So we have our cast for Pricks. Most of them anyway. Today, we’re bringing them all down and see how they fare with each other. Before hand we’re having a meeting to gab about the show, as well as some other things that we need to talk about, such as Santa’s List, some Lot B stuff, some concert stuff, and other things.
So far this show has seen a communication breakdown. Yeah, that’s right. I referenced Zepplin. Eat me.
I’m thinking everyone is assuming that everyone else is jiving on the same page. It turns out that we’re not. It turns out that we all think everyone is talking to everyone else about the project, and we’re not. Bill and I discussed it, and we’d like to get everyone on the same page at this meeting today. It was originally scheduled for 11am, but after Bill and I talked yesterday, he would like the meeting for 10, because we got a lot of shit to go over.
Scheduling this meeting hasn’t been the easiest thing to do either. Pat Murphy, who plays Cleon in our Lot B series, is the lead in this script, but he’s back to school at Guelph. He’s bussing it down here, but there isn’t the appropriate bus to ride on the weekend, so we have to push the cast read through back until two, and someone is going to have to go pick him up in Hamilton at 1:30 or so.
So after dragging my ass out of bed at 8, I get the hankering to watch the remake of 3:10 to Yuma again at about 9:30. I bring my laptop outside and start watching the flick, planning on turning it off when people start arriving.
I totally dug this flick the first time I saw it, and it’s even better the second time. I don’t know why, but I’m really inspired by westerns lately, and while I’m peeping out the movie, I’m getting some good ideas for my own script I have yet to pen for LA Director.
Alicia calls and says she’s running a little late as she had to print up some extra copies of the script. That’s cool, because I’m really into the movie, and a little more than halfway now and I’d like to finish it.
Bill calls at around a quarter after ten and tells me he should be hitting the road in five.
Alicia arrives at about 10:30 and we wait for Bill and Steve.
At about ten after eleven Bill shows up and explains that the reason he’s late is because he just got off the phone with Steve, who I guess was unaware of the meeting. It’s the climax of the flick, so I ain’t turning it off for anyone now. We wait for Steve while Russell Crowe and Christian Bale finish their turns of being badass cowboys.
Steve arrives and we start the meeting, flying through it like no meeting before. I’m glad I wrote out an itinerary of shit we needed to cover the night before with Bill. The only thing we don’t have time to get into is Santa’s List. The important stuff is out of the way though, meaning Pricks, which is on the immediate horizon. The only reason I wanted to talk about Santa’s List is because I know if we don’t jump on that, it’s going to arrive and bite us in the ass unprepared. I like being prepared. That way I don’t get bite marks in the ass.
Bill and Steve book to Hamilton to pick up Pat while Alicia jets to pick up Jaimie Godard from his house, who is a friend of hers that acted in King of Hearts, and Dean Buchanan, a dude she worked with before, who is being grabbed from the bus terminal.
Alicia comes back with Jaimie and Dean, who are both totally cool cats. Andrea Szyjka (don’t even ask me how to pronounce that) arrives, who is a friend of Steve’s, and is playing a role in this show as well. She’s a cool chick I met back when we shot the first incarnation of Neighborhood Watch at her house. I say first incarnation because I believe it’s on the backburner as something we’re going to shoot again.
We kick around shooting the shit for awhile until Bill and Steve arrive with Pat and Cheryl, who is also playing a role, in tow. Joe Vomvas would round out the cast we have right now, but is unable to make the reading.
We go through the script a couple of times, much like the read through of Desolation Row, on my back deck, then move the activities to my backyard, which I am now calling a ‘grand backyard.’
I call it that because it’s huge.
The day goes pretty well with Alicia and me filling in for a couple of roles, and then me filling in the shoes of the great Joe Vomvas. Joe, I hope I did you justice buddy.
The read through ends, and Steve and Cheryl take Pat to his place where he’s hitching a ride with his Dad back to Guelph. Alicia and I give Dean a ride to Chapters where he’s meeting up with his woman, and drop Jaimie off back at home. Andrea skips off on her own at some point, but who cares, she’s a Baltimore Ravens fan.
Let me clarify a bit. I’m a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Baltimore and Pittsburgh don’t get along. Mainly because Baltimore sucks but they fail to realize it. Case closed.
Bill also takes off to go to his bowling league. Check it, I’m tired of people digging into Bill because he’s in a bowling league. You guys are all just jealous. I’ve been in bowling leagues before, and not only is that shit fun as hell, I knocked the balls out of those leagues. You want to challenge my ten pin skillz, hit me up biotch, and we’ll do it right.
Later on that night we head to the Grim to check out some locations for the shoot. We kick around the Grim for a bit, then head to Vineland and Beamsville, which are both a bust. Back in St. Catharines, we find one location that might be suitable.
I’m the director of photography for this show, and it looks like Bill’s going for locations which are already lit, so it’s going to make my job a hell of a lot easier. I was thinking we would have to lug the generator out and do it up with some extra crew. We might need another hand with the dolly which Bill has planned to use, but this show will hopefully be easier than I thought. We’re hoping to get Bob back into the mix to snap some pics and do some crew as well. I hope he’s up for it. I miss that dude.
At some point in the next week, we’ll have to go jump to Niagara on the Lake for a location we still need. We go into production on this in about two weeks, so while we have most of our shit together, there’re still some ends we need to tie up.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
From August 26th, to September 20th, 2008
A long time since a diary entry huh?
Well, a lot has happened in the near month I haven’t written anything.
I’m guessing most people that peep this diary out are people that know me, and as such, are aware of the major change my life has taken thanks to an email that got circulated around. I had no plans of making this public at all, but since my hand was dealt for me, I might as well, but I’m not going to talk too much about it.
Sue and I broke up but we are going to try and remain friends. She is still a very important person to me that I care for, and we have a lot of history together, so I’m hoping we can make the friendship work.
That’s all I’m going to say about it.
During this time, I have put all the footage of the past three projects (Desolation Row, Episode 4, and the Quest for the Past Concert) into my computer. There was one snag, and this is going into geeky tech shit right now, so skip ahead if you don’t dig on that.
The new drive I bought, I basically just plugged it in and went to town, not thinking about what kind of format the drive was in, and truthfully, not caring. It turns out that it was in a FAT 32 format.
A FAT32 you say?
Yes, a FAT32. What that means is that the drive has a maximum file size. So I could only put and save files up to a certain size on the drive. But why is that important you ask? Here’s why it’s important.
I wanted to capture each individual tape from the concert as one big file. Video files are pretty big. As such, I could only input about 18 minutes of footage at a time onto the drive, and not the hour I wanted to. So, the capture process would stop, I would have to start it again, and later on have to try and sync it back up to the footage before it stopped.
This is a ridiculous process, so I learned how to reformat my drive into an NTFS drive, which doesn’t have a file size limit. Once I did that, I recaptured all the tapes again, then synced them all up with one another.
Well, almost all the tapes.
It turns out I’m missing one, and we can’t seem to find it anywhere. It was the final tape for the encore, and as much as I want to really dig into editing this beast, I don’t feel right doing so without this final tape.
The search continues…
I also felt the need to clean up my living space, so that took a couple of weeks to do, because the shit was dank. Cleaning is a metaphor for life and when something is out of order, cleaning is a good way to get it straight again. My living situation cleaned up, I started back to work on Desolation Row.
I’m not sure how others edit, but the way I handle it is very meticulously. I edit in a way that I get the best performances out of the actors for every single line they say. I don’t want to go too much into the whole process here, but I’m about 11 scenes away from finishing my assembly cut of the flick. Right now, it’s running about two hours or so, then I’ll choose which takes and such to use to get my rough cut.
I don’t know what my plan is right now. We still have other shit to shoot for the concert, so I might do the assembly cut of Desolation Row, then do the assembly of Episode 4, then move to a rough cut of the Row again if we still haven’t shot the rest of the footage we need for the concert.
The assembly cuts are so boring to do, I think this might be the best way to dive from one show to the next without feeling the bog down of having to start something all over again.
During all this, I’ve also been plugging away at the script for the LA Director. I’ve basically been given the green light to write whatever I want. At least I think I have. It sounds like a sweet deal, but it’s a little hectic of a process when you don’t exactly have a story in mind. I’ve got probably close to ten pages of notes that I’ve been scribbling down, and I know the story is pretty close to falling out of my head and onto the page. Most of the pieces are there, I’m just waiting for it to coagulate in my brain. Too bad my brain is on thinners it seems.
We’re also gearing up for another couple of projects that will be shot almost back to back again, but on a smaller scale: Pricks, penned by Steve and directed by Bill, and Santa’s List, penned by me, and directed by Bill, and starring me. Yeah, that’s right baby. Carey Lewis is making his way to the big screen!
Well, maybe not to a big screen, but definitely onto a DVD that you can watch at your own convenience. Well, maybe not at your own convenience, but definitely when I sit your ass down and make you watch it.
We’ve had a few preliminary talks about Pricks, among other things, such as Santa’s List, as well as the Stag and Doe for Bill and Leanne. It falls close to Halloween, so we’re hoping to make it a huge party as well. There’s a live band there and people are encouraged to go in costume, so it should be good times. Come and check it out.
If you don’t, I’ll kill you.
Well, a lot has happened in the near month I haven’t written anything.
I’m guessing most people that peep this diary out are people that know me, and as such, are aware of the major change my life has taken thanks to an email that got circulated around. I had no plans of making this public at all, but since my hand was dealt for me, I might as well, but I’m not going to talk too much about it.
Sue and I broke up but we are going to try and remain friends. She is still a very important person to me that I care for, and we have a lot of history together, so I’m hoping we can make the friendship work.
That’s all I’m going to say about it.
During this time, I have put all the footage of the past three projects (Desolation Row, Episode 4, and the Quest for the Past Concert) into my computer. There was one snag, and this is going into geeky tech shit right now, so skip ahead if you don’t dig on that.
The new drive I bought, I basically just plugged it in and went to town, not thinking about what kind of format the drive was in, and truthfully, not caring. It turns out that it was in a FAT 32 format.
A FAT32 you say?
Yes, a FAT32. What that means is that the drive has a maximum file size. So I could only put and save files up to a certain size on the drive. But why is that important you ask? Here’s why it’s important.
I wanted to capture each individual tape from the concert as one big file. Video files are pretty big. As such, I could only input about 18 minutes of footage at a time onto the drive, and not the hour I wanted to. So, the capture process would stop, I would have to start it again, and later on have to try and sync it back up to the footage before it stopped.
This is a ridiculous process, so I learned how to reformat my drive into an NTFS drive, which doesn’t have a file size limit. Once I did that, I recaptured all the tapes again, then synced them all up with one another.
Well, almost all the tapes.
It turns out I’m missing one, and we can’t seem to find it anywhere. It was the final tape for the encore, and as much as I want to really dig into editing this beast, I don’t feel right doing so without this final tape.
The search continues…
I also felt the need to clean up my living space, so that took a couple of weeks to do, because the shit was dank. Cleaning is a metaphor for life and when something is out of order, cleaning is a good way to get it straight again. My living situation cleaned up, I started back to work on Desolation Row.
I’m not sure how others edit, but the way I handle it is very meticulously. I edit in a way that I get the best performances out of the actors for every single line they say. I don’t want to go too much into the whole process here, but I’m about 11 scenes away from finishing my assembly cut of the flick. Right now, it’s running about two hours or so, then I’ll choose which takes and such to use to get my rough cut.
I don’t know what my plan is right now. We still have other shit to shoot for the concert, so I might do the assembly cut of Desolation Row, then do the assembly of Episode 4, then move to a rough cut of the Row again if we still haven’t shot the rest of the footage we need for the concert.
The assembly cuts are so boring to do, I think this might be the best way to dive from one show to the next without feeling the bog down of having to start something all over again.
During all this, I’ve also been plugging away at the script for the LA Director. I’ve basically been given the green light to write whatever I want. At least I think I have. It sounds like a sweet deal, but it’s a little hectic of a process when you don’t exactly have a story in mind. I’ve got probably close to ten pages of notes that I’ve been scribbling down, and I know the story is pretty close to falling out of my head and onto the page. Most of the pieces are there, I’m just waiting for it to coagulate in my brain. Too bad my brain is on thinners it seems.
We’re also gearing up for another couple of projects that will be shot almost back to back again, but on a smaller scale: Pricks, penned by Steve and directed by Bill, and Santa’s List, penned by me, and directed by Bill, and starring me. Yeah, that’s right baby. Carey Lewis is making his way to the big screen!
Well, maybe not to a big screen, but definitely onto a DVD that you can watch at your own convenience. Well, maybe not at your own convenience, but definitely when I sit your ass down and make you watch it.
We’ve had a few preliminary talks about Pricks, among other things, such as Santa’s List, as well as the Stag and Doe for Bill and Leanne. It falls close to Halloween, so we’re hoping to make it a huge party as well. There’s a live band there and people are encouraged to go in costume, so it should be good times. Come and check it out.
If you don’t, I’ll kill you.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Monday, August 25th, 2008: Shoot Day # 11 on VH Guitar, Last Day of Production
Today is a sad day. The last day of production on Episode 4: The Van Halen Guitar. It’s also much more than that. It’s also the last day on possibly the best summer of my life.
We’ve been shooting non-stop for about two months now, and the pre-production on these projects began months before the summer actually came. Yes, we’ll work together again, and yes it will hopefully be soon. But just because you know there’s going to be other family reunions doesn’t mean you’re not sad when this one has to end.
But let’s get on with the show before we go to nostalgia.
Today is a staggered day with the cast arrivals and departures. We start out with the Boppers, as this is a day of basically Ajax kicking ass. So we’ll have Mac, Pat, and Mike, as well as Irish, Harry, and Keith, who will be reprising his role of Chiles on the last day of production.
The Boppers, Harry, and Alicia meet up at my joint before we head out. It turns out that in the hectic departure from the Dunner last night, Bill put the audio gear into his car before he scooted off to work. We won’t have him for the first half of the day as he just got off the midnight shift and needs to catch some sleep before he’s useful.
I’m not sure about everyone else, but I kind of don’t want to go. If we go, then we have to shoot, which brings us closer to having this end. Bill arrives to drop off the gear, and kicks around for a bit with us. We laugh about all the donuts Bill brought over, and this causes Sue to get sick, as she’s been sick ever since chowing down on some of Bills day olds.
Now, I’m a rotten human being. This kind of shit makes me laugh. She told me she was going to get sick from the donut talk, and I did nothing to stop it. I wanted to chuckle. So after she cleans herself up and comes back outside, I immediately start talking about donuts again.
I really don’t know what’s wrong with me.
So we eventually pack up the gear and head out to the park once more to begin finishing off the day.
The first scene that we’re shooting is the end of the scene we picked up here last time. The Boppers select Bulldog as the person Ajax has to jump in order to get into the gang and go from his blue plaid shirt to his read plaid shirt. We shot Cleon and Cochise selecting Bulldog for Ajax to jump; now we have to shoot the actual jumping.
Ajax does his business with a lead pipe. I figured Steve would have found some cardboard tube and a way to paint it to look real. Nah, that’s not Steve’s style. Steve went and got a machined tube from Home Hardware.
I break out the Glidecam, and we get to work rehearsing the scene and doing the hits slowly, because I can always speed it up in post to make it look more vicious. It goes pretty well, and we get all the coverage I’m hoping we’ll need. We chill out for about ten minutes before Keith arrives to shoot his scenes, and we move deeper into the park.
We greet Keith and then I start looking through my notes for the next scene. We grab a shot of the busy park, a long shot of Keith sitting on the bench, and then we start shooting the Boppers, who are now telling Ajax to jump Chiles. Mike throws in a bit of ad-lib at the end, and I like it, so we use it.
We run into a small problem while shooting this scene. It turns out that we’re not the only ones who like this park. The YMCA runs a traveling playground, so today they bring all the handicapped kids to the park and turn the joint into a jamboree. I really don’t want all these unfortunate kids running through my shots and running around in the background, so doing a shot selection is a little tricky now. We get through it with no real problems, other than one kid in particular screaming like a banshee and trying to grab our shit.
It’s cool though. If that would’ve kept up, I could’ve totally taken out that kid. I’m pretty sure of it.
The real spectacle of the bus loads of kids and their handlers was a fat man walking around with two fanny packs snapping pics of all the kids. I’m really hoping the dude was with them or the newspaper, because that’s pretty creepy shit.
Come to think of it, whenever I get bored I might just skip off to that park. There always seems to be entertaining shit going on there, whether it be slow kids running around, fat men with fanny packs waddling around taking pictures, or people in bikinis walking in some weird pattern on the field.
Real life is more entertaining then TV.
After we shoot Pat and Mike’s part, they’re wrapped until four, where we’re once again, back to the bank. Mike takes off with his girlfriend somewhere, and Pat takes off to wherever Pat goes when he’s not entertaining the shit out of me.
We move over to the bench where Chiles does his business and quickly kick off the scene where Ajax does the actual jumping of Chiles. It goes pretty quickly, and now Mac is wrapped until four. He bounces to wherever he goes when he’s not beating people down with a pipe.
We have one more scene to shoot before Steve arrives, but there’s a small problem that we never thought of.
Bulldog has a wound on his face when he meets up with Chiles, but when he beats on Steve, who’s making the final part of his cameo, he is pre-beating. What this means is that Alicia would have to apply the wound for the scene with Chiles, take it off for the scene with Steve, and then reapply it and then some, for our final sequence at the bank.
She doesn’t have much makeup left, and is doing all this for free, and sacrificing her kit for us, so we decide that we’ll just wait for Steve, do his scene first, and then apply the wound, and shoot the scene with Keith.
So now it’s lunch time.
Sue runs home to grab more sandwiches my Dad made as well as some salads he bought. We didn’t want to return home to eat in fear that when we get back, our picnic table will be gone.
We chill for a bit filling Keith in on the production and chatting a bit. The weird part comes when I have to walk across the park to go to the washroom. I’ve played soccer all my life growing up, so stepping on that field, even just to cross it, is a weird feeling. I feel like I should look up and scope for the ball. It definitely brought me back, and on this day when I’m already feeling bummed for the last day of shooting, this didn’t help. Just another thing reminding me of something that’s gone that I thoroughly enjoyed. I know I can go into a mens league if I wanted to, but I’m too fat, I smoke too much, running has never been my thing, and people in the mens league take the shit too serious.
However, if I could smoke and play while making fun of people and not have to move too much, I’m so signing up.
While we’re all relaxing, Steve calls and says that he’s going to be a half hour late or so. We continue to chill and about five minutes before Steve is to arrive, we start preparing to shoot again. Bill arrives during our lunch break as well, so now I don’t have to operate the camera and direct at the same time. Not that it’s a hard thing to do with this cast. There’s not much direction involved when it comes to them.
As we’re shooting Bulldogs arrival into the park, Steve arrives and gets ready in his car in the background of the shot. I want to keep rolling, because for some reason I find this funny. We get it done, and then we shoot Harry punching Steve in the face. Steve rigged his prop glasses to fly off his head when he gets hit. This guy is amazing. Every time he swings his head back, the glasses come flying off.
We knock it off pretty quick, and then move over and set up the camera for the Bulldog/ Chiles scene while Alicia applies the wound to Harry.
Harry and Keith have decided, unbeknownst to me, to make a burner out of the first take. I guess a burner is when you totally flub the take on purpose in the hopes of getting laughs. Well, it wasn’t that funny but it was actually a good thing, because we decided to ad-lib another line at the end that came out of the burner.
We bang out the scene pretty quickly, and wrap Keith. Another production where we shoot all of his scenes in one day. Since we’re running behind, everyone came back to the park to meet up with us. We grab the voice over from earlier that we couldn’t do because we couldn’t get audio while the camera was on the Glidecam.
Our goodbyes are said to Keith and we’re off to the bank for the final sequence we’ll shoot on this show.
We get to the bank and quickly shoot the first shot, which is Ajax now coming out of the bank. Then we head to the back of the parking lot to shoot The Mick and Bulldog watching Ajax leave the bank. We bang it out, then move to the back of the bank to wrap the show.
The scene at the back of the bank is fairly short, but there’s a lot of people in it, and quite a bit going on. This is one of the scenes that I didn’t storyboard and now wish I did. I get everyone to walk through the scene, and I’ll figure out camera positions as we go through it.
This is how often I don’t have storyboards for a scene: I’m trying to figure out a way to shoot, and I’m told constantly by three or more people to grab my binder and look in there. Even after I tell him I don’t have storyboards for this scene, and my production book is useless to me right now, I’m still told to grab the binder and look at my notes. It just wasn’t sinking in that for once, I haven’t storyboarded.
I decide to record a master shot, which I haven’t done in awhile, and we eventually get everyone into marks where we can see them all, and roll through that shot. Then we go and get some pickups. This scene, as well as the last scene we shot back here involving Nigel, is really two scenes in one, which makes it tricky.
Pat and Mike are standing at the back of the bank waiting for Ajax to arrive with the loot. While they’re waiting, they’re going on about the funniest shit until Ajax arrives. Here’s one example.
“See you have to kick, just keep kicking like this.”
“Wow, that’s impressive, do you do yoga?”
“No, I just do lots of kicks.”
The one that Mac couldn’t handle though, was the “scalp pull.” Apparently, it’s when you grab someone’s scalp and pull it off using your teeth.
We roll through the scene, with only one interruption from a fat woman walking her cat on a leash telling us to keep it down. Yeah, fat women walking cats on a leash telling you to keep it down at six or seven pm is really an intimidating factor. She rumbles off, we finish off our last few shots and wrap the Boppers and Irish.
We have one last thing to do, which is to catch Harry’s voice over that we missed from the third day of shooting. We roll it out and I give Bill the honors. Bill likes to wrap everything “for production.” I’d say that we’re wrapping the dolly for the day, and Bill would pipe up “for production.”
I give him a chance to wrap the production and the fucker chokes. I say, “go ahead Bill,” and a look of confusion crosses his face. I tell him to wrap the production, and he doesn’t know what to say. Eventually he spits out that the production is wrapped for production. Definitely an anti-climactic moment.
The Boppers jet, as well as Irish, and we pack up our shit and jet for the part of the day Harry’s been looking forward to the most: my Dad’s Sloppy Joes. Writing that, it seems incredibly dirty. Fuck it, it’s not my Sloppy Joe that Harry’s going to eat.
We get back to my place, unload the gear and put it in its proper place once again, and kick it on my back deck for awhile. Leanne drops by as well to sample my Dads Joes. We all sit around and talk for awhile and I really don’t want the day, or I guess you could say night now, to end. While we’re chowing down, we start talking about what exactly makes you gay, and start trying to make rules. It turns out that the line isn’t as bright as you would think.
Obviously we all talk about the production too and how great of a time we all had. I really can’t believe it’s all over. I’m trying to keep everyone here as long as I can, but I know Alicia has to jet to go camping for a few days, and I know Harry can’t stay here forever, no matter how bad he or I would like him to.
Eventually, Bill and Leanne bounce, leaving Sue, myself, Alicia and Harry. I’m feeling downright retarded about now, and I think me and Harry are doing a good job of acting that way. Sue and Alicia just sit back and watch the show.
We decide to play another game of Scene-It, which has seemed to have become the thing to do since Logan came down. During the first round, I get a call from Bill who’s designing the poster. He sends me a pic of the actual replica guitar to see if it’s the right one, and it is. As a result of this conversation, I miss playing the entire first round.
It’s a tight race for the first place position between me and Alicia, but during the Final Cut round, I end up pulling it out by six hundred points. Victory.
We head out onto the deck again and chill for longer, all the while Alicia is getting calls and texts from her camping partners. It turns out the plan is to leave at 4am, go grocery shopping for a couple of hours, drive the three hours to the place, then sleep for three hours at the camp grounds, then they can start the “vacation.”
First of all, I don’t think I could even go camping this soon after wrapping. I’m pretty sure I would need a day or two to decompress. Actually, maybe I could go camping to get my mind off the vast nothingness my life is about to become once again. I don’t know, but I know that with these timelines and the constant check-ins, it don’t sound like much of a vacation to me. Call me crazy, but my version of a vacation doesn’t have an itinerary.
Actually, I’m not sure when the last time I went on a vacation is. I don’t think I need one to tell you the truth. I never felt the need to go away somewhere and escape, but like I said, I’m pretty weird that way. I mean, who else laughs when other people get hurt and when they puke?
Regardless of my self inflection just then, Alicia keeps getting calls, and it seems that the plan keeps changing. Being in the mood I’m in, I can’t help it but laugh uncontrollably when the last call comes in. Both Harry and I crack up but try to stifle the hilarity. Alicia gets off the phone and tells us we didn’t do a good job, because Andrea thinks that we’re laughing at her.
Andrea, we weren’t laughing at you at all. The stupidest things are making us laugh right now. It’s been a long ride and there’s a lot of shit going through our heads right now. We’re downright retarded, so please don’t take any offense to us. I blew smoke into a coke bottle then laughed hysterically when I squeezed the bottle and the smoke came out. Really, you’re going to get offended by someone who laughs at something as stupid as that?
That’s like being offended because the dog chose your lawn on the street to drop bricks on. The dog just has to go and your lawn looked good.
Harry and I joke around that we should go crash their camp site. We’re convinced that we would be the life of the whole campground and people would travel from their lots to come and watch us regale them with awesomeness. We would be Gods in that campground. I’m actually half tempted to do it. Yeah, I’m that retarded right now.
Eventually, Alicia and Harry take off and I start trying to capture the footage from the past little while that I haven’t been able to do. I decide to call it a night when I pass out in front of the computer.
The last day of principle photography for the Van Halen Guitar is officially over. However, we do still have one more thing to shoot for it. Something no one except the Rebels know about.
Now that the show’s over, onto the nostalgia.
I can’t believe it’s all over. I can’t remember a better summer that I’ve ever had. I’m having a hard time actually putting it into words. Not only did I get to do what I love to do all summer long, but I’ve also met a lot of really good people, and bonded more with others that I knew for years.
Harry and I first met on the set of Wonderland, my first feature film, which we shot in 2004, so I’ve known this cat for four years now. I think we really ended up getting a lot closer this summer than we have in the past four years. Irish, I also met on Wonderland, and it was great to have him involved again, and again, I think we had a lot of fun together on this show.
Alicia and Steve I met only early this year or so, and I can’t believe how close we’ve all gotten with each other. Well, I don’t know if they feel the same way, but fuck ‘em, this is my diary.
The cast on Desolation Row, as well as Episode 4 feel like a big family to me. Maybe a family I like more than my real one. Speaking of vacation, to me, shooting this summer has felt like a vacation. It was way too much fun. More fun than people should be allowed. Yeah, sure, we’ve had problems, but the good definitely outweighs the bad. The juice was worth the squeeze.
I really can’t believe everything we’ve pulled off this summer either. Sure, I guess you can classify these flicks as “shorts” but they’ll be around 40- 50 minutes. They’re not very short. You also throw in a concert that we prepped for while knee deep in production on another show, as well as all the challenges and obstacles we’ve had to overcome and the situations we put ourselves in…. well, it was just quite the experience, let’s put it that way.
I’m having a hard time accepting that it’s over. I still have a lot of work ahead of me, but it’s not going to be nearly as much fun, because all that work will be in solitary. Like I said before, the fun part of shooting is hanging out with some really cool people you don’t get to see enough.
So, as cliché as it sounds, that’s a wrap.
We’ve been shooting non-stop for about two months now, and the pre-production on these projects began months before the summer actually came. Yes, we’ll work together again, and yes it will hopefully be soon. But just because you know there’s going to be other family reunions doesn’t mean you’re not sad when this one has to end.
But let’s get on with the show before we go to nostalgia.
Today is a staggered day with the cast arrivals and departures. We start out with the Boppers, as this is a day of basically Ajax kicking ass. So we’ll have Mac, Pat, and Mike, as well as Irish, Harry, and Keith, who will be reprising his role of Chiles on the last day of production.
The Boppers, Harry, and Alicia meet up at my joint before we head out. It turns out that in the hectic departure from the Dunner last night, Bill put the audio gear into his car before he scooted off to work. We won’t have him for the first half of the day as he just got off the midnight shift and needs to catch some sleep before he’s useful.
I’m not sure about everyone else, but I kind of don’t want to go. If we go, then we have to shoot, which brings us closer to having this end. Bill arrives to drop off the gear, and kicks around for a bit with us. We laugh about all the donuts Bill brought over, and this causes Sue to get sick, as she’s been sick ever since chowing down on some of Bills day olds.
Now, I’m a rotten human being. This kind of shit makes me laugh. She told me she was going to get sick from the donut talk, and I did nothing to stop it. I wanted to chuckle. So after she cleans herself up and comes back outside, I immediately start talking about donuts again.
I really don’t know what’s wrong with me.
So we eventually pack up the gear and head out to the park once more to begin finishing off the day.
The first scene that we’re shooting is the end of the scene we picked up here last time. The Boppers select Bulldog as the person Ajax has to jump in order to get into the gang and go from his blue plaid shirt to his read plaid shirt. We shot Cleon and Cochise selecting Bulldog for Ajax to jump; now we have to shoot the actual jumping.
Ajax does his business with a lead pipe. I figured Steve would have found some cardboard tube and a way to paint it to look real. Nah, that’s not Steve’s style. Steve went and got a machined tube from Home Hardware.
I break out the Glidecam, and we get to work rehearsing the scene and doing the hits slowly, because I can always speed it up in post to make it look more vicious. It goes pretty well, and we get all the coverage I’m hoping we’ll need. We chill out for about ten minutes before Keith arrives to shoot his scenes, and we move deeper into the park.
We greet Keith and then I start looking through my notes for the next scene. We grab a shot of the busy park, a long shot of Keith sitting on the bench, and then we start shooting the Boppers, who are now telling Ajax to jump Chiles. Mike throws in a bit of ad-lib at the end, and I like it, so we use it.
We run into a small problem while shooting this scene. It turns out that we’re not the only ones who like this park. The YMCA runs a traveling playground, so today they bring all the handicapped kids to the park and turn the joint into a jamboree. I really don’t want all these unfortunate kids running through my shots and running around in the background, so doing a shot selection is a little tricky now. We get through it with no real problems, other than one kid in particular screaming like a banshee and trying to grab our shit.
It’s cool though. If that would’ve kept up, I could’ve totally taken out that kid. I’m pretty sure of it.
The real spectacle of the bus loads of kids and their handlers was a fat man walking around with two fanny packs snapping pics of all the kids. I’m really hoping the dude was with them or the newspaper, because that’s pretty creepy shit.
Come to think of it, whenever I get bored I might just skip off to that park. There always seems to be entertaining shit going on there, whether it be slow kids running around, fat men with fanny packs waddling around taking pictures, or people in bikinis walking in some weird pattern on the field.
Real life is more entertaining then TV.
After we shoot Pat and Mike’s part, they’re wrapped until four, where we’re once again, back to the bank. Mike takes off with his girlfriend somewhere, and Pat takes off to wherever Pat goes when he’s not entertaining the shit out of me.
We move over to the bench where Chiles does his business and quickly kick off the scene where Ajax does the actual jumping of Chiles. It goes pretty quickly, and now Mac is wrapped until four. He bounces to wherever he goes when he’s not beating people down with a pipe.
We have one more scene to shoot before Steve arrives, but there’s a small problem that we never thought of.
Bulldog has a wound on his face when he meets up with Chiles, but when he beats on Steve, who’s making the final part of his cameo, he is pre-beating. What this means is that Alicia would have to apply the wound for the scene with Chiles, take it off for the scene with Steve, and then reapply it and then some, for our final sequence at the bank.
She doesn’t have much makeup left, and is doing all this for free, and sacrificing her kit for us, so we decide that we’ll just wait for Steve, do his scene first, and then apply the wound, and shoot the scene with Keith.
So now it’s lunch time.
Sue runs home to grab more sandwiches my Dad made as well as some salads he bought. We didn’t want to return home to eat in fear that when we get back, our picnic table will be gone.
We chill for a bit filling Keith in on the production and chatting a bit. The weird part comes when I have to walk across the park to go to the washroom. I’ve played soccer all my life growing up, so stepping on that field, even just to cross it, is a weird feeling. I feel like I should look up and scope for the ball. It definitely brought me back, and on this day when I’m already feeling bummed for the last day of shooting, this didn’t help. Just another thing reminding me of something that’s gone that I thoroughly enjoyed. I know I can go into a mens league if I wanted to, but I’m too fat, I smoke too much, running has never been my thing, and people in the mens league take the shit too serious.
However, if I could smoke and play while making fun of people and not have to move too much, I’m so signing up.
While we’re all relaxing, Steve calls and says that he’s going to be a half hour late or so. We continue to chill and about five minutes before Steve is to arrive, we start preparing to shoot again. Bill arrives during our lunch break as well, so now I don’t have to operate the camera and direct at the same time. Not that it’s a hard thing to do with this cast. There’s not much direction involved when it comes to them.
As we’re shooting Bulldogs arrival into the park, Steve arrives and gets ready in his car in the background of the shot. I want to keep rolling, because for some reason I find this funny. We get it done, and then we shoot Harry punching Steve in the face. Steve rigged his prop glasses to fly off his head when he gets hit. This guy is amazing. Every time he swings his head back, the glasses come flying off.
We knock it off pretty quick, and then move over and set up the camera for the Bulldog/ Chiles scene while Alicia applies the wound to Harry.
Harry and Keith have decided, unbeknownst to me, to make a burner out of the first take. I guess a burner is when you totally flub the take on purpose in the hopes of getting laughs. Well, it wasn’t that funny but it was actually a good thing, because we decided to ad-lib another line at the end that came out of the burner.
We bang out the scene pretty quickly, and wrap Keith. Another production where we shoot all of his scenes in one day. Since we’re running behind, everyone came back to the park to meet up with us. We grab the voice over from earlier that we couldn’t do because we couldn’t get audio while the camera was on the Glidecam.
Our goodbyes are said to Keith and we’re off to the bank for the final sequence we’ll shoot on this show.
We get to the bank and quickly shoot the first shot, which is Ajax now coming out of the bank. Then we head to the back of the parking lot to shoot The Mick and Bulldog watching Ajax leave the bank. We bang it out, then move to the back of the bank to wrap the show.
The scene at the back of the bank is fairly short, but there’s a lot of people in it, and quite a bit going on. This is one of the scenes that I didn’t storyboard and now wish I did. I get everyone to walk through the scene, and I’ll figure out camera positions as we go through it.
This is how often I don’t have storyboards for a scene: I’m trying to figure out a way to shoot, and I’m told constantly by three or more people to grab my binder and look in there. Even after I tell him I don’t have storyboards for this scene, and my production book is useless to me right now, I’m still told to grab the binder and look at my notes. It just wasn’t sinking in that for once, I haven’t storyboarded.
I decide to record a master shot, which I haven’t done in awhile, and we eventually get everyone into marks where we can see them all, and roll through that shot. Then we go and get some pickups. This scene, as well as the last scene we shot back here involving Nigel, is really two scenes in one, which makes it tricky.
Pat and Mike are standing at the back of the bank waiting for Ajax to arrive with the loot. While they’re waiting, they’re going on about the funniest shit until Ajax arrives. Here’s one example.
“See you have to kick, just keep kicking like this.”
“Wow, that’s impressive, do you do yoga?”
“No, I just do lots of kicks.”
The one that Mac couldn’t handle though, was the “scalp pull.” Apparently, it’s when you grab someone’s scalp and pull it off using your teeth.
We roll through the scene, with only one interruption from a fat woman walking her cat on a leash telling us to keep it down. Yeah, fat women walking cats on a leash telling you to keep it down at six or seven pm is really an intimidating factor. She rumbles off, we finish off our last few shots and wrap the Boppers and Irish.
We have one last thing to do, which is to catch Harry’s voice over that we missed from the third day of shooting. We roll it out and I give Bill the honors. Bill likes to wrap everything “for production.” I’d say that we’re wrapping the dolly for the day, and Bill would pipe up “for production.”
I give him a chance to wrap the production and the fucker chokes. I say, “go ahead Bill,” and a look of confusion crosses his face. I tell him to wrap the production, and he doesn’t know what to say. Eventually he spits out that the production is wrapped for production. Definitely an anti-climactic moment.
The Boppers jet, as well as Irish, and we pack up our shit and jet for the part of the day Harry’s been looking forward to the most: my Dad’s Sloppy Joes. Writing that, it seems incredibly dirty. Fuck it, it’s not my Sloppy Joe that Harry’s going to eat.
We get back to my place, unload the gear and put it in its proper place once again, and kick it on my back deck for awhile. Leanne drops by as well to sample my Dads Joes. We all sit around and talk for awhile and I really don’t want the day, or I guess you could say night now, to end. While we’re chowing down, we start talking about what exactly makes you gay, and start trying to make rules. It turns out that the line isn’t as bright as you would think.
Obviously we all talk about the production too and how great of a time we all had. I really can’t believe it’s all over. I’m trying to keep everyone here as long as I can, but I know Alicia has to jet to go camping for a few days, and I know Harry can’t stay here forever, no matter how bad he or I would like him to.
Eventually, Bill and Leanne bounce, leaving Sue, myself, Alicia and Harry. I’m feeling downright retarded about now, and I think me and Harry are doing a good job of acting that way. Sue and Alicia just sit back and watch the show.
We decide to play another game of Scene-It, which has seemed to have become the thing to do since Logan came down. During the first round, I get a call from Bill who’s designing the poster. He sends me a pic of the actual replica guitar to see if it’s the right one, and it is. As a result of this conversation, I miss playing the entire first round.
It’s a tight race for the first place position between me and Alicia, but during the Final Cut round, I end up pulling it out by six hundred points. Victory.
We head out onto the deck again and chill for longer, all the while Alicia is getting calls and texts from her camping partners. It turns out the plan is to leave at 4am, go grocery shopping for a couple of hours, drive the three hours to the place, then sleep for three hours at the camp grounds, then they can start the “vacation.”
First of all, I don’t think I could even go camping this soon after wrapping. I’m pretty sure I would need a day or two to decompress. Actually, maybe I could go camping to get my mind off the vast nothingness my life is about to become once again. I don’t know, but I know that with these timelines and the constant check-ins, it don’t sound like much of a vacation to me. Call me crazy, but my version of a vacation doesn’t have an itinerary.
Actually, I’m not sure when the last time I went on a vacation is. I don’t think I need one to tell you the truth. I never felt the need to go away somewhere and escape, but like I said, I’m pretty weird that way. I mean, who else laughs when other people get hurt and when they puke?
Regardless of my self inflection just then, Alicia keeps getting calls, and it seems that the plan keeps changing. Being in the mood I’m in, I can’t help it but laugh uncontrollably when the last call comes in. Both Harry and I crack up but try to stifle the hilarity. Alicia gets off the phone and tells us we didn’t do a good job, because Andrea thinks that we’re laughing at her.
Andrea, we weren’t laughing at you at all. The stupidest things are making us laugh right now. It’s been a long ride and there’s a lot of shit going through our heads right now. We’re downright retarded, so please don’t take any offense to us. I blew smoke into a coke bottle then laughed hysterically when I squeezed the bottle and the smoke came out. Really, you’re going to get offended by someone who laughs at something as stupid as that?
That’s like being offended because the dog chose your lawn on the street to drop bricks on. The dog just has to go and your lawn looked good.
Harry and I joke around that we should go crash their camp site. We’re convinced that we would be the life of the whole campground and people would travel from their lots to come and watch us regale them with awesomeness. We would be Gods in that campground. I’m actually half tempted to do it. Yeah, I’m that retarded right now.
Eventually, Alicia and Harry take off and I start trying to capture the footage from the past little while that I haven’t been able to do. I decide to call it a night when I pass out in front of the computer.
The last day of principle photography for the Van Halen Guitar is officially over. However, we do still have one more thing to shoot for it. Something no one except the Rebels know about.
Now that the show’s over, onto the nostalgia.
I can’t believe it’s all over. I can’t remember a better summer that I’ve ever had. I’m having a hard time actually putting it into words. Not only did I get to do what I love to do all summer long, but I’ve also met a lot of really good people, and bonded more with others that I knew for years.
Harry and I first met on the set of Wonderland, my first feature film, which we shot in 2004, so I’ve known this cat for four years now. I think we really ended up getting a lot closer this summer than we have in the past four years. Irish, I also met on Wonderland, and it was great to have him involved again, and again, I think we had a lot of fun together on this show.
Alicia and Steve I met only early this year or so, and I can’t believe how close we’ve all gotten with each other. Well, I don’t know if they feel the same way, but fuck ‘em, this is my diary.
The cast on Desolation Row, as well as Episode 4 feel like a big family to me. Maybe a family I like more than my real one. Speaking of vacation, to me, shooting this summer has felt like a vacation. It was way too much fun. More fun than people should be allowed. Yeah, sure, we’ve had problems, but the good definitely outweighs the bad. The juice was worth the squeeze.
I really can’t believe everything we’ve pulled off this summer either. Sure, I guess you can classify these flicks as “shorts” but they’ll be around 40- 50 minutes. They’re not very short. You also throw in a concert that we prepped for while knee deep in production on another show, as well as all the challenges and obstacles we’ve had to overcome and the situations we put ourselves in…. well, it was just quite the experience, let’s put it that way.
I’m having a hard time accepting that it’s over. I still have a lot of work ahead of me, but it’s not going to be nearly as much fun, because all that work will be in solitary. Like I said before, the fun part of shooting is hanging out with some really cool people you don’t get to see enough.
So, as cliché as it sounds, that’s a wrap.
Sunday, August 24th, 2008: Quest for the Past Concert
Bill has to work at midnight, so we take two cars again. Kyle has to book it after the show too, so he goes in his own ride. We leave my place where we all meet and head to The Grim, where we meet up at Steve’s.
We kick around for a bit and talk about his vacation and he regales us with stories. We hand out walkie-talkies to the drivers of all four cars, and we’re on our way, caravanning it to the Dunner.
I’ve never really used a walkie before, especially not one when I’m to be taken seriously. For anyone that remembers the old “Spy-Tech” toys, that’s the extent of my walkie experience.
I felt like the biggest geek driving along field sidling roads using a walkie-talkie.
We get to the theatre and head inside. It turns out that there will not be a full band rehearsal before the show. I’ve already told Alicia what I’m looking for in lighting cues, and we go over it again.
Bill fine tunes the lights, which seem to have moved, and we talk to Carl. We get our shit ready to go and find out that the audio is piss poor. Since this is a concert, we can’t really have a shitty hum droning its way through all the songs. Kyle and Carl troubleshoot the problem and they get it down to a better level. From my understanding, there’s still a bit of hum, but I couldn’t notice it while the band was playing. The hum is also coming through the speakers, so it has nothing to do with the camera.
The nerves are starting to hit me.
We head out for lunch, and since it’s Sunday, nothing’s open. We head over to the Subway/ Mac’s/ M&M Meats store. So here’s what you can do in the Dunner.
You can buy a porn magazine, order a big plate of meat to cook later while enjoying a sub.
Dunnville ain’t so bad.
Since I boycott Subway because of Jared, who might have lost a lot of weight but gained it all back in ego, I decide to try to find somewhere else to eat. Not only that, but I’m just not in the mood for a sub. Or food for that matter.
I walk across the street to a pizza diner, decide the place ain’t for me, and turn around and walk out. Everyone finishes their meal at Jerod’s house of hell, and since my coffee fetish is pretty well known, it’s just assumed that we would walk over to Timmys. While there I get a sandwich and we’re back to the theatre.
It’s at this point I can’t get enough nerve calming nicotine in my system.
The rest of the work we need to get done gets done and Bill and I head out to satisfy my increasing smoke habit. We talk about the show, what we’re going to do, and form a plan of action, while Kyle loads the four cameras up with tapes and doles out spares for us.
The show comprises of two sets and an encore. Each set is about forty-five minutes long, and the encore is about fifteen. That’s good news to us because now we don’t have to worry about changing tapes over during the middle of the performance.
The encore will be a problem, because it won’t be a ten minute or so intermission in between. We need about a minute and a half to change the tape on the sound camera, and that job will go to Bill, who will also have to change the tape over in his camera. We formulate a plan of action for this with Steve, who will hold on to the band until we’re ready for them.
Steve has a walkie backstage and tells us there’s two minutes until show-time. I fill Alicia in on what I want for lighting cues again, wish everyone a good show, and then get to my camera. We’re about to shoot a concert for a band which we’ve never heard the music for, don’t know who’s coming in when, have lighting cues we don’t know exactly when to use, and I’ve never directed a live show of this size before.
It’s show-time.
The band comes on for the first song. Things go remarkably well I think. I didn’t think I’d be able to hand out cues using the walkie during the show, but I manage to do it, even though Alicia is already on her game; doing the cues while I’m handing them out. Bill and I communicate quite a bit, filling each other in on the shots we have.
I’m feeling good after the first song. The problem is they have more than one song.
I have a film background where I concentrate for minutes at a time at the task at hand. Once the take is over, I hand out direction or say “let’s do it again.” Okay, that’s not true. I say “one more time,” and then we’ll do it five more times. This show made me concentrate for the whole thing.
From my camera, and the crowds reaction, I think we got good stuff for the entire show. I know that it was expected that we’d only be able to release five tracks or so, but I’m hoping the whole thing is high enough quality to put onto a DVD. Brad also gave us a shout-out, so you bet your ass that’s making the cut!
I haven’t seen Bill or Kyle’s footage, but I could see in the here and now what Alicia was doing and she did a great job with the lights. Last year when the band played, they just turned all the lights on and kept them on for the entire show. People that came to both shows I don’t think expected an actual show.
Once the whole thing is over, I almost collapse. I have a feeling of euphoria. All that’s running through my mind is “I can’t believe we did it. I can’t believe we did it.” We went into this show about as blind as you could be, and we continue to defy the odds pulling shit off that we have no real business pulling off. I’m sorry for the ego trip, but I really can’t believe we did it.
After the show all I hear is how great the lights were and how it was much better than last years show. I’m glad to hear it, and I’m glad I was apart of it. I’m glad I’m part of this super team we have. I really am man.
That’s about as much emotion you’re going to get out of me.
We pack up our gear and head back to the Grim to find someplace that’s still open and have a mini-celebration.
It turns out that on a Sunday night in the Grim, Boston Pizza is the place to be.
Inside, Steve orders something called “The Team Pitcher.” I’ve never been to Boston Pizza before, well, because I haven’t wanted to, but after seeing the Team Pitcher, I might have to move in. The thing is hyuge! Bill snaps a photo of it with me modeling. I’m sure it’ll be up on Facebook before I get home.
We have some food and drinks, and Steve again, regales us with stories, including how to beat a breathalyzer. Coolest mofo going. I didn’t realize how much the concert was playing on my nerves, but now that it’s all over, I’m pretty beat. The adrenaline dump killed me.
Bill heads out to work and we continue to chill watching the young drunks in the joint and chatting it up. At one point, one of the drunken girls drops a full tray of empty bottles. She earned a slow clap. By one person. Who forgot that a slow clap starts slow and builds to fast, not just from slow to fast. Damn kids, if you’re going to do shit, do it right.
There’s some other hi-jinks at the BP tonight, including the same drunk girl yelling at a guy that’s trying to make out with her that his heart belongs to another broad. Looking at the girl, she shouldn’t really care who his heart belongs to as much as she should care that there’s got to be something wrong with this dude if he wants to make out with her.
Actually, it’s the same broad that Alicia heard in the washroom throwing up and then running out when her friend came in to tell her she had shots to do on the bar.
I now love Grimsby. Actually, I might just love this broad. I’d like to call her up when I’m bored just to entertain me. Stupid people are funny when they think they’re smart. Just ask anyone that hangs out with me.
We end up calling it a night, probably later than we should’ve. We have an early call tomorrow for the final day of Episode 4: The Van Halen Guitar. It’s also the last day of shooting for at least a month, and the final day of shooting for this amazing summer.
Here's some screenshots from the night. No color correction or cropping.
We kick around for a bit and talk about his vacation and he regales us with stories. We hand out walkie-talkies to the drivers of all four cars, and we’re on our way, caravanning it to the Dunner.
I’ve never really used a walkie before, especially not one when I’m to be taken seriously. For anyone that remembers the old “Spy-Tech” toys, that’s the extent of my walkie experience.
I felt like the biggest geek driving along field sidling roads using a walkie-talkie.
We get to the theatre and head inside. It turns out that there will not be a full band rehearsal before the show. I’ve already told Alicia what I’m looking for in lighting cues, and we go over it again.
Bill fine tunes the lights, which seem to have moved, and we talk to Carl. We get our shit ready to go and find out that the audio is piss poor. Since this is a concert, we can’t really have a shitty hum droning its way through all the songs. Kyle and Carl troubleshoot the problem and they get it down to a better level. From my understanding, there’s still a bit of hum, but I couldn’t notice it while the band was playing. The hum is also coming through the speakers, so it has nothing to do with the camera.
The nerves are starting to hit me.
We head out for lunch, and since it’s Sunday, nothing’s open. We head over to the Subway/ Mac’s/ M&M Meats store. So here’s what you can do in the Dunner.
You can buy a porn magazine, order a big plate of meat to cook later while enjoying a sub.
Dunnville ain’t so bad.
Since I boycott Subway because of Jared, who might have lost a lot of weight but gained it all back in ego, I decide to try to find somewhere else to eat. Not only that, but I’m just not in the mood for a sub. Or food for that matter.
I walk across the street to a pizza diner, decide the place ain’t for me, and turn around and walk out. Everyone finishes their meal at Jerod’s house of hell, and since my coffee fetish is pretty well known, it’s just assumed that we would walk over to Timmys. While there I get a sandwich and we’re back to the theatre.
It’s at this point I can’t get enough nerve calming nicotine in my system.
The rest of the work we need to get done gets done and Bill and I head out to satisfy my increasing smoke habit. We talk about the show, what we’re going to do, and form a plan of action, while Kyle loads the four cameras up with tapes and doles out spares for us.
The show comprises of two sets and an encore. Each set is about forty-five minutes long, and the encore is about fifteen. That’s good news to us because now we don’t have to worry about changing tapes over during the middle of the performance.
The encore will be a problem, because it won’t be a ten minute or so intermission in between. We need about a minute and a half to change the tape on the sound camera, and that job will go to Bill, who will also have to change the tape over in his camera. We formulate a plan of action for this with Steve, who will hold on to the band until we’re ready for them.
Steve has a walkie backstage and tells us there’s two minutes until show-time. I fill Alicia in on what I want for lighting cues again, wish everyone a good show, and then get to my camera. We’re about to shoot a concert for a band which we’ve never heard the music for, don’t know who’s coming in when, have lighting cues we don’t know exactly when to use, and I’ve never directed a live show of this size before.
It’s show-time.
The band comes on for the first song. Things go remarkably well I think. I didn’t think I’d be able to hand out cues using the walkie during the show, but I manage to do it, even though Alicia is already on her game; doing the cues while I’m handing them out. Bill and I communicate quite a bit, filling each other in on the shots we have.
I’m feeling good after the first song. The problem is they have more than one song.
I have a film background where I concentrate for minutes at a time at the task at hand. Once the take is over, I hand out direction or say “let’s do it again.” Okay, that’s not true. I say “one more time,” and then we’ll do it five more times. This show made me concentrate for the whole thing.
From my camera, and the crowds reaction, I think we got good stuff for the entire show. I know that it was expected that we’d only be able to release five tracks or so, but I’m hoping the whole thing is high enough quality to put onto a DVD. Brad also gave us a shout-out, so you bet your ass that’s making the cut!
I haven’t seen Bill or Kyle’s footage, but I could see in the here and now what Alicia was doing and she did a great job with the lights. Last year when the band played, they just turned all the lights on and kept them on for the entire show. People that came to both shows I don’t think expected an actual show.
Once the whole thing is over, I almost collapse. I have a feeling of euphoria. All that’s running through my mind is “I can’t believe we did it. I can’t believe we did it.” We went into this show about as blind as you could be, and we continue to defy the odds pulling shit off that we have no real business pulling off. I’m sorry for the ego trip, but I really can’t believe we did it.
After the show all I hear is how great the lights were and how it was much better than last years show. I’m glad to hear it, and I’m glad I was apart of it. I’m glad I’m part of this super team we have. I really am man.
That’s about as much emotion you’re going to get out of me.
We pack up our gear and head back to the Grim to find someplace that’s still open and have a mini-celebration.
It turns out that on a Sunday night in the Grim, Boston Pizza is the place to be.
Inside, Steve orders something called “The Team Pitcher.” I’ve never been to Boston Pizza before, well, because I haven’t wanted to, but after seeing the Team Pitcher, I might have to move in. The thing is hyuge! Bill snaps a photo of it with me modeling. I’m sure it’ll be up on Facebook before I get home.
We have some food and drinks, and Steve again, regales us with stories, including how to beat a breathalyzer. Coolest mofo going. I didn’t realize how much the concert was playing on my nerves, but now that it’s all over, I’m pretty beat. The adrenaline dump killed me.
Bill heads out to work and we continue to chill watching the young drunks in the joint and chatting it up. At one point, one of the drunken girls drops a full tray of empty bottles. She earned a slow clap. By one person. Who forgot that a slow clap starts slow and builds to fast, not just from slow to fast. Damn kids, if you’re going to do shit, do it right.
There’s some other hi-jinks at the BP tonight, including the same drunk girl yelling at a guy that’s trying to make out with her that his heart belongs to another broad. Looking at the girl, she shouldn’t really care who his heart belongs to as much as she should care that there’s got to be something wrong with this dude if he wants to make out with her.
Actually, it’s the same broad that Alicia heard in the washroom throwing up and then running out when her friend came in to tell her she had shots to do on the bar.
I now love Grimsby. Actually, I might just love this broad. I’d like to call her up when I’m bored just to entertain me. Stupid people are funny when they think they’re smart. Just ask anyone that hangs out with me.
We end up calling it a night, probably later than we should’ve. We have an early call tomorrow for the final day of Episode 4: The Van Halen Guitar. It’s also the last day of shooting for at least a month, and the final day of shooting for this amazing summer.
Here's some screenshots from the night. No color correction or cropping.
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008: Shoot Day #10 On VH Guitar
Today is another early call time of 8am. We all arrive at the plaza which the bank that we are shooting in front of is nestled in. We have the Boppers back today, which always makes for a pleasurable day.
We get going with the first scene in front of the bank where the Boppers notice the English Rocker walking out of the bank. We bang it off pretty quickly and move to the back of the plaza.
At the back, we shoot the English Rocker giving a bag of money that he just got out of the bank to The Barber. The Barber then walks off into the sunset.
I’m a big NYPD Blue fan. Huge. David Caruso’s last shot on that show was of him walking out of the station house. So when they shot the scene, Caruso walked out of the station house and got into his limo and left the set. It was the first take. They called him back and then realized he was gone.
Since Rick lives in the building behind the bank, I’m half afraid he’ll do the same thing. Just keep walking towards his building and never come back. Lucky for us, he did come back and did the same shot three or four times.
We wrap The Barber.
We shoot the rest of the same scene where the Boppers bum-rush the English Rocker. It goes fairly quickly and we finish the scene.
We Wrap Nigel and Lyndsey.
Our next location is the park where we shot the first of the huge fight scenes. The Boppers are noticing and involved with various people that we’ll pick up on Monday. For now, we’re just going to shoot the Boppers, but first I need to get back to my place to grab the guitar cases that we’ll need.
Bill meets up with me here, and we’re off to the park. The only crew we’ve had since Steve went on vacation, and actually, for the majority of the shoot, has been me, Bill and Alicia, and we’re moving like a well oiled machine.
At the bank, Mike and Pat started doing some dancing. Don’t ask me why, these guys really just start doing shit that’ll leave you in stitches. The energy in them is unbelievable. I wish I could give you just one example of it, but it’s the whole day they’re making us laugh.
I wanted to include them dancing so at the park I asked them if they wanted to dance to start and end the scene. There was some concern as to how they would get into the dialogue from the dancing, but my idea was just to stop dancing and do the scene like they were never dancing, then start up again.
They do it and I can’t stop laughing. It’s good on set, but like I said, if you’re laughing on set, you probably won’t be laughing watching it. I hope that saying is wrong. I’m thinking of crediting them as the writers of the song they were making up while dancing. The “Ted Dancing.” You’ll understand if you watch the movie.
We do the two scenes really quick, and pick up part of a third that’s scheduled for Monday. We head back to my place where we have to wait for my Dad to finish coaching soccer before we can shoot the final scene of the day.
On the way back, Bill calls my Mom, who will pick up pizza for us during this break. The humor of someone else calling my Mom for me doesn’t escape me.
My Dad calls and tells me he’s going to be an hour or so later than planned. This is going to be a lot of chilling out.
The real surprise of the day though, definitely goes to Bill who shows up with 72 donuts. Leanne got a job at the Donut Diner and somehow six dozen donuts ended up in Bills car, which then ended up on my back deck. Food fit for champions, we chill out on donuts and Little Caesar’s.
Fatigue starts to set in a bit, as well as boredom, so Mike goes to catch some zzz’s on the swing in the backyard while the rest of us move indoors for a game of Scene-It on the 360. It’s funny that there always seems to be a race for last place, and a race for first. There’re never more than three people racing to get in on those spots.
Alicia and I are battling for first, and it’s a tight war when we get into Final Cut, the final round of the game. I am not happy to report that I lost this game to her. This does not make me happy one bit.
After my bitter defeat, I go outside to ease my pain with some day old donuts that are already starting to smell like trash, and some nicotine. I don’t want to be a sore loser, but fuck you Alicia. Fuck you in the ear.
Finally, the old man arrives and we walk through what we’re going to be doing in the scene. We roll it and I throw some improvisation out there for the Boppers. The final scene of the day goes really well.
Bill jets and refuses to take his nasty ass donuts with him. Pat comes in and saves the day by taking them with him. Pat is my new hero. Bill, my new enemy.
I’m hoping this episode is pretty funny, and if it is, I think it’ll be mostly the shit that got added to the script and nothing I wrote. Some of the stuff I wrote I already know will fall flat on its face. There was nothing I could do to bring it back to the humor it had on the page. There’s also other things that I wrote in the episode that I didn’t think were funny at all, but the people playing the roles put some funny into them. Something as simple as the Mick getting out of a car has turned into a favorite thing of mine because of how Irish did it.
Tomorrow is the concert, which means another early wakeup call. I really don’t want to try and tackle this thing. Sometimes I get myself into situations I’m not sure I can handle just yet. Bill managed to get a hold of Kyle, who will be a shooter and also supply two cameras. One of the cameras is useless, but we’ll use it just to capture the audio, and the other camera is almost useless, as it shoots at a different frame rate.
We’ll see what happens. Sue, Alicia and myself head out to Wal-Mart to grab tapes for tomorrow. We then hit up the video store where I purchase State and Main. We peep it before calling it a night. I love this movie.
We get going with the first scene in front of the bank where the Boppers notice the English Rocker walking out of the bank. We bang it off pretty quickly and move to the back of the plaza.
At the back, we shoot the English Rocker giving a bag of money that he just got out of the bank to The Barber. The Barber then walks off into the sunset.
I’m a big NYPD Blue fan. Huge. David Caruso’s last shot on that show was of him walking out of the station house. So when they shot the scene, Caruso walked out of the station house and got into his limo and left the set. It was the first take. They called him back and then realized he was gone.
Since Rick lives in the building behind the bank, I’m half afraid he’ll do the same thing. Just keep walking towards his building and never come back. Lucky for us, he did come back and did the same shot three or four times.
We wrap The Barber.
We shoot the rest of the same scene where the Boppers bum-rush the English Rocker. It goes fairly quickly and we finish the scene.
We Wrap Nigel and Lyndsey.
Our next location is the park where we shot the first of the huge fight scenes. The Boppers are noticing and involved with various people that we’ll pick up on Monday. For now, we’re just going to shoot the Boppers, but first I need to get back to my place to grab the guitar cases that we’ll need.
Bill meets up with me here, and we’re off to the park. The only crew we’ve had since Steve went on vacation, and actually, for the majority of the shoot, has been me, Bill and Alicia, and we’re moving like a well oiled machine.
At the bank, Mike and Pat started doing some dancing. Don’t ask me why, these guys really just start doing shit that’ll leave you in stitches. The energy in them is unbelievable. I wish I could give you just one example of it, but it’s the whole day they’re making us laugh.
I wanted to include them dancing so at the park I asked them if they wanted to dance to start and end the scene. There was some concern as to how they would get into the dialogue from the dancing, but my idea was just to stop dancing and do the scene like they were never dancing, then start up again.
They do it and I can’t stop laughing. It’s good on set, but like I said, if you’re laughing on set, you probably won’t be laughing watching it. I hope that saying is wrong. I’m thinking of crediting them as the writers of the song they were making up while dancing. The “Ted Dancing.” You’ll understand if you watch the movie.
We do the two scenes really quick, and pick up part of a third that’s scheduled for Monday. We head back to my place where we have to wait for my Dad to finish coaching soccer before we can shoot the final scene of the day.
On the way back, Bill calls my Mom, who will pick up pizza for us during this break. The humor of someone else calling my Mom for me doesn’t escape me.
My Dad calls and tells me he’s going to be an hour or so later than planned. This is going to be a lot of chilling out.
The real surprise of the day though, definitely goes to Bill who shows up with 72 donuts. Leanne got a job at the Donut Diner and somehow six dozen donuts ended up in Bills car, which then ended up on my back deck. Food fit for champions, we chill out on donuts and Little Caesar’s.
Fatigue starts to set in a bit, as well as boredom, so Mike goes to catch some zzz’s on the swing in the backyard while the rest of us move indoors for a game of Scene-It on the 360. It’s funny that there always seems to be a race for last place, and a race for first. There’re never more than three people racing to get in on those spots.
Alicia and I are battling for first, and it’s a tight war when we get into Final Cut, the final round of the game. I am not happy to report that I lost this game to her. This does not make me happy one bit.
After my bitter defeat, I go outside to ease my pain with some day old donuts that are already starting to smell like trash, and some nicotine. I don’t want to be a sore loser, but fuck you Alicia. Fuck you in the ear.
Finally, the old man arrives and we walk through what we’re going to be doing in the scene. We roll it and I throw some improvisation out there for the Boppers. The final scene of the day goes really well.
Bill jets and refuses to take his nasty ass donuts with him. Pat comes in and saves the day by taking them with him. Pat is my new hero. Bill, my new enemy.
I’m hoping this episode is pretty funny, and if it is, I think it’ll be mostly the shit that got added to the script and nothing I wrote. Some of the stuff I wrote I already know will fall flat on its face. There was nothing I could do to bring it back to the humor it had on the page. There’s also other things that I wrote in the episode that I didn’t think were funny at all, but the people playing the roles put some funny into them. Something as simple as the Mick getting out of a car has turned into a favorite thing of mine because of how Irish did it.
Tomorrow is the concert, which means another early wakeup call. I really don’t want to try and tackle this thing. Sometimes I get myself into situations I’m not sure I can handle just yet. Bill managed to get a hold of Kyle, who will be a shooter and also supply two cameras. One of the cameras is useless, but we’ll use it just to capture the audio, and the other camera is almost useless, as it shoots at a different frame rate.
We’ll see what happens. Sue, Alicia and myself head out to Wal-Mart to grab tapes for tomorrow. We then hit up the video store where I purchase State and Main. We peep it before calling it a night. I love this movie.
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Another trip back to the Dunner.
Bill decides to take Leanne’s car to the rehearsal, with Leanne in it, as gas is still costing a lot of scratch. The plan is to bring the Par cans as well as our extension cords and dimmers to create our own little, budget dimmer board. It’ll be a dimmer board when we set them all beside each other and get the markings for the light levels. Trust me, it will.
So we take two cars and load the equipment into my ride and Bills. Bill needs to stop off in Grimsby to drop his dog off at his moms pad, and Alicia and I need to swing by her place so she can grab a piece of equipment that was put into the prop basket. We’ll meet up with Bill in the G-Town and tailgate him to the Dunner.
Bill has these clamp things (I don’t remember what he calls them) which allows you to clamp shit down, like lights, real good onto any surface that has a lip. We need these things to clamp down our Pars onto the I beams running across the ceiling.
We’re about three quarters of the way to Grimsby when Alicia gets a call from Bill telling her that the clamps are back at my place. We turn around and head back. Now I’m convinced that I always have to leave my joint twice before I get anywhere.
Back at my place, I look in the cases where Bill says the clamps are. No dice. I check the light stand bag. No dice. Alicia gets Bill on the phone and tells him the clamps are not where he said they were. As I’m looking through his light kit, he tells her to tell me to check it. I tell her to tell him I am checking it. He tells her to tell me to check the bottom. The damn thing is about two feet long and a foot wide by maybe a foot tall. As soon as you open the bag you’re checking out the bottom. I tell her to tell him the bag is the bottom.
I offer to drive over to Bills pad and check his truck, but Bill says no, because what’s the point? Even if I do find them, I won’t be able to get into Bills truck to get them. I tell him I can, but he might not be happy with my methods. He tells me just to come back to Grimsby.
He phones while we’re en route to tell us he’s found three of the four.
We meet up in the Grim (yeah, I’m trying a bunch of nicknames for this place too) and tailgate it to the Dunner.
Once in the theatre we meet up with Brad, who seems a little stressed. Can’t say I blame the guy. If I was in charge of this show, I’d be a little stressed too. I’m just in charge of filming the thing, creating a lighting setup, editing and putting together a DVD. I don’t know the music, haven’t heard the music, and don’t know when any instruments are supposed to come in or go out. We still don’t have enough crew or cameras to really do the event. Come to think of it, I might be a little stressed too.
We bring in the gear and I start walking around the joint, looking for the best places to put the cameras. My original plan was to put the cameras on stage, but since it’s a nine piece band, that game’s off the field. I’m still going to put one up there, provided we can get it.
All the chairs are in now and setup, so I’m trying to find two other positions that won’t take chairs away, and will still allow people to see. I think with the two spots I picked we only had to remove five or six chairs. That’s not too bad.
Now we go over and talk to Carl the sound guy. He’s got his PA system going, and since this building was built right after Jesus was born in the Manger, the electricity might not be the most up to date. We’re told that if we draw power with our lights from anywhere in the theatre section, he won’t have enough juice left over to power his PA.
His alternative solution is to run our extension cords into the kitchen. Needless to say, this idea doesn’t appeal to me.
Again, the idea comes up that it would be pretty awesome if we could do what we wanted to the lighting grid they already have in there. We’re told that we can’t add or remove or unplug or….. yeah, just a whole bunch of stuff we can’t do. We can pan them and change the filters though.
We ask Carl if he could talk to Nancy about us doing something about the grid, and perhaps fixing the clusterfuck of fun they already have in there. When you work on one switch, three lights will come up in a completely random order. Another switch might bring up two more, and another switch will bring up nothing.
She was pretty adamant about us not touching anything the last time we were up here. Carl explains it to her in better words than us to her what we want to do and she gives us the go ahead. I think the key word was “re-designate.” It’s my new favorite word.
Now we have a lot of work to do, so we get to it quick. Bill quickly jumps up on the ladder and starts unplugging every light while Alicia runs the dimmer board. Once things are a little figured out of what does what, Bill starts aiming the lights how I want them.
After a few hours, we decide it’s time to eat something, so we head out to this small, cool retro diner and grab some grub. This is a pretty cool place, not only because I got a banana split and lots of bacon, but because inside this establishment, I swear, is the mafia Don of Dunnville.
If you’re wondering, the Don of Dunnville orders a sundae.
We get back to the hall and start fine tuning the lighting as the string ensemble starts to rehearse. As it is now, we only have one of our Par cans up, and that’s to spotlight Brad. We have the dimmer running all the way across the ceiling to the booth that Alicia will sit in to operate the lights for the show.
With us turning the lights on and off, and trying to find good spots for the various lights, the string section apparently can’t see. They’re all reading music, and it makes it hard to play the music that you’re reading when you’re sitting in the dark.
Because I just recently saw Shine a Light, the Rolling Stone concert film by Martin Scorsese, I joke in my head how The Rolling Stones memorized all their songs, what’s these guys problem? Of course, I’m only joking. I can barely read a Dr. Seuss book, let alone music, and I can’t do either one in the dark.
We chill out for a bit while the band rehearses and I tape it for reference. When I’ll get to this reference, I have no idea because we’re shooting all day tomorrow, and the day after that is the concert. Oh well, maybe I’ll get time.
Once the string section is done, we start tidying up and packing some stuff back up. We know we’ll have to get here earlier on Sunday to fine tune the lighting, and Brad lets us know that he’ll be here at one and the whole band will be going through a complete rehearsal of the show.
We tell him we’ll be here at one. Somehow I doubt it though. I don’t know why our mouths write checks our asses can’t cash. One of these days we’ll be on time. One of these days.
On the way back home, I run over a bunch of frogs that are jumping in front of my car. I feel bad for it, but I would feel a lot worse if the stupid amphibians weren’t jumping at the only two cars on the road.
Tomorrow is a fairly long day and we wrap Nigel, Lyndsey, and The Barber. It’s weird knowing that this project is coming to an end real soon. It still hasn’t hit me that after tomorrow that we have one more shoot day.
Bill decides to take Leanne’s car to the rehearsal, with Leanne in it, as gas is still costing a lot of scratch. The plan is to bring the Par cans as well as our extension cords and dimmers to create our own little, budget dimmer board. It’ll be a dimmer board when we set them all beside each other and get the markings for the light levels. Trust me, it will.
So we take two cars and load the equipment into my ride and Bills. Bill needs to stop off in Grimsby to drop his dog off at his moms pad, and Alicia and I need to swing by her place so she can grab a piece of equipment that was put into the prop basket. We’ll meet up with Bill in the G-Town and tailgate him to the Dunner.
Bill has these clamp things (I don’t remember what he calls them) which allows you to clamp shit down, like lights, real good onto any surface that has a lip. We need these things to clamp down our Pars onto the I beams running across the ceiling.
We’re about three quarters of the way to Grimsby when Alicia gets a call from Bill telling her that the clamps are back at my place. We turn around and head back. Now I’m convinced that I always have to leave my joint twice before I get anywhere.
Back at my place, I look in the cases where Bill says the clamps are. No dice. I check the light stand bag. No dice. Alicia gets Bill on the phone and tells him the clamps are not where he said they were. As I’m looking through his light kit, he tells her to tell me to check it. I tell her to tell him I am checking it. He tells her to tell me to check the bottom. The damn thing is about two feet long and a foot wide by maybe a foot tall. As soon as you open the bag you’re checking out the bottom. I tell her to tell him the bag is the bottom.
I offer to drive over to Bills pad and check his truck, but Bill says no, because what’s the point? Even if I do find them, I won’t be able to get into Bills truck to get them. I tell him I can, but he might not be happy with my methods. He tells me just to come back to Grimsby.
He phones while we’re en route to tell us he’s found three of the four.
We meet up in the Grim (yeah, I’m trying a bunch of nicknames for this place too) and tailgate it to the Dunner.
Once in the theatre we meet up with Brad, who seems a little stressed. Can’t say I blame the guy. If I was in charge of this show, I’d be a little stressed too. I’m just in charge of filming the thing, creating a lighting setup, editing and putting together a DVD. I don’t know the music, haven’t heard the music, and don’t know when any instruments are supposed to come in or go out. We still don’t have enough crew or cameras to really do the event. Come to think of it, I might be a little stressed too.
We bring in the gear and I start walking around the joint, looking for the best places to put the cameras. My original plan was to put the cameras on stage, but since it’s a nine piece band, that game’s off the field. I’m still going to put one up there, provided we can get it.
All the chairs are in now and setup, so I’m trying to find two other positions that won’t take chairs away, and will still allow people to see. I think with the two spots I picked we only had to remove five or six chairs. That’s not too bad.
Now we go over and talk to Carl the sound guy. He’s got his PA system going, and since this building was built right after Jesus was born in the Manger, the electricity might not be the most up to date. We’re told that if we draw power with our lights from anywhere in the theatre section, he won’t have enough juice left over to power his PA.
His alternative solution is to run our extension cords into the kitchen. Needless to say, this idea doesn’t appeal to me.
Again, the idea comes up that it would be pretty awesome if we could do what we wanted to the lighting grid they already have in there. We’re told that we can’t add or remove or unplug or….. yeah, just a whole bunch of stuff we can’t do. We can pan them and change the filters though.
We ask Carl if he could talk to Nancy about us doing something about the grid, and perhaps fixing the clusterfuck of fun they already have in there. When you work on one switch, three lights will come up in a completely random order. Another switch might bring up two more, and another switch will bring up nothing.
She was pretty adamant about us not touching anything the last time we were up here. Carl explains it to her in better words than us to her what we want to do and she gives us the go ahead. I think the key word was “re-designate.” It’s my new favorite word.
Now we have a lot of work to do, so we get to it quick. Bill quickly jumps up on the ladder and starts unplugging every light while Alicia runs the dimmer board. Once things are a little figured out of what does what, Bill starts aiming the lights how I want them.
After a few hours, we decide it’s time to eat something, so we head out to this small, cool retro diner and grab some grub. This is a pretty cool place, not only because I got a banana split and lots of bacon, but because inside this establishment, I swear, is the mafia Don of Dunnville.
If you’re wondering, the Don of Dunnville orders a sundae.
We get back to the hall and start fine tuning the lighting as the string ensemble starts to rehearse. As it is now, we only have one of our Par cans up, and that’s to spotlight Brad. We have the dimmer running all the way across the ceiling to the booth that Alicia will sit in to operate the lights for the show.
With us turning the lights on and off, and trying to find good spots for the various lights, the string section apparently can’t see. They’re all reading music, and it makes it hard to play the music that you’re reading when you’re sitting in the dark.
Because I just recently saw Shine a Light, the Rolling Stone concert film by Martin Scorsese, I joke in my head how The Rolling Stones memorized all their songs, what’s these guys problem? Of course, I’m only joking. I can barely read a Dr. Seuss book, let alone music, and I can’t do either one in the dark.
We chill out for a bit while the band rehearses and I tape it for reference. When I’ll get to this reference, I have no idea because we’re shooting all day tomorrow, and the day after that is the concert. Oh well, maybe I’ll get time.
Once the string section is done, we start tidying up and packing some stuff back up. We know we’ll have to get here earlier on Sunday to fine tune the lighting, and Brad lets us know that he’ll be here at one and the whole band will be going through a complete rehearsal of the show.
We tell him we’ll be here at one. Somehow I doubt it though. I don’t know why our mouths write checks our asses can’t cash. One of these days we’ll be on time. One of these days.
On the way back home, I run over a bunch of frogs that are jumping in front of my car. I feel bad for it, but I would feel a lot worse if the stupid amphibians weren’t jumping at the only two cars on the road.
Tomorrow is a fairly long day and we wrap Nigel, Lyndsey, and The Barber. It’s weird knowing that this project is coming to an end real soon. It still hasn’t hit me that after tomorrow that we have one more shoot day.
Thursday, August 21st, Shoot Day #9 On VH Guitar
Today wasn’t a day on the schedule, but it’s a huge day nonetheless. Today we are shooting the two huge fight scenes in the show. The first fight scene is modeled after the famous fight scene from They Live, a great 80’s action/ sci-fi pic from John Carpenter. The second one is a very impressive and ugly fight from the third season of the HBO series Deadwood.
Originally, I had asked Alicia to schedule the fights on separate days, and to have them closer to the beginning of the shoot. My feeling was that these fight scenes are exhaustive, so if we get them out of the way at the beginning, it’s all down hill from here. Alicia’s thinking was that we can shoot them towards the end and get the makeup right; and if they dirty any of the wardrobe, it won’t matter because it’ll be the end.
Well, the two fights never got scheduled because of a lot of scheduling conflicts Alicia has had to endure during the shoot. So the only available day to shoot is today, and if we want to shoot both fight scenes, they’ve got to be today.
I’m a little nervous.
The call time is for 9am at my place, and Irish and Harry show up, followed by Bill and Alicia. Bills got to book it to work at three, so after that it will just be me, Alicia, and Alicia’s friend Andrea that came and helped us out at the auditions.
Here’s a problem that we have with this shoot, and a problem we had with Desolation Row as well. All these people are way too cool, so it’s such a good time hanging out with them, you don’t want to get up to shoot. Not that shooting’s not fun, it’s just hard to move from one fun activity to another. We lose track of time easily in each other’s company.
Eventually we hit the bricks at 10; an hour after our call time, and head over to the park to shoot the first fight scene, which is also the longest. Yesterday, I spent quite a few hours watching these scenes shot by shot and trying to storyboard them accordingly. There’re a few things we obviously can’t do, mainly the suplexes, and if we’re to move quickly today, there’s multiple angles we can’t get, which applies mainly to the Deadwood fight.
The first fight is broken down into stages, consisting of about 21 setups. We start blocking out and rehearsing the first chunk, which is one of the bigger melees, after we shoot the minimum dialogue that leads up to the scene, and something is weird. It turns out Irish has never gotten into a fight before, so his punching is a little off. However, I think it still works because he’s playing a character called The Mick, who is Irish, so maybe his fighting style is more a European flavor.
So once we get the chunk rehearsed to a stage that I like, we start trying to roll. But, and this is an ongoing problem at this location, the park maintenance dude decides to come out and cut the lawn on his big riding lawn mower. We get the sound of it, in case we have to sound match later, and start shooting the scene.
Considering what we have to shoot in this scene, and 21 setups is ridiculous, we move at a brisk pace. Alicia’s on top of her game applying the makeup quickly when it’s needed, and we’re all on top of moving shit out of the shot when it’s needed. We take some breaks to get out of the sun and let Irish and Harry cool down a bit and catch their breath, but man, these guys are fucking troopers. Not one complaint out of either of them the entire time.
We’re getting towards the end of the scene, and with the lawnmower man mostly done, a new audio annoyance arrives in the form of a Dickie Dee ice cream retailer. This dude (or chick, I’m not sure) was so lazy, s/he wouldn’t even bring their bicycle ice cream cart thing into the park. It actually might’ve been a law, I don’t know for sure, but s/he would just sit there and ring the damn bell over and over again. It just so happens that right now, we’re shooting a chunk that requires some dialogue, so we can’t have an ice cream bell in the middle of this fight scene.
Harry, blood covered face and all, goes to talk to the Dickie Dee rep. This is just a sight that makes me laugh. I don’t know exactly what was said, and Harry’s the type of guy that even if he told you seriously, you would still think he’s joking, but the bell stopped. I guess the bell tolled for Harry.
We move on to the next chunk, where we face another distraction. Some kids have decided they want to play soccer at the net that is in our background. There’re two soccer fields here, and therefore three other nets they could play at, but they decide to play at the one that’s in our shot. After a couple of takes, and with the teenie boppers moving ever closer to us, I send Andrea out to ask if they could move.
These kids are around the twelve to fourteen year old range, so I figure sending a blond out there to ask them to move will do the trick. I’m sure if a blond asked you to do anything at that age you would comply. So they move and we continue shooting.
And throughout the day we’re constantly distracted by the best distraction ever. And I mean it. The Best. Distraction. Ever.
Someone points out that there’s a woman in a bikini walking back and forth along the end of one of the soccer fields. I can’t believe it and search to find her. Sure enough, there’s a woman in a bikini walking back and forth along the end of the soccer field.
We would shoot some, and then look and see if she’s still there. Yes. Still there. Maybe she dropped something and is looking for it, and that’s why she’s walking? But wait. Now there’s a dude in a speedo that was sitting down and has decided to join her on the merry frolic.
Okay, so now we have two bikini clad people in a park with a children’s splash pad and playground equipment walking along the back of one of the soccer fields and doing a diagonal across the other. Not once. Not twice, but all damn day.
Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because it’s two people in a bikini walking along a soccer field. Because I don’t understand it. Irish and I would later talk, and I said, “okay, I understand maybe sun tanning at a park in a bikini, and walking makes sense, everyone does it…” when Irish finishes my thought “but you put them both together and it doesn’t make sense.”
You do that shit at a beach and that shit’ll fly. You do it at a park, and that’s going to get noticed, and not winning a medal kind of noticed. More like a two heads and a penis tattoo on your chest noticed.
So as we’re finishing up, Bills phone beeps telling him it’s three and he should book. We’re almost done the scene so he finishes with us and takes off. A sense of accomplishment with us, we set off back to my place to grab a bite.
My Dad has made sandwiches for us, and it seems like just now, with only a few shooting days left on the second consecutive project, he now cares about my money situation. He has made sandwiches for us, and will have dinner ready when we’re done, so I don’t have to spend more money. My Dad, if you haven’t had his cooking, is an amazing cook, so this shit would’ve came in real handy a couple of months ago. I’m also glad that now that I’m more than tapped, he steps in to help me out.
Oh well. Free food. I’ll take it.
So we eat and head off to shoot the second fight scene at another park at around five.
We get to the park and do a couple of shots of Bulldogs truck pulling into the parking lot. They start another fight here, so we bang those out. This is a quieter park, so we’re not expecting any distractions. Again, I’ll be wrong.
Alicia applies the makeup to them, and The Mick and Bulldog exchange a few words in the truck, followed by a punch with a pistol. Then they both get out and the fight turns up.
As we’re shooting, a woman wants to take her kid to the park and asks us permission to pass. Sure, go ahead, I don’t own the park. She pulls in, and apparently her little kid is so frightened by the makeup and it’s so good, something happens that makes it a real Backlot Rebels shoot.
The cops show up.
We’re thinking it’s the woman with the kid that called the cops, but it could’ve been anyone I guess; passerby, neighbors etc. The lady cop who shows up thinks we’re really going to brawl, and we haven’t even started anything outside Harry’s truck yet. We haven’t even started the good part of the scene.
She sees all the blood on both their faces and is skeptical. She doesn’t believe it when we tell her its makeup. This is pretty much awesome proof on how good Alicia is at her shit.
Another cruiser pulls up and both of those cops are laughing. We tell them we’re shooting an episode for our online series, and the part that is really confusing me is that we’re all laughing and joking around. I guess we run some kind of outside in parks fight club where we’re all happy shit-kickers.
That’s cool though. We all have a good laugh about it, and the cops take off, leaving us to film our scene. The They Live fight was five pages, and this one is two, which is still fairly big, but small compared to what we did this morning.
I’m guessing it took around five hours to shoot the first fight scene, so I’m a little worried about running out of daylight for this one. It’s getting darker earlier and earlier now, so we don’t have any breaks during this fight scene as we shoot it.
Irish and Harry are fucking awesome people. They are both exhausted, especially Irish who has to get up and down more and fall more, but neither one of them complained once. Both of them knew what they had to do and they did it awesomely. Harry actually said he’d do the whole thing again after we wrapped the day.
We end the scene with about twenty minutes of daylight left and head back to my joint for some grub.
We get back and Irish “cleans up” in the washroom. When I say “cleans up,” I mean, he just transferred all the blood from his face and body into and around my sink. His ride arrives and he jets.
Harry, Andrea, Alicia, Sue and I chat it up for awhile talking about the day and other things. Harry decides to take a shower, and I’ve had enough, I need to eat. My Dad has left spaghetti sauce in a slow cooker for us and I lead the charge on it. The old man is so cool, he even left out some vegetarian sauce for Alicia. I still don’t understand “those” people.
We all chow down, reveling about the awesome cooking skills of my old man, until we eventually call it a night. I drive Alicia and Andrea back to Alicia’s joint, then head back to put the days footage into my computer.
A really great day today. We got a lot of work done, and there were no major injuries. Some junk got hurt, and Irish got cut, but he did it to himself so it doesn’t count.
Tomorrow I have to get up fairly early, which I’m not apt to do, and head to the Dunner and peep in on the rehearsal, and figure out a way to light this thing. I’m also hoping to get some cues down, and maybe storyboard the scenes we’re shooting on Saturday.
Originally, I had asked Alicia to schedule the fights on separate days, and to have them closer to the beginning of the shoot. My feeling was that these fight scenes are exhaustive, so if we get them out of the way at the beginning, it’s all down hill from here. Alicia’s thinking was that we can shoot them towards the end and get the makeup right; and if they dirty any of the wardrobe, it won’t matter because it’ll be the end.
Well, the two fights never got scheduled because of a lot of scheduling conflicts Alicia has had to endure during the shoot. So the only available day to shoot is today, and if we want to shoot both fight scenes, they’ve got to be today.
I’m a little nervous.
The call time is for 9am at my place, and Irish and Harry show up, followed by Bill and Alicia. Bills got to book it to work at three, so after that it will just be me, Alicia, and Alicia’s friend Andrea that came and helped us out at the auditions.
Here’s a problem that we have with this shoot, and a problem we had with Desolation Row as well. All these people are way too cool, so it’s such a good time hanging out with them, you don’t want to get up to shoot. Not that shooting’s not fun, it’s just hard to move from one fun activity to another. We lose track of time easily in each other’s company.
Eventually we hit the bricks at 10; an hour after our call time, and head over to the park to shoot the first fight scene, which is also the longest. Yesterday, I spent quite a few hours watching these scenes shot by shot and trying to storyboard them accordingly. There’re a few things we obviously can’t do, mainly the suplexes, and if we’re to move quickly today, there’s multiple angles we can’t get, which applies mainly to the Deadwood fight.
The first fight is broken down into stages, consisting of about 21 setups. We start blocking out and rehearsing the first chunk, which is one of the bigger melees, after we shoot the minimum dialogue that leads up to the scene, and something is weird. It turns out Irish has never gotten into a fight before, so his punching is a little off. However, I think it still works because he’s playing a character called The Mick, who is Irish, so maybe his fighting style is more a European flavor.
So once we get the chunk rehearsed to a stage that I like, we start trying to roll. But, and this is an ongoing problem at this location, the park maintenance dude decides to come out and cut the lawn on his big riding lawn mower. We get the sound of it, in case we have to sound match later, and start shooting the scene.
Considering what we have to shoot in this scene, and 21 setups is ridiculous, we move at a brisk pace. Alicia’s on top of her game applying the makeup quickly when it’s needed, and we’re all on top of moving shit out of the shot when it’s needed. We take some breaks to get out of the sun and let Irish and Harry cool down a bit and catch their breath, but man, these guys are fucking troopers. Not one complaint out of either of them the entire time.
We’re getting towards the end of the scene, and with the lawnmower man mostly done, a new audio annoyance arrives in the form of a Dickie Dee ice cream retailer. This dude (or chick, I’m not sure) was so lazy, s/he wouldn’t even bring their bicycle ice cream cart thing into the park. It actually might’ve been a law, I don’t know for sure, but s/he would just sit there and ring the damn bell over and over again. It just so happens that right now, we’re shooting a chunk that requires some dialogue, so we can’t have an ice cream bell in the middle of this fight scene.
Harry, blood covered face and all, goes to talk to the Dickie Dee rep. This is just a sight that makes me laugh. I don’t know exactly what was said, and Harry’s the type of guy that even if he told you seriously, you would still think he’s joking, but the bell stopped. I guess the bell tolled for Harry.
We move on to the next chunk, where we face another distraction. Some kids have decided they want to play soccer at the net that is in our background. There’re two soccer fields here, and therefore three other nets they could play at, but they decide to play at the one that’s in our shot. After a couple of takes, and with the teenie boppers moving ever closer to us, I send Andrea out to ask if they could move.
These kids are around the twelve to fourteen year old range, so I figure sending a blond out there to ask them to move will do the trick. I’m sure if a blond asked you to do anything at that age you would comply. So they move and we continue shooting.
And throughout the day we’re constantly distracted by the best distraction ever. And I mean it. The Best. Distraction. Ever.
Someone points out that there’s a woman in a bikini walking back and forth along the end of one of the soccer fields. I can’t believe it and search to find her. Sure enough, there’s a woman in a bikini walking back and forth along the end of the soccer field.
We would shoot some, and then look and see if she’s still there. Yes. Still there. Maybe she dropped something and is looking for it, and that’s why she’s walking? But wait. Now there’s a dude in a speedo that was sitting down and has decided to join her on the merry frolic.
Okay, so now we have two bikini clad people in a park with a children’s splash pad and playground equipment walking along the back of one of the soccer fields and doing a diagonal across the other. Not once. Not twice, but all damn day.
Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because it’s two people in a bikini walking along a soccer field. Because I don’t understand it. Irish and I would later talk, and I said, “okay, I understand maybe sun tanning at a park in a bikini, and walking makes sense, everyone does it…” when Irish finishes my thought “but you put them both together and it doesn’t make sense.”
You do that shit at a beach and that shit’ll fly. You do it at a park, and that’s going to get noticed, and not winning a medal kind of noticed. More like a two heads and a penis tattoo on your chest noticed.
So as we’re finishing up, Bills phone beeps telling him it’s three and he should book. We’re almost done the scene so he finishes with us and takes off. A sense of accomplishment with us, we set off back to my place to grab a bite.
My Dad has made sandwiches for us, and it seems like just now, with only a few shooting days left on the second consecutive project, he now cares about my money situation. He has made sandwiches for us, and will have dinner ready when we’re done, so I don’t have to spend more money. My Dad, if you haven’t had his cooking, is an amazing cook, so this shit would’ve came in real handy a couple of months ago. I’m also glad that now that I’m more than tapped, he steps in to help me out.
Oh well. Free food. I’ll take it.
So we eat and head off to shoot the second fight scene at another park at around five.
We get to the park and do a couple of shots of Bulldogs truck pulling into the parking lot. They start another fight here, so we bang those out. This is a quieter park, so we’re not expecting any distractions. Again, I’ll be wrong.
Alicia applies the makeup to them, and The Mick and Bulldog exchange a few words in the truck, followed by a punch with a pistol. Then they both get out and the fight turns up.
As we’re shooting, a woman wants to take her kid to the park and asks us permission to pass. Sure, go ahead, I don’t own the park. She pulls in, and apparently her little kid is so frightened by the makeup and it’s so good, something happens that makes it a real Backlot Rebels shoot.
The cops show up.
We’re thinking it’s the woman with the kid that called the cops, but it could’ve been anyone I guess; passerby, neighbors etc. The lady cop who shows up thinks we’re really going to brawl, and we haven’t even started anything outside Harry’s truck yet. We haven’t even started the good part of the scene.
She sees all the blood on both their faces and is skeptical. She doesn’t believe it when we tell her its makeup. This is pretty much awesome proof on how good Alicia is at her shit.
Another cruiser pulls up and both of those cops are laughing. We tell them we’re shooting an episode for our online series, and the part that is really confusing me is that we’re all laughing and joking around. I guess we run some kind of outside in parks fight club where we’re all happy shit-kickers.
That’s cool though. We all have a good laugh about it, and the cops take off, leaving us to film our scene. The They Live fight was five pages, and this one is two, which is still fairly big, but small compared to what we did this morning.
I’m guessing it took around five hours to shoot the first fight scene, so I’m a little worried about running out of daylight for this one. It’s getting darker earlier and earlier now, so we don’t have any breaks during this fight scene as we shoot it.
Irish and Harry are fucking awesome people. They are both exhausted, especially Irish who has to get up and down more and fall more, but neither one of them complained once. Both of them knew what they had to do and they did it awesomely. Harry actually said he’d do the whole thing again after we wrapped the day.
We end the scene with about twenty minutes of daylight left and head back to my joint for some grub.
We get back and Irish “cleans up” in the washroom. When I say “cleans up,” I mean, he just transferred all the blood from his face and body into and around my sink. His ride arrives and he jets.
Harry, Andrea, Alicia, Sue and I chat it up for awhile talking about the day and other things. Harry decides to take a shower, and I’ve had enough, I need to eat. My Dad has left spaghetti sauce in a slow cooker for us and I lead the charge on it. The old man is so cool, he even left out some vegetarian sauce for Alicia. I still don’t understand “those” people.
We all chow down, reveling about the awesome cooking skills of my old man, until we eventually call it a night. I drive Alicia and Andrea back to Alicia’s joint, then head back to put the days footage into my computer.
A really great day today. We got a lot of work done, and there were no major injuries. Some junk got hurt, and Irish got cut, but he did it to himself so it doesn’t count.
Tomorrow I have to get up fairly early, which I’m not apt to do, and head to the Dunner and peep in on the rehearsal, and figure out a way to light this thing. I’m also hoping to get some cues down, and maybe storyboard the scenes we’re shooting on Saturday.
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