caffeine in trying to give him a name.

Once we start playing, the day is a blast. We’re cracking up the entire time. The script isn’t fully “haha” funny, but the whole storyline is so weird and ridiculous that we’re seriously thinking, “Okay, we’re either going to be one of the top 3 films with this one, or AAFilmLabs is going to ask us to never submit anything to them again.” It’s a great feeling.

We move onto the second setup. We’re riding the wire, but we’re doing alright on time before Damian is out. This scene is shorter than the other two, but involves some choreography craziness (a fight/scuffle), and a good deal of our time is spent fine tuning the actions and the camera movements.

I find another way to “break” the scene, right after Damian’s Priest dies (he died in our last film too - we’ve decided that we’re going to try killing him in every film we put him in) and the camera/POV goes to the floor. It’s 7:30 and I’m considering asking Damian to please stay 5 minutes longer when I realize that we’re both wearing jeans and dark sneakers. I’m wearing a brown t-shirt and he’s wearing a brown jacket. I had wanted to get a shot of Damian’s dead body on the ground in the last shot, but now I’ll just fill in and do it instead.

Funny, I had a cameo in our last film as a dead body as well. I’m primarily an actor, but all I seem to do in my own films is lie motionless on the ground.

We release Damian, thank him profusely, and we finish off the scene with me filling in for the dead body. Once I’m out of the scene, it’s actually kinda funny listening to the rest of the crew trying to direct the shot. Funny, but frustrating. I’ve really gotta learn how to be clearer about expressing what I want when I’m not actively directly a scene through a monitor.

We try one shot where a pool of blood slowly creeps into view of the camera/POV which is now on the ground on it’s side (is it Elizabeth Ong’s blood, or one of the other characters?) It fails miserably. We didn’t water down the syrupy fake blood enough so it just kinda spreads and stops in a very strange, sudden way. Unfortunately we can’t do this over and over again for fear of staining the floor. This is a great location and we’d like for Rickmond’s wife, Aiko, to allow us to shoot there again in the future.

We make due with the substandard pool of blood and we’re done at that location.

Now we have a film in the can, but the script actually has one more scene left to shoot - the first scene of the film, actually. It’s a “prologue” scene where Tim is seemingly talking to himself while looking into the trunk of a car (and we later realize that it’s Elizabeth Ong in the trunk.)

We sneak the shot at a UCLA parking lot with Naoya’s Accord, and a single China ball. Hint: the elevators in the UCLA parking structures each have a single electrical outlet.

We treat the cast and crew to a Mexican dinner at Poquito Mas, and send them on their merry way. Neil and I head back to my place.

Now we could sleep, but we decide to edit. I wanna have a rough of this thing done before I turn in for the night.

We’re pretty happy with what we’ve got. Neil can’t stop talking shit about how it’s only been about 32 hours and we’re almost done with the film. Man, that sure does come back and bite us in the ass later.

We have about 40 minutes of footage, but a very simple editing job. Still it takes us longer than we predicted. I don’t go to sleep until 4am.

At that point, in the past 44 hours, I have gotten 4 hours of sleep.