Tuesday, July 29th, 2008: Shoot Day #9, Wrap on Desolation Row

Dear Diary…

Today. Score!

Inside joke to my buddy Joe. Hope he enjoys the shout-out.

Okay, so this is going to be a different start to this entry. I’ve been starting them with “so I woke up this morning” and blah blah blah. Well, today I didn’t wake up this morning because I was already awake. As I type this entry, it’s well over 24 hours that I’ve been awake, and I couldn’t try to count how long it’s been. This is my warning that this entry might not make the most sense.

Late last night, well after I should’ve gone to bed, I started picking Kyle’s brain about how to do the concert, and if it would be possible to do the things I want to do. He’s got more experience in this type of gig than I do, so I figure he’d be the guy to ask. I was wrong, because he didn’t give me the answers I wanted.

The call time for this morning is 6:30am at Bills and I find myself on the computer far too late talking to Kyle and trying to trouble-shoot and brainstorm ideas. When I finally do decide to go to bed, it’s around 2am, and my mind is spinning and my heart is beating pretty quick.

So for the next four and a half hours, I lay in bed, getting angrier and angrier at myself for not being able to throw some Zzz’s.

Sue has the day off today so she’s decided to be a trooper and add whatever help she can. We pack up the camera and the sticks and head over to Bills, a little late I’m sure. Too bad I couldn’t send off this show by showing up on time on the last day. The surprise is that Alicia is late as well, and with the wrong coffee order.

We load up Bills truck and are about to take off to the Red Onion when Kyle shows up. Good timing. Bill, Alicia, and Kyle book it over to the location, and Sue and I head over to Timmy’s for some much needed coffee.

At the Onion, we meet up with Justine, Harry, and Joe to shoot the scene. I sense some sadness and reservation in the air as I’m sure it’s on everyone’s mind that this is our last shoot, and we’re going to wrap today.

This shoot has been a lot of fun, and if I haven’t said it enough, the cast is super-fly cool. Think of Shaft. That cat was a cool mofo right? I mean, Shaft was so cool they couldn’t even finish lyrics about him. Well, they can’t even write a song about this cast, let alone a lyric, because these guys are as cool as they come. I mean, someone goes to write a note to paper about this cast, and someone is going to bitch slap that pen out of their hand and tell them this kind of cool can’t be contained.

Alright, so we seriously rock this bitch out of the Onion. We start fairly late (as is our motif) and we finish up pretty early. We’re all on our shit today. Bill, Harry and I say our thank you’s and good-byes to Jimmy (another all time cool cat in the Sammy Davis realm) and we head outside. Kyle leaves to an appointment.

Sue and I take a coffee order and we’re off while the rest of the gang head to Mr. Sub to grab a bite. We meet up with them there, hand off said coffee order, then head back to Bills to grab one shot of a scene we missed, and to shoot the scene where Harry’s character arrives at the new pad of Joe and Justine’s characters.

Sue and I arrive with Justine, Joe, and Harry, and what do we hear thumping out of his joint? Saved by the Bell. Say what? Yeah, that’s right. Saved by the fucking Bell. It’s Christmas.

Bill ordered the seasons, and they all came today, except for Good Morning Miss Bliss, which lets be honest, isn’t really Saved by the Bell. Now you have to understand something for anyone that grew up in the 80’s. Saved by the Bell is the shit. That’s been an undying source of conversation for all of us. Rod Belding. Jeff pimp daddy manager of the Max. Eric, Jessie’s badass New York brother. The Zack Attack. It’s heaven at Bills place.

I’m confused though as Bill plays the supposed first episode on the supposed first disk. Nah, something’s missing. I know, and I don’t care what any Boxed Set says, the very first episode of Saved by the Bell starts with Zack waking up, hitting some remote control, and a life sized cardboard cutout of Kelly Kapowski comes from the ceiling; volleyball in hand. Slater arrives at the school to spoil Zacks dominance over his prey.

The first episode according to this box set is the dance off at the Max hosted by Casey Kasem and won by Lisa and Screech doing “The Sprain.” That shit ain’t right. That ain’t no first episode of Saved by the Bell. Oh well, we still dig on this shit anyway, but that’s still stuck in the back of my head.

We then check out the famous break-up of Zack and Kelly due to Jeff, pimp daddy manager of the Max, Mr. Patrick Muldoon himself. Just as good as I remember it. I believe Kyle makes it back by this point.

So, with two episodes of Saved by the Bell in us, it’s time to shoot again. The only problem is that two episodes of awesomeness, plus some food, plus an early call time, plus the heat equals dragging of some heavy ass.

We power through it all, and eventually wrap the production, despite fantastic AD Alicia passing out on set, as well as Kyle. Kyle, we’ve come to expect this from. Dude passed out on a fucking altar in a church before, and couldn’t be woken up, so him passing out is not a surprise. Alicia passing out was kind of a surprise, but the girl has definitely earned some R&R lately.

Anyways, I’d be a hell of a lot sadder about wrapping if I didn’t have so many other things on the go. The past week I’ve been thinking about this day, and how much it sucks, and how much I’d like to get another project going just to hang with these cats again. Who knows, maybe “Desolation Row 2: Desolated Again” will be in the works real soon.

Today though, I’m just too tired now, I got Episode 4 creeping up in my mind and on the calendar, the concert on the 24th, and the director from LA is supposed to call me tomorrow. I also got the whole website thing on the brain and hoping that we can transfer all the shit over before time runs out.

So we wrap and put everything away at Bills. I’m told the first three days of production on Episode 4 will be at Bills, serving as Cyrus’ lair, so we’ll just store all the gear here for now and then move it out when we wrap Bills…. Again.

We kick it in front of Bills for a bit as he rushes off to work. We say our goodbyes and go our separate ways. For now. I fully want to work with these cats again.

Alicia heads back with me and Sue to discuss wardrobe for Episode 4 and we grab some coffees on the way. Sue also reminds me that Shine a Light comes out today, as well as Lost Boys 2. We definitely got to hit that shit up.

We get the wardrobe sorted out, and shoot the shit for awhile. I come in to check my email to find out that the contract for the server ran out (I’m guessing) and we didn’t get the shit transferred over in time. Me, being the smart SOB that I was raised to be, didn’t bother backing up anything in my backlotrebels account. This is hurting like hell. Alicia and Bill did the whole thing the smart way, so they’re not out too much. Me on the other hand… well, I kind of always have done things the hard way.

It’s getting late, and Alicia has plans with her man Jesse, so we drag her along to get our flicks, and agree to drop her off after. It turns out Lost Boys 2 is a popular choice as we have to go to three video stores to find a copy. We end up snagging it at the Stinky Feet store, aka, Blockbuster.

Every time I go into this joint, it smells like wet feet. Despite how many times I shout out that it smells like wet feet in there, they still refuse to do anything about it. Tonight is no exception. The dude behind the counter also does not share in my enthusiasm for finding a copy of Lost Boys. Fuck him, what does he know about Edgar and Allan Frog? Obviously nothing. Oh, the uneducated.

We drop Alicia off and head back. However, by this time, it’s too damn late to catch any flicks, so Sue is halfway passing out as I put the days footage into my computer. Bill also gives me a shout while at work and we gab a bit about the day and some other shit that isn’t too important.

I’m hoping the LA director calls me tomorrow so we can get this show on the road. I also planned to do a couple of other things tonight, like getting to the bottom of this server fiasco, but after my last order for coffee tonight in broken English (and that’s being kind), I decide it’s best to leave the communication angle for another day. Clearly the sleep deprivation is starting to get to me.

So that’s a wrap on Desolation Row. In a way, I’m glad it’s over because it took longer than it should have. In another way, I’m sorry to see it go because of the people involved in it.

I have a philosophy where I like to learn from every project that we do. How else do you get better? I normally don’t learn too much from a project immediately after wrapping it. To me, a project is never really complete, it just gets to a point where I let it go, but it’s not really until that point, or some time after, that I really learn from it.

For this one in particular, with all the new equipment, and the new aspect ratio, I tried to do the bulk of my learning before we ever went to camera. Here are some things that I did learn though.

1.People will surprise you. Either good or bad, they’ll surprise you.

2.If you surround yourself with good people that are good at what they do, let them do their thing, and trust that they’ll do it good.

3.If these people aren’t doing their shit right, tell them they ain’t doing their shit right.

4.I still incredibly despise laziness. Maybe even more now.

5.If you set a goal for yourself and the people around you, you’re going to own that bitch.

6.Give everyone respect, but feel free to take that shit back.

7.Surround yourself with positive people. If someone starts talking skank, do something about that. If they’re negative, there’s no use for them.

8.Being on a set with no egos is the best place to be.

9.Do as much homework and research as you can.

10.If you find great people like I have for this show, don’t let them get away.

Here's a bunch of screen shots. The last ones for Desolation Row.

Thursday, July 24th to Sunday, July 27th, 2008

I don’t know why I included Thursday in here. I don’t think much happened on Thursday other than I edited a little bit. Alicia also came over with her new revised schedule on a calendar she made. I like the calendar, and I think it’s the shit, but I warn her that she’ll have to redo it. She doesn’t think so, and even if she does, she seems to be on top of the scheduling mess that is Episode 4.

If we’re having this much trouble scheduling Episode 4, I can only imagine how hard our planned Episode 5 will be, which will be our biggest episode to date. The majority of it will all be shot on location at night. The cast involved will rival our features. It will be a huge episode.

When I first started Lot B, it was just supposed to be something we did for fun. If we wanted to try something new, we would test the waters in a Lot B episode. Well, this shit has grown huge now. It’s no longer something we do in between projects, they are projects now. I have no problem with how big it’s gotten, it’s just kind of eye opening looking back at what the original concept was, and what it is now. It was something to pass the time, and now it consumes our time.

In fact, I always envisioned myself stepping into more of an executive producer role on some of these episodes, and not writing/ directing/ producing all of them. Maybe once Episode 5 gets going, someone will want to take the reins for Episode 6.

I guess I’m in a reflective mood, so I’m going to go on.

These past few days, and with all the scheduling conflicts we’ve gotten regarding this episode has caused me to think. Hey, I don’t like it as much as anyone else. Basically, Bill and I brought on Steve and Alicia, and they are fantastic additions to the Backlot Rebels team. Bob has more or less stepped down, so that definitely hurt. Before Bill and I asked Steve and Alicia to become Rebels, we were talking about doing our shit more professionally, and being taken more seriously and running our shit in a more professional manner.

Now, when I say professional, I don’t mean like, Canadian Film Industry professional. I mean, are you kidding me? Have you seen the crap that comes out of this country? Hell, our own people don’t even support it, how can it be taken seriously? Anyways, I don’t mean professional as in how the “pros” do it, because lets face it, that machine is fucking broken. It’s highly inefficient, incredibly expensive, stupidly run, has a chugging pace, and is a time wasting balloon of lead that couldn’t get off the ground if it fell off a cliff.

I’ve always worked with small crews. If I have the money, I’m going to put that green on screen rather than hire 50 more people when five more can do the job. Anyways, there’re plenty of other reasons why Canadian films suck and why we don’t support them, but this isn’t the place I’m going to rant on about that.
Yeah, so basically it comes down to Bill and I talking about treating our work more professionally. But we were talking about treating this shit like a job; the greatest job in the world mind you, but still a job. We’ll laugh and joke around, but when shit’s got to get done, shit’s going to get done, you dig?

So Alicia and Steve joined our team, and we thought this was a perfect time as any to start employing this new method. We already got rid of a couple of actors that, in essence, broke down the on-set hierarchy by getting too comfortable and too relaxed and acted like they were doing us a favor by being in our flicks. Well, I’ll take part of the blame for that, as I’m really grateful to people that agree to be in our flicks and make the sacrifice to do so. Maybe that shit went to their head.

Well, we’re not doing that anymore.

We’re taking this company in another direction. If you don’t like it, take the fucking bus.

So our first project as a unified team was, and still is, Desolation Row. The two actors that are returning to this project that I’ve used before are Harry and Keith. These two are dedicated mofo’s. They respect the process and are excited to be in any project we’re throwing down. They believe in us, our work, and the shit we do. In fact, when we had to re-shoot, Keith came down on really short notice, and Harry gave up a days worth of work to come and shoot. In fact, I think Harry gave up a job to come and shoot one of our projects before. Why? Because this is what he wants to do.

These people don’t act like they’re doing us a favor. We’re all helping each other out to reach our goals. End game. In fact, Bill has pointed out many times that the actors get more out of these films than we do. They get to put this shit on a demo reel, put it on their resume, and the more shit on your demo reel and resume, the more respected you’ll be when you put your ass on the line for another project. As directors and producers, especially at this level, you have to make your own work. Sure yeah, I can throw down this shit on a demo reel too, but how many people are hiring directors as opposed to actors?

We bring these projects to festivals, which are occupied by a grossly overwhelming number of other filmmakers, who are also looking at actors to hire. We bring these things to a festival, and if it doesn’t get sold, or no interest is shown to the behind the scenes guys, it’s back to square one for us. Create new project, make new project, the cycle continues.

I’m also reminded of the money hose that I referred to a long time ago in this diary, and how Rodriguez doesn’t like to open it because once it’s open you can’t stop it. Well, no shit. I found out the hard way. I lost count, and it would be too painful to gather up all my receipts or look back at this diary to put together the total cost for this project.

Why do I bring this up? Because I find it really fucking funny when actors talk about the sacrifices they’re making to be in a show. To me, it’s a team effort, so it’s all of our project. It’s not mine, it’s not Bills, and it’s not a vehicle for any actor. It’s a team effort to steer the train into the station. Don’t start bitching about money, because to make the project happen, money gets spent, and most likely it ain’t from an actor. If you don’t want to be part of a project, don’t sign on. And maybe you don’t become an actor. If you want something, you’re going to have to sacrifice something for it.

So we had the read through for Desolation Row. We were up front with everyone there. We told them what we expected of them, and what they could expect from us. Straight up, no bullshit. We said here’s the schedule right now, if there’s conflicts let us know right now. If there’s any other days you can’t make it, let us know right now. It was as smooth as a strippers ass, and we have not had any problems scheduling Desolation Row. The re-shoots were a bit of a struggle, but it was more a matter of logistics than any fault on any actor.

In fact, because of Desolation Row, I now love actors again. Then came scheduling for Lot B.

I don’t know if it’s because some of the actors are coming from the old method we used to use, which was basically, we’d bend over for the actors and not get a reach around in return, or if they’re just not taking it like they should. That shit ain’t going to fly anymore. You don’t like the sport we’re playing, you’re out of the game. You don’t take this seriously, step aside for your replacement. There’s plenty of ballers out there, and not enough games for everyone to take a jump shot. If we put you on the floor, be prepared and happy that you’re playing, or ride the fucking bench.

End rant.

Bill has been trying to orchestrate an elaborate plan for a bunch of people to go see The Dark Knight. The party of eight or nine dwindled down to four: Bill, myself, Leanne, and Sue. We go Friday at noon, thinking there’d be a lot less people as I generally don’t like people, and I really don’t like people in a movie theatre.

To my surprise, the theatre is about half full. We park our asses in the second row from the back. There’re a couple of teenage girls a couple of rows in front of us, and a dude in the row right in front of us that’s texting. I’m thinking these are going to be the problem people. Turns out I couldn’t be more wrong.

Behind us and to the left is a father out with his two kids, who are about nine years old. Like kids, they ask a lot of questions throughout the whole movie. Not like the father I hoped he would be, he didn’t smack his kids silly and then cover their mouths when they tried to cry. Note to parents: if you take your kids out to a theatre, either beat their ass when they talk, or move them to a corner when their questions aren’t going to annoy the other people who paid money to see the flick.

Behind us to the right were a couple out on a date. The broad is too busy texting the whole time to watch the movie, so she would have to turn and ask her boyfriend what was going on. He’d tell her, and then I guess her hearing is bad, because he would have to repeat himself. Not that he was the pearl in the oyster either.

Boy: That’s Two-Face.
Girl: What?
Boy: That’s Two-Face.
Girl: How do you know?
Boy: Because his name is Harvey Dent.
Girl: What?
Boy: It’s Harvey Dent. That’s Two-Face.
Girl: Who’s Two-Face?

And on, and on. I love narrators. You know, just in case I couldn’t follow a movie as complex as a superhero flick, it’s nice to have these people behind me just to make sure I’m on the right track. Thank you. I wouldn’t know it was Batman if I didn’t have your insight.

Sue finally had enough and turned around and said something sarcastic to the guy, along the lines of “Thanks, I wouldn’t have seen that on the giant screen if it wasn’t for your pearls of wisdom. I paid 10 bucks to see this movie and decided not to pay attention so I’m glad you’re here so I can follow this.”

The guy said “That’s good but I wasn’t talking to you so shut the fuck up.”

Them be fightin’ words. The only person that can tell Sue to shut the fuck up is me, and I didn’t even do it yet that day, so I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some douche bag steal my thunder.

I turned around and scolded him, then stared him down until he slunk down on his seat and watched the screen again. He was quiet the rest of the movie. But I’m really surprised that the girl could walk upright she was so dumb. I actually turned around and asked her if it was possible she could really be that fucking dumb.

The last barrage came towards the end of the flick, when this exchange took place. I won’t include any spoilers.
Girl: Did she die?
Guy no response.
Girl: Did she die?
Guy no response
Girl: Did she die? Did they kill her? Did she die?
Me: Yes, she died. She died. And you would know that if you actually watched the movie instead of talking to him the whole time.

Then I stared the both of them down until they slunk in their seats further and watched the rest of the movie in silence.

So, I’m not sure how much I actually enjoyed The Dark Knight.

Later on, I get an email from that old friend in LA who said that the producers are going to give me a shot at writing the script for them. The budget is 2.5 million, and I won’t see any money up front, but I can get back end points. Apparently, they passed on all the other writers and are going to go with me. The director will call me if he hasn’t already. Sweet deal, but I feel ill prepared.

At the end of the night Friday, Sue and I are craving coffee but don’t have the money to buy it. Alicia calls to discuss more things with the schedule and Sue and I, great people that we are, call Alicia back and see if she’d like to watch a movie with us tonight, for the low admission price of two coffees. She agrees.

We pick her up, then head over to the video store to initiate her film education with Bloodsport. We also grab In Bruges, and The Gate, which I haven’t seen since I was pretty damn young. After Alicia pays for that, we skip over to 7-11, forgoing the coffees for some slurpees. Sue and I manage to pay for a good chunk of it with lots of change, while Alicia finishes off the balance.

Man I feel like scum.

We get back to my place, and we watch one of the best movies of all time: Bloodsport. I already knew it was awesome, and Alicia learned the awesomeness of Frank Dux, Chong Li, and Jackson. The surprise hit of the night was In Bruges though. Definitely check it out if you get the chance. A criminally overlooked film.

The next night, Sue and I are sitting around bored, as is Alicia, so she comes by again to check out one of the best films of all time: Robocop. I’m not even going to start going on about the full on awesomeness of this movie, because if I will, I won’t stop. If you haven’t seen it, then your life isn’t complete.

Alicia and I also talk about the concert coming up. I remember the band name now, and I believe it’s “Quest for the Past.” Apparently there was some miscommunication between Alicia and myself, and I’m still not sure, but I don’t think she wants to handle the show. She just wants to handle the one aspect that would fall under the directors job, and she was unaware that that part was the directors job. We’re going to have to talk some more to see who’s handling this gig and make it certain.

The director also called, but I missed it. He left a number to call him back with but he’s going to Santa Barbara and will return tomorrow, so if I don’t hit him back, he’ll get me.

I start wondering if now’s the time to get an agent. I’ve tried to get agents before, but it’s always more or less turned out the same. “We only accept new clients when you have a deal about to go through.” Well, that’s great and everything, but how am I supposed to get a deal when people will only take scripts from agents? I was always stuck between a rock and a hard place with a 747 on my head before, but it looks like a deal is about to go through now. I’m wondering if I should take full advantage of the situation and try to rope myself a representative.

I throw up the teaser trailer link on a few sites and do some more editing to end the night.

On Sunday, I phone the director and get his machine and leave a message for him, and also my email address as I can see this turning into a game of phone tag pretty quick. I’m going to be in Toronto tomorrow so I’m probably going to miss his return call, then on Tuesday, we have our final shoot on Desolation Row, so I won’t be available then either.

I’m not saying too much or giving away any names and shit regarding this whole writing gig, because I’m not sure how much I can say, and even though it seems pretty close, I don’t like to say anything outright until it’s finally a concrete deal.

I also end up buying more server space because the server is in Bobs name now, and he doesn’t want any part of it anymore. I’m told it would be easier to just buy the space myself, and transfer it from there. It ends up being a lot more money than I thought it would, and thus, a lot more than I can afford. What can you do though? We need the website up and Bill, Steve, and Alicia have been great with footing the bill for various things for this production, so I can’t complain about dropping some coin on this.

I’m toying with the idea of adding a shopping cart to our site so people can use that to buy our swag. I’m going to have to talk to the rest of the guys to see if that’s something they want to pursue.

I'm off to Toronto in about five hours and I'm looking forward to catching up with Logan while I'm there. I haven't seen that cat in awhile.

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Every one of my entries lately seems to start with me waking up. This one will be no exception.

I wake up to a pretty vile message being left on my machine. I had planned to just sleep in past it, but the message being left prompted my action, and then a swift verbal ass-kicking. I grew up as a fat kid that’s an only child; you don’t want to get into verbal warfare with me. People never learn.

Anyways, the context of this conversation has to do with the shit day I had and how it continues to streak across the kitchen floor. That’s enough of that.

Alicia had sent out the schedule for Episode 4 and there’re many problems with the first edition she put out, and she forwards me the ten emails or so that contain the conflicts. Man, I’m so glad this is out of my hands now and she’s taking care of it. I don’t think most actors realize how hard it is to schedule a show to begin with, and then how hard it is to schedule one that makes everyone happy. These episodes are a bitch to schedule to say the least.

Steve’s band has a gig coming up in August that Steve would like to have a concert DVD made to sell as merch. Great friend that I am, I can’t remember the name of the band but it’s some Celtic music type thing they throw down. Anyways, the dude’s super busy as it is, and he’s going away on a vacation where he gets to zap people in the head with electricity and watch them jism out, so he would like to have a meeting about the concert and get the ball rolling. The sooner the better.

We try to go for later on today, which is the only day that’s good for Steve. I’m good for it, and Alicia is good for it, but Bill has to work tonight, but he says he can drop by for ten minutes or so on his lunch break. Jesse, Alicias boyfriend, drops her off at my joint on his way to band practice, and I drive Alicia to Steves place to have the meeting.

Steve gives us the tour of his pad, shows us how he’s trained his cats to stand up with the wave of a hand, and shows us either his, or his wifes, impressive weapons collection. The highlight was Steve demonstrating one of his knives saying “if you get disarmed then whoof!” and he pulls another knife out of the knife. That was so awesome I can’t even describe it. A knife within a knife.

So the meeting commences with a phone call from Bill saying he can’t make the meeting after all. Once we all start talking about it, Alicia is on this project like a fat kid on a chocolate bar. This kind of sucks, because I had big plans for the gig too, but I’m willing to step down and let her run the show. I’d probably go too balls deep and too ambitious with it anyway, so it’s all hers. It’s on the 24th, and we’ll be in the middle of shooting Episode 4 when this concert comes about, so I have other things to worry about anyway. I’ll run a camera for the show, and do what I can in the prep for it.

Alicia and I get back to my place so I can lend her The Wire (greatest show on TV EVER. If you haven’t seen it, go buy the seasons RIGHT NOW), and Raging Bull, and we meet up with Sue, who I wanted to speak to about the conversation I was lucky enough to have in the morning. We all kick it for a few awhile before we take Alicia back home, and then I hop on the computer with little to do and an inkling for some editing.

I start cutting a trailer for Desolation Row, even though we’re not even done shooting it yet. My idea for a full length trailer is stifled when I realize that I don’t have a shot that I need because we haven’t shot it yet, so I just decide to go ahead and cut a teaser for it, using some Ennio Morricone music from Once Upon a Time in the West. Truthfully, I didn’t put too much work into it, I just thought I would do it for the cast and crew that have been working tirelessly, and without complaint on it. I hope they dig it when they see it.

Here it is.

Screen shots

Here are some screen shots from the past two shooting days.

These are from Day #6.





Day #7 Screen grabs

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

I end up sleeping in until around 2:30. I turn the computer on and check my email and I get a hit from my old friend telling me that his buddies loved the script I sent them, and they would like to see some loglines I come up with for the script they have in mind. They need the loglines yesterday, and if they like them… I don’t know. They’ll hire me? They’ll talk more to me about it? I don’t know, I’ll just take this journey one step at a time.

In the email I get, there’s a list of cast members I think they have for the project, and a list of characters from other movies they would like to see involved. The types of characters anyways, not the exact same ones. It turns out they have two or three million for this project, so I won’t have to be as restrained as I am when I write projects I plan to do myself.

Sue and I head outside, and I grab my binder and start jotting things down after I catch up on these diary entries. I come up with two loglines based on the parameters they’re looking for, and I try to remember a logline from another script I wrote that could be adapted to what they want.

I fire the loglines off, and now I sit back and wait.

Alicia sends me a tentative schedule for Episode 4 and it looks good. She also tells me that Bill is restricting his house as a location to the basement. This sucks as I had his house in mind for a major location in the episode, but I can understand where he’s coming from. Considering what happens at this location, I wouldn’t be able to use it again after this episode anyway. I come up with an alternative plan, tell Alicia, and she’s seeing if it’s a possibility.

Today, I would just like to chill a little bit, and watch a flick. We still have two other horror movies Keith sent us, and I think I left Joes flick at Bills house, so we go for The Bank Job. Normally I stay away from Jason Statham movies, but I’ve been hearing good things about this one. It’s a solid flick to say the least that I thoroughly enjoy.

I hop back on the computer and notice that the Saved by the Bell conversation is now infecting everyone’s lives. You really can’t get enough of the Bayside gang.

That’s pretty much it for my day. The rest of the night, I just plan on rearranging the insides of my computer, capture the footage we shot the last couple of days, and hopefully put up some screen grabs.

Monday, July 21st, 2008: Shoot Day #8, The Zack Attack

I wake up to a call from my best friends, FedEx. They inform me that my package has come and ask if I would like to come and pick it up or have it delivered. I ask what time it would be delivered at and they give me a ballpark number, I tell them to keep it there and I’ll come and pick it up for fear it’ll end up in Winnipeg again. My apologies for saying it was Windsor before; I screwed up. It was actually in Winnipeg. If it was Windsor, I would’ve driven down to get it. Fucking Winnipeg.

I hang up the phone and try to catch some more shut eye, but it’s over. I decide to get up and head over to Hades; or the FedEx depot. There’s another lady there that I haven’t dealt with before, and she asks me for a tracking number. I tell her I don’t have one. Then she gets a superior attitude towards me and then I restrainfully lose it on her, telling her I had a tracking number and then her company fucked up really bad. I give her my address that it should’ve been shipped to, then also add that I should’ve gotten this package on Saturday, and her company really screwed me over.

I know she’s not directly responsible for this, but if she had any sense, she would’ve called in sick today. Nah, I’m just playing, but she didn’t need to have the attitude I stripped her of.

I get home and open the package. While Sue was talking to one of the main guys at FedEx on Saturday, the dude fell back on the terms and conditions about business days and how Saturday isn’t a business day, so it would be Monday that I would get the package. All this bullshit he was spewing was him protecting his ass if I wanted to go after him monetarily. Basically he was creeping out of the FedEx hole saying that it didn’t have to be delivered on Saturday. Well, doesn’t the box say “Saturday Delivery” on it? FedEx = pieces of shit. From now on, I’m going to see what Brown can do for me.

So I take out the part, hoping there’s a new imaging element inside. There isn’t, but I do notice that the legs that seemed to cause the squeak in the other part are a lot more fixed up in this new one. I tear apart the adapter again, and install the new piece.

I’ll be damned, isn’t there another piece of dust on the glass again? This time I’m not going to make the brush mistake. I brush it off, very careful not to touch anything, but the speck doesn’t want to go away. I rush upstairs to the sink to wash it off, and I drop the glass into the sink. Lucky for me, and the production, but mainly for me because the production would tear me apart, that I don’t scratch or break it. I air-dry it and put it back on, and really take care of the dust issue. It’s all aligned, and I’m off at 3:30 for the 3:00 call time.

Today should be an easy and short day. We’re filming with Dave, Joe and Justine today, and the first scene we’re to film is when Detective Baldwin pays a visit to Grant. Dave looks a lot better today, and a lot more jovial.

All the gear gets brought in from Bills truck as I look over my battered storyboards. Bill asks me if I had the rails for our other dolly system, or if I grabbed them from the bus station last night. I ask him where I would’ve put them, considering I didn’t drive, and I didn’t unload anything out of his truck. Alicia and Bill take off to see if the rails are still at the bus station.

Meanwhile, Dave, me, and Baby Reilly sit around shooting the shit. Bill and Alicia get back and we set the dolly up and start shooting. Luckily the rails were still there. The new part for the Brevis makes the adapter whisper quiet. We could tell it was on before because you could hear the damn thing clicking away; now you have to look to see if the light is on, and touch it to make sure it’s vibrating. Yeah, that’s what she said.

It takes a couple of hours to knock out this scene, but it gets done, and the performances are stellar to my eyes. Dave is wrapped for production, which seems weird, because I always thought he was in more than two scenes. Now I wish I would’ve written him in more. The whole time we’re shooting this, Alicia is upstairs trying to organize the chaos that is Episode 4.

We wait for dark to film a scene where Dana comes home to confront Grant, and also a scene when Grant comes home to the empty place. We’re also going to improvise a small scene, but all of this takes place at night.

Sue showed up from a shift at work she wasn’t supposed to work today. It turns out yesterday she was supposed to work and didn’t go in thinking it was the final day of her vacation. Today she had off, but thought it was her first shift back. She put in the day anyway, and now has tomorrow off. I don’t know if irony covers this, but it’s definitely a weird story.

We have a little bit of time to kill, and we need some food, so we decide to walk over to the Mandarin. While there, more Saved by the Bell talk comes out, centered again on Rod Belding and Jeff, pimp master of the Max, as well as Kevin Bacons angry factory dance in Footloose. No one can think of the song.

We walk back over to Bills, and while Alicia is doing Justine’s makeup, Joe, Bill, and I end up on youtube checking out The Zack Attack, the legendary fight between AC Slater and Zack, the “Get out of my school, Rod” clip, a montage of Jeff, and the angry Kevin Bacon dance. All worth the time and effort. I can’t believe how many re-cuts there are of the Zack/ Slater showdown.

I head downstairs and throw some light on the front of Bills pad, Justine is ready, and we shoot the small scene with four shots. I’m hoping it comes out good.

We move inside and more or less do the two remaining scenes simultaneously. We shoot Justine coming into the house, then we shoot Joe coming into the house and entering the room. We bring Justine back, and we shoot their showdown, having a bunch of laughs the whole time.

During the small downtime we had when we moved from the exterior to the interior, Bill has decided he’s going to grab all the Saved by the Bell seasons. Joe and I really connect as well, because it turns out when we were entering high school, we both thought the same thing: Where’s the Max at? Disappointment ensued.

We finish up the scene and Justine and Joe take off. His job is to watch Sonny Chiba’s 1974 masterpiece Street Fighter and bring it back on Tuesday. My job is to watch a flick he brought me called The Business, which is from England.

Slowly we pack up everything, and eventually scram out of Bills place. I talk to Baby Reilly a little bit, and then I’m off. When I get home, I start youtubing some California Dreams, another show that was dear to my heart growing up. I refund everything I ate at the Mandarin then hit the sack.

Next Tuesday is our next and final shoot day on this production. This saddens me, but I don’t have much time to think about it as I still have a lot of work to do for Episode 4. I’m hoping the cast for that production are as cool as the cast for this one. Most of the people on Episode 4 I’ve worked with before, and they’re super cool. Let’s just hope the New Class is as cool as this one (Saved by the Bell reference).

I don't have the footage on my computer yet, but I hope to soon, so I'll put up some grabs then.

Sunday, July 20th, 2008: Shoot Day #7

Today is going to be a busy day, just from the different locations we have to travel to. We’re supposed to start out at Bills and shoot the scene where the Landlord shows Grant and Dana the new place where they’re going to live.

Yesterday, I didn’t do much when I got home from the wedding, so today I’m going to put the Brevis back on the camera, sans new part that I was supposed to get, head over to Bills and start shooting.

The plan was to head over to Bills to pick up the super awesome dolly system, bring it back here in Bills truck, let my Dad customize it for the new wheels while I reattach the Brevis, then load all the shit back into Bills truck and head back.

I phone Leanne and tell her I’m on my way, when my Dad decides it would be easier to come with me, and grab the dolly in his SUV. Alright. So we’re off to grab the dolly system, and on the way back he treats me to a coffee. The way to my heart.

We get back and the old man starts hacking the dolly as I start putting the Brevis back on. As I start putting it back on I notice there’s some dust inside on the imaging element from when I put it back together on Friday. When I put it back together on Friday, I never bothered to make sure there wasn’t any dust inside, as I figured I would just be ripping it apart again to put the new piece in. Thanks again FedEx.

So I get it all hooked up to my camera, and start aligning it, when I notice the speck on the element. Great. I take the element out and start brushing it off with some kind of pen that I got from Henry’s. My laziness doesn’t come in handy, as the hard part of the brush starts rubbing onto the glass, causing some markings on it.

I rush upstairs to wash the element, get it all cleaned and air-dried, and notice the mark is still there. This isn’t the start of a new week after all it seems. I debate about canceling the shoot, thinking the piece is not usable, but throw it in my camera anyway. Turns out the mark isn’t noticeable. Maybe it is the start of a new week after all.

I phone Bill to let him know I’ll be a little late, throw my shit in the car, and head over. My own father doesn’t even have the patience for me as he’s already left to drop off the super awesome dolly system. I arrive to see Steve and his wife Cheryl doing the set dec; making the joint look like someone just left in the middle of the night without any of their shit. As they’re doing that, I set up the lights that we need for the scene, and have minimal conversation with Steve, Cheryl, and Lisa, who’s back to play the Landlord.

I get what I can setup, and head outside to have a smoke and cool off a bit. Bill gets back to his house, which confuses me as I thought he was upstairs the whole time. He went over to BestBuy to grab a terabyte for himself as he’ll probably need the room on his computer to edit the Serbian wedding.

I come back inside to see Steve and Cheryl both staring at a wet spot on the floor. I think to myself that it’s supposed to be a beer spill from the previous tenant as Steve and Cheryl both seem to be analyzing it; and that’s how detail oriented Steve is, that he would analyze the flow from a supposedly spilt beer. Turns out that I was wrong, and Bills dog Hunter just had an “accident.” We all have a good laugh.

Turns out my fears about the previous week extending were wrong, as once we start shooting, the shit gets rocked out. The new super awesome dolly system is heads and tails above the super awesome dolly system 1.0 model. 2.0 is definitely an improvement.

We rock out the scene and wrap Lisa for a second time. We’re trying to organize our trip to Burlington when she heads out amid the chaos, and eventually we’re off after I eventually get a hold of my mother and ask her to meet us there. We’re shooting at her office building, and she and her boss were nice enough to let us use the lunch room. We’re late as usual as Dave is supposed to meet us there for four. We get there and pull into the wrong parking lot and Bill puts his 4x4 to use and just drives over the curb into the correct spot.

My Mom is there waiting with Dave, who has just got back from vacation and is struck with food poisoning. Remember when I said coolest cast ever? This shit is more proof. There’s a rumor that it could’ve been alcohol poisoning, but whatever; dude’s still the shit.

We also have to watch out because if the door is open for longer than a certain amount of time, the alarm will go off. It’s either 7 seconds or 30 seconds, we’re not sure. It’s probably something we should’ve looked into though. We move in the gear, and head up to the second floor, the whole time joking around that it feels like we’re entering Cyberdyne systems from T2. It kicks ass that all these places are reminding me of other kick ass scenes from movies. Either that or I’m making a stretch and I’ve watched way too many movies.

Everything gets set up in the small little room that’s supposed to serve as the break room for a police station. Dave, food poisoning and all, rocks out the scene with Joe. I’m surprised and happy as hell to see that detail oriented Steve made up a wanted, and missing picture to hang up on the wall. It’s me and Alicia in the pictures, and it’s the easiest I’ve ever dropped 26 pounds in my life. I can’t remember who was who in the descriptions, but I think I was despondent, and Alicia was a stripper killed by Bill Reilly. This shit is pretty sweet sauce.

We finish the scene, pack up our gear, and head back to my place where my Dad has agreed to barbeque some grub for us as we wait for night fall before we head to the bus station to shoot the beginning and end of the flick.

During our down time, and as per usual on our sets, a pretty intense conversation comes out involving Saved By the Bell. The show was just so damn classic. Before, it was just pretty much me, Logan, and Bill handling this end of the conversation, but it’s so much nicer now having more people my age that grew up watching the same shit I grew up watching. To say the least, Saved by the Bell was an important staple in our lives. We can’t get past Rod Belding, the cooler Belding with an affinity for stewardesses, and Jeff, the pimp daddy manager of The Max.

After chowing down, and with the Saved by the Bell conversation hitting it’s peak, we’re off to the bus station to film. We start out by breaking out the Glidecam, then head inside for the rest of the night. Around 1am, Baby Reilly shows up and takes over the audio duties from Alicia. He’s digging on this shit, so I think it’s pretty cool because now Alicia can concentrate on the scenes we have to do and the make-up, and I can concentrate on my version of “directing.”

Joe is supposed to be dying during these scenes from a gut shot wound, and Alicia does a great job making him up to sell this effect. I’m looking at the guy and feeling sick, and I feel pretty bad for him. I have to keep reminding myself that he’s not really looking this way, he’s just made up this way.

We pack up the scene at around 4:30 or so and I think we ended up getting some cool shit in here, and the last shot of the film reminds me of a Kubrick type shot. I hope it cuts together nicely.

Bill hustles ass with Joe trying to get a poster for the flick as the rest of us pack up the gear. I have to remind Bill that Joe has class in Toronto at like, 10 tomorrow, so he stops shooting. Once Bill starts going with his camera, there’s no stopping him.

We get back to Bills and decide to just unload the cameras and leave everything else for tomorrow. It’s another late night, and I’m glad we don’t have a call time until three in the afternoon tomorrow. It’ll give me time to get the new part for the Brevis, hook it up, and sleep in a little.

Today’s shoot went really great with no significant problems. It seems like a new week has begun after all.

I'll have some screen shots up later.

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

When it rains, it pours.

So my part for the Brevis is supposed to be in St. Catharines today. I was told 8am, but the FedEx depot here doesn’t open until noon, so I try to catch a few zzz’s before heading over there to pick it up. I figure it’s a good idea to sleep in a bit, then head over and grab it for noon, then meet up with Bill at my place at one, then meet up with Dave in the Falls for two to start shooting the wedding, which he’s already started shooting this morning at eleven. You catch all that?

For some reason my sleeping in isn’t happening. It might have something to do with Sue calling the FedEx main office this morning to get the whereabouts for my package and being told it would be in Windsor by noon. It might have something to do with her having to correct the lady and telling her it’s supposed to be in St. Catharines at noon. It might have something to do with yesterday, when I tried to look it up on the computer, it wasn’t scanned anywhere. Maybe I was too optimistic and ignored the obvious problem of my package disappearing.

That’s all hindsight. This morning I can’t sleep in.

I hop on the computer like I do every morning and see what I missed during my slumber. I have an email in my inbox from a friend of mine I worked with way back in 2002 who says that he has some friends that have the scratch to make a flick, and they just fired their writer. He of course, dropped my name to them as a possible replacement. Right now, they’re interviewing writers to take over, and since they’re looking for an edgy, Tarantino style writer to take over, he thinks I’ll fit that bill.

I wrote a script for him a year ago or so that he was supposed to produce, but I’m not sure exactly what happened with it. He asks me if he can give that to them, or an old script I wrote back in 2002 as a writing sample, or if I have something else I’d prefer. I’m not too keen on that old script, so I tell him to either submit the one I wrote a year ago, or the attachment that I’m sending him. I send him Desolation Row, and he says he’s going to pass that along to them.

I’m not really expecting anything to happen with it, and it won’t be a paying gig regardless, but we’ll see how these cards fall.

Sue and I have two guinea pigs, Wolfgang and LaMotta. For the better part of this week, LaMotta has stopped eating, and more importantly, seems to have stopped drinking. This isn’t good, because when a guinea pig gets sick, they have very little time to recover before they get real worse real quick. Today, Sue phones the vet in Grimsby and asks if they can take him. This stings her a bit, as she recently had her cat put down there and they raped her financially on the cost of it. But what can you do? They’re the only ones that are semi-local that even have an idea of what to do with a guinea pig. They say they’ll take LaMotta so as I’m checking the many inboxes I have, she grabs LaMotta and is off.

I head out to the FedEx depot to pick up my new part. The lady punches in the tracking number and I hear that dreaded noise that all windows users hate to hear. The “dung.” It sounds as if someone smacked your intelligence, that would be the sound it would make. Dung.

Obviously, she can’t find it in her system. She tries a few different ways to find it, and phones some other people and there’s no package to be found. I have to call the shipper, and to do that, I need to go back home and get the number. Why can’t this shit just be easy for me?

I come back home, phone Cinevate and leave a message on their machine, then I get a phone call from Dave asking if we can meet him ten minutes earlier than planned. I say sure, I’m just waiting on Bill who was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. I get off the phone with Dave, ring Bill, who tells me he’s on his way. I print up everything I have from FedEx and plan to stop off at the depot on the way to the Falls.

Bill gets here and suddenly I can’t find my ass if it was on the toilet seat. I waste probably a good ten minutes trying to find all my shit before we take off. Bill’s high-tailing it out of there after the ceremony as he’s got previous plans, so we take two cars.

We get to the FedEx depot and I hand over all my printed shit and patiently watch as the lady goes about trying to find my package again. Nothing gets accomplished and it becomes quarter to two, so I have to leave. She has my number and Sue will be home after picking up and dealing with LaMotta and the vet.

Bill and I get to the Falls later than we said, but early in that the show hasn’t started. We quickly get everything set up and ready. Now we just wait on the wedding party and for this show to hit the road.

I’ve shot weddings before, and I’ve been to weddings before. They’re all the same. Until you get a Serbian wedding. Now that is some crazy shit there.

As soon as the gig starts, I know this is going to be different. For example, the whole wedding was in Serbian, and the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious leader is chanting everything. I can’t understand anything that’s going on. They’re walking back and forth, and the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious leader is standing in front of the bride and groom, but facing the same way as them towards the wall. Righteous.

Then they do three laps around the church. There’s a choir on the balcony that seems to be repeating everything the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious leader is chanting. Man, I felt like Jon Voight arriving in New York City in Midnight Cowboy. I’m just trying to keep up.

There was none of that “do you take this person, give her the ring, say your vows” thing going on, and if there was, it wasn’t in English. At one point the dude tied the bride and grooms arms together, placed a book on their heads, planted some crowns on them, made them kiss the book and crowns, then untied them and that was it. They were hitched.

Then the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious dude spoke English, in an English accent of all things, and said they were going to sign the papers. Sweet. This wedding was pretty far out.

We go outside to get the wedding party leaving the church and there’re rumors about throwing money. Sure enough, it wasn’t a rumor as handfuls of change started flying up in the air and smacking people in the head, against the limo and wherever else change felt free to fall. People start scurrying for that shit like chickens to feed. Crazy. Then a fistful of bills comes out, and that was thrown in the air. The funny thing is, only one bill came off, and the rest of the wad landed right in some lady’s hand. To her benefit, she started sharing the money instantly.

So the wedding party comes out, and the wedding party does what all Serbian wedding parties do I guess; they start drinking booze from a cooler beside the church stairs. Serbians are pretty awesome people.

So that’s all done, I hop on Bills cell to see if there’s a voice message from Sue, who was supposed to call FedEx to get to the bottom of this shit. There is a message so I call her back and she starts telling me that FedEx says that Cinevate fucked up. I don’t really believe this, and I start telling her that I don’t care who fucked up, I just want my package when Bills phone dies. Of course.

I borrow Dave’s cell (I really should get me one of these things) and call her back and she tells me she’s on the other line with FedEx. I manage to say that I don’t care what happened, if it’s in Brantford or Mississauga or some shit, I’ll go there and pick it up. She’s on it.

The three of us then caravan it over to where the wedding party is getting their pictures taken. We haul ass to get there and then…. we wait. I meet Joe the photographer and he shakes my hand and crushes it. I realize now how jacked up my hand still is. I punched walls before but it never lasted this long. Oh well, it’s a little embarrassing and I yell at Joe for being the Hulk. I’m not sure how he takes it as I just met him, but damn my hand hurts now. I’d punch him if it didn’t hurt so much.

I hop on Bills cell again and call Sue. Turns out FedEx is changing their story and taking the blame for it. They’re pretty adamant that the fault is theirs and not to blame Cinevate. They fucked up, and my package is in Windsor after all. How the fuck does this happen? How does it go out of province when where it was coming from, and going to, are all in the same province? Yay FedEx, you’re taking the blame. You apologize. Big fucking deal. How does you saying you fucked up get me my package that I need for tomorrow?

FedEx, you are now on my piece of shit list. Congratulations. You’re pieces of shit.

I ask Sue to call them back and find out if the truck is making any stops. If it stops and unloads in Mississauga onto another truck, I’ll drive my raging ass up to Mississauga and grab it, maybe punch a few walls in the process. That building should be made out of some nice concrete. I get off the phone, and Bill jets to meet up with Leanne and do some family thing in Markham.

Finally the wedding party arrives just in time for it to really start raining (literally). Joe starts leading them through the paces of their pictures, Dave and I tape a lot of it, they move to a few locations around the joint, we film it, then Dave and I head off to the hall, hitting a Tim Hortons up along the way.

We get to the hall, start charging our camera batteries and wait. And wait. And wait. Joe arrives and we ask what’s going on. He says the limo is riding around town and the wedding party is having a good time inside. While I’m getting setup for the shit we got to do in the hall, I spill my coffee over my brand new shirt. This isn’t too important, but it pissed me off. I like that shirt.

The limo arrives and no one gets out. Dave and I are ready to go. The window rolls down and an empty case of Heineken comes out. Serbians are really awesome people. They wait in the limo for about 45 minutes before coming out; the groom very tipsy but happy.

Dave and I tape the rest of the night. All 400 people in the hall do some crazy linked arms dancing to music I don’t understand. It literally sounds like Looney Tunes music to me and all the songs run into the other. They have a saxophonist, a guy and girl singer, a keyboardist, and an accordionist. More proof that I ain’t got no culture. If I didn’t see it in a movie, I don’t know about it.

After dinner I phone Sue to see if my far off dream of getting my package before Monday will be a reality. It will not. Again, she tells me FedEx took the blame for it, and I was curious to know what they said when she told them they just cost me five grand for a shoot I can’t do tomorrow. Turns out they just apologized more. She asked them what time on Monday it would be here because if it’s not here at a certain time, that’s going to cost me another five grand. They can’t guarantee a time, but guesstimate noon.

This shit ain’t costing me five grand, but this is ridiculous. I can take blame all day long too if it don’t mean shit. I mean, really, what does them saying the fault lies on them do? They still give me my shit on Monday. I still don’t have it when I need it. Am I getting money out of them? No. Them taking blame doesn’t change a single fucking thing in the fabric of the universe, so congratulations FedEx, you’re on my piece of shit list. Because you’re a piece of shit.

I get home around eleven, with plans to set up the Brevis on the camera, take a shower, do this diary, and hit the sack. Alicia is online and we talk about scheduling Episode 4 briefly. Turns out she’s going to take that off my hands. I send her what I’ve done so far, and she’s going to get on top of it. She also tells me that tomorrow we’ll be without Kyle and Baby Reilly. I remember hearing about this earlier, and I remember coming to the same conclusion I come to now. We’ll just have to do it without them.

My dad also informs me he went out and got smooth wheels for the super awesome dolly system, but he’s going to have to cut the dolly a little bit to make it fit as the wheels are slightly bigger. I phone Bill asking when I can get the dolly for him to cut it up, and have it available for us tomorrow. Bill calls me back, and I fill him in on the rest of the wedding, and we decide that I’ll come and get it tomorrow, throw it in the back of his truck, bring it here, then load it up again and bring his truck back for the noon call time.

I pass on setting up the Brevis tonight, and decide to do that tomorrow while my Dad alters the super awesome dolly system. I change the counter balance spring back, hook the tripod plate back on the rails, then hit the shower.

We shoot tomorrow, which is a Sunday, which I’m also hoping is the start of a brand new week. I usually say Monday is the start of a new week, with Sunday being a sort of “limbo” day, but I’m really pulling for Sunday to be the start of a new week this time.

So I’m hoping we have this week behind us, or behind me at least because I don’t know what everyone else went through. I don’t know if my resolve for making this picture was being tested or not. I’m not sure if my resolve for this dream of a filmmaking was being tested or not. If it is, I’m going to pass this fucker, because there’s not too much that’s going to stop me from shooting this and getting it in the can, and there’s very little that’ll stop me from making movies.

Hopefully the test is over. Tomorrow’s a brand new day, and hopefully a brand new week.

Between Tuesday, July 15th, and Saturday, July 19th, 2008

So the week off has been a busy week off, and it hasn’t been a busy week off. Like so much else that has happened this week, it’s pretty confusing.

I know that the people that read this probably don’t know me very well, if at all. That’s fine. The people that do know me though, I’m sure will tell you that I don’t go around telling everyone if shit is going on in my life or not and how it’s affecting me. It’s just something I don’t do. If something is going on in my personal life, even the people closest to me would never know it, unless it pertains to them. It’s just the way I am.

That bad day seemed to stretch to the majority of this week, and I’m not sure if the people I’m working with really know how bad it was/ is. Just trust me if I say I had a bad day, then it was pretty fucking bad, leave it at that, and leave it alone.

I don’t think it was until Wednesday that, for the most part, I started picking the pieces back up and putting my life back together, and started making sense of the whole thing that happened. Even now as I write this on early Saturday morning, I’m not sure if I have the whole thing figured out yet, but at least I know I’m on a forward path with it again, and that’s a good sign.

The only person I told about this at all is Bill, who was amazed that I was able to keep it quiet for as long as I did. The only reason he even heard about it was because he called at the wrong time, and I more or less exploded into the receiver. It was nice to get it off my chest though, and get an outside view on things. Guy’s always there when you need him. Unless you piss him off, then just get out of the way.

That’s enough of that, on to the weather.

So that’s done. Unfortunately, dealing with that has prevented me from putting as much work into Episode 4 as I would have liked. I did manage to go over the script one last time, changing a few lines of dialogue, writing in a location that was needed, locking the script, writing up breakdown sheets, and sending all that to Bill, Alicia, and Steve. I would’ve liked to have scheduled the fucker, but I just couldn’t get around to it.

I think the break was needed as I believe the stress was starting to get to people. I wanted to chill out myself, and I caught up on some movie watching. What else does someone do with time off when they’re in love with movies? I managed to get my hands on Redbelt, which I was looking forward to ever since Bob sent me the trailer oh so long ago. My favorite film writer David Mamet helmed this flick, and I would’ve went and peeped this bitch opening night if it came around here, but I think the closest it was playing was like, Toronto or something. Yes, distribute that Vegas movie with Kelso everywhere, but keep quality films like Redbelt out of sight.

Keith also sent me a bunch of 80’s horror movies, so I also watched Silent Night, Deadly Night, which has a few similarities to Santa’s List, which we plan on shooting later this year. I’m thinking about lending it to Bill as he’s helming that flick, to see if he wants to draw inspiration from it. I mentioned to him about cheesy 80’s slasher films as an influence for Santa’s List, and he was never really into horror movies. This movie might be too cheesy for him though.

I also watched another one Keith sent me, which was Mother’s Day. The drain-o scene is worth the price of admission alone.

Speaking of Keith, he sent me quite a nice message during this week, and also filled me in on stuff regarding the epic feature I would like to do. It turns out he mentioned the flick to someone he knows who might be able to help us out with it. This is some very good news indeed because to do this picture properly, we’re going to need money, and now getting the money to do it might be just a bit easier.

The message Keith sent me was world class, and just proves my point that he’s one of the best people walking the Earth. You need a motivational speaker or a pick me up, you give Keith a ring and he’ll set you up right.

The last film I was able to check out was The Ruins, which I kind of dug. I think it worked kind of like The Mist, in that the psychological states of the characters are much scarier than any being or force that you have to contend with. That’s also why The Thing is so effective, and remains one of my top films of all time. My top 5 movies probably have close to 50 movies on it.

I also went out and grabbed a terabyte hard-drive as I’ve once again run out of space on my computer for all the projects on here. I have a system worked out in my head now about how shit’s going to go; I just have to implement it.

Also, it seems like Bob is going to walk me through how to take over the website as it expires very soon, and the server space is in his name right now. If I can find the time to get this done, hopefully the website won’t be down at all, and once it’s all in my name, I can hand it over to a webbernetz guy, who Kyle might have lined up for us. I’m really hoping this shit works out.

During the shoot so far, the Brevis has been acting up a little bit. I’m not going to get into how the whole 35mm adapter thing works, but basically the unit vibrates to make it work right. During the shoot, a clicking sound developed and continued to get louder and louder, and it wasn’t the normal vibrating sound. At one point during the shoot, it sounded like a hyperactive cricket was in the corner of the room.

I wrote on the message board on Cinevate’s website about my problem, and I got back an answer as to what to do to fix the problem, which was to take it apart, and gently move a wire or two that was believed to be contacting the carbon fiber tube. On Thursday, I took it all apart, turned it on, and the clicking sound was still there.

I trouble-shooted my way through it, and every step as I narrowed down the problem, I wrote it on the message board. Eventually, my dad and I found the problem, and we’re positive it’s the source of the problem, and I wrote it down on the message board, also explaining that I have a shoot on Sunday that I would like this thing fixed for.

Later that night, Dennis Wood, the owner of the company, told me to call him in the morning because it sounds like something they’d like to look at.

On Friday morning, I’m woken by a phone call from someone at Cinevate. I tell them the problem, and the person on the other end offers solutions, which I tell him I’ve already tried. He’s going to talk to some people there and hit me back.

A few hours go by and I don’t hear anything, so I leave a message on their board and call and leave a message. Now this is how awesome this company is.

I get an email from FedEx telling me the tracking number for a package that’s coming to me from Cinevate. Shortly after that, I get a phone call from Cinevate, who tells me they’re shipping me a new base unit to replace my faulty one. They’re over-nighting it, and since FedEx doesn’t deliver on Saturdays, I can go pick it up at the depot in St. Catharines at 8am, to have it for my shoot on Sunday (which for some reason they think is Saturday). They would just like me to send back my old base unit when I get a chance. I’m hoping pretty hard that this new unit doesn’t have a cricket living inside it too.

I think I would be amazed at this level of customer service regardless, but after all the shit I went through with Henry at 4videoequipment, this is really blowing my mind. I would drive up to Cinevate just to shake their hands if they weren’t 18 hours away from me. Top notch, world class people up there in Thunder Bay I can’t recommend them enough.

The rest of the day on Friday, I kind of get ready for the wedding Bill and I are shooting with Dave tomorrow. I bust out the new suit, which Sue irons the shirt for me as I replace the counter balance spring in my tripod (since I won’t be using the Brevis tomorrow, the weight of my camera is significantly lighter, requiring the use of the lighter set counter balance spring), put the release plate on the camera from the rails, and recharge the batteries for my camera. I just hope I remember to take the tape out of the camera before I head out tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we had two “elaborate rehearsals?”

Right now, I can’t wait for Sunday when we start shooting again. The time off has been nice, but I’ve been chomping at the bit to be on set again. Hopefully, by then, Alicia made it work with the actors for the remaining schedule and we can wrap this puppy, and then move on to Episode 4.

Monday, July 14th, 2008: Shoot Day #6, The Gay Day

So yesterday we had off. It might be a good thing or a bad thing that we had it off, I don’t know. Yesterday I had a really bad day that peaked once in the early morning, then peaked again at about 4am today. It might be a good thing that we had it off because the fit hit the shan, and I didn’t have to be on set and could deal with it, or it could be a bad thing because maybe it would never have happened had I been on set.

I think it would have happened anyway. In fact, I know it would have. Wishful thinking on my part.

Anyways, I’m not going to get into the details of said really shitty day, and I’m not even going to say what it was at all actually. However, I’m sure anyone that had one of these days will know where I’m coming from when I say that it was one of those days where you would really rather not have been born than go through that day. In fact, you start thinking about it, because you see no way out of, or around, this day. It’s like there’s a cart full of shit floating up in the sky waiting for Biff from Back to the Future to crash into it, but instead it all gets dumped on you. Then Biff comes over and kicks you in the face. Then McFly calls you a loser.

I don’t know why Back to the Future just made a tremendous impact in my life.

So on with the production day. Wait a second. Before I go on to it, I would just like to take a moment to apologize to the cast and crew of this day because I was definitely not myself and didn’t seem to have much vigor for the production today. My apologies.

So now lets start the day. A day of scenes we haven’t “elaborately rehearsed” yet. The day actually began the night before when Alicia, AD extraordinaire, emailed everyone and said the call time was for 8am. I don’t do mornings well, but I figure after the start of my bad day in the early morning, I’m pretty tired and I’ll be able to get to sleep early to make the call time. Well, shit happened again until four in the morning, so I got about three hours of sleep until I had to be up at seven to get up and meet Alicia’s demands.

Lucky for me, I arrive as Alicia is arriving. Great girl that she is, she even filled the coffee order for everyone. The plan is to be at the Holiday Inn to shoot a hotel room scene at nine. We get there a bit after nine, set up, Justine gets put through makeup, as does Steve, who’s making a cameo along with Bill. We shoot this simple scene a couple of times, then we’re off. Kyle Greer also makes his return today.

Oh, we went a lot slower today because during my bad day yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to punch a concrete wall. In hindsight, definitely a bad idea. You’d think I would’ve learned all the other times I punched the concrete wall. I really got to move my punching show upstairs where it’s drywall and not concrete. Now I’m a gimp who can’t even pull the legs apart on the tripod. I still try, but I have to call for help.

While we’re waiting at the hotel for Bill to come back to tell the main dude John that we’re bouncing, Justine starts talking to me about a script she’d like to get made, but can’t write herself. I tell her to fire it off my way and I’ll see if I can take a crack at it.

Now we’re off. Alicia and I head over to Home Depot to grab a new measuring tape for our camera. I want a nylon version that you wind up and is longer than the 16 ft one we have now. My bad day carrying over to today (it’s something you just can’t shake with 3 hours of sleep and no resolution to the problem), I don’t know where the measuring tapes are, but Alicia finds them. Great. More gay jokes to ensue.

In fact, this seems to be the gay day. All day long, continuing from Saturday, Alicia is firing gay jokes at my masculinity. A lot of them are actually quite clever so I’ll give her props for that. I don’t have the wherewithal to challenge anything she throws down, nor do I have the grey matter today to formulate a good response.

All I can manage to do is start firing off gay jokes about myself as well. Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. This is actually getting a kick out of her, so I continue doing this all day, and she chimes in once in awhile. Whatever, I’ll do anything for a laugh. I mock anger as I let the self-deprecating jokes fly, which she eventually thinks is real anger on my part. Hell no. I dish it out, so I better damn well be able to take it. And I do take it, right in the pooper Alicia. Right in the pooper.

So, we all get back to Bills to unload some gear and go back out to Niagara Falls. Like I said, I’m dragging ass today, so our departure takes awhile. We’re about 2/3’s of the way there, when I realize that the V-16 system is in my car and we’re in Bills truck. Dammit. Alright, Steve’s car and Harry’s car will continue to the casino, and Bill and I will turn around and get the V-16. It was actually Bills insistence that we go back to get it; I was just too lethargic to really care at that point. But I’m so glad that Bill is my Director of Photography, and my friend. Kid is really something.

So eventually, we’re back to the Falls, we move out to our location, the V-16 system is set up and we start shooting. Only, I can’t get the shot. The ground goes on an incline, then goes flat, then another incline, then a slightly steeper incline. I’m supposed to be leading Steve, Bill, and Justine in the scene, except they’re always lower than I am, so by the end of the scene, I’m just getting the top of their heads. Also, it seems like that cart load of shit in the sky also had a friend by the name of Mr. Wind, who would pick up every time I said action. Not cool Mr. Wind, not cool at all.

We move down to another location, and I think we got the shot. Well, it’s not as nice as I would have liked it to be, but it’s a shot. Then we’re back to Bills house where Steve dresses the set again, and he’s off to spend some quality time with his wife, who he hasn’t seen much lately.

Back at Bills, it’s another dragging ass moment as we all chill and eat. Eventually, Harry brings it up to me that to film his arrival at the bus station, we would just need him, myself, and Bill. That’s a great idea I think, because while we’re gone, the others can set up the lights and shit for the last scene we’re supposed to film here today. We’re off, and for some reason, we bring Alicia along, leaving Greer and Baby Reilly alone with Justine to set up the lights and dolly. We’re all a little scared for Justine.

We get to the bus station, get our shots, except when I put the camera back on the Glidecam system, I forgot to turn the Brevis on again. Okay, so I turn the Brevis on, we get the shot, and we’re back off to Bills again.

Again, back at Bills, we drag ass. I think he should start calling his house, “Bills House of Dragging Ass,” because that’s what we seem to do there. Nah, I’m just playing. I’m not saying it’s because of the house, it’s definitely on me as to why we went so slow.

So we all get set up, and we start shooting the scene. Justine and Harry actually blow me away with their performances. This scene is pretty dry if the actors don’t get it, and they definitely got it, which is a huge relief. It was definitely stellar acting from both of them, and Harry continues to impress me every time out. After the first three days of “elaborate rehearsals,” I actually had high expectations for Justine, and she surpassed them today.

Also, my boy Bill is definitely coming into his own as a camera operator/ director of photography. He knew that we would need the same focal length on the lens for the reverse shot, and he was trying to find a solution to keep the same focal length. We came up with one, and then he started trying to match the lighting. I was very impressed with this moment, and he’s been impressing me a great deal during this production.

Bill’s always on the lookout for other angles, or complete other shots that he would like to do. I can’t remember him ever suggesting a bad one on this show. He’s always thinking of how to make the shot more interesting, and I’m definitely happy he’s doing this; especially on a day like today where I showed no real vigor.

Like I said, the boy would look at Hurricane Katrina and call it a pussy.

So we finish our day, got our pages, and now we’re off until Sunday. This makes me sad, as it’s such a long wait, but I can do Lot B prep during this time. Also, Alicia can see if her new schedule will coincide with everyone’s schedules. The plan is to add one or two more days to the production a week after we were supposed to wrap. She’ll send it out to everyone in the next day or so, and we’ll hope everyone’s cool with it.

All of us missed Joe as well, who wasn’t on set today. We need our Frank Dux fix.

Here are some screen shots.

Saturday, July 12th, 2008: Shoot Day #5, The Depahded

Okay, so I decided to go back and put the shoot day number on all the days that we shot, even though I’m telling everyone that the first three days was just a really elaborate rehearsal.

Chevonn is getting married today, and while Bill and I were supposed to videotape it for her, we managed to get out of it to make up a day of re-shoots. She didn’t really care too much about having her wedding taped, and I’d rather shoot a flick anyway. You’d be surprised how much I would give up to shoot a film.

So today was a redo of Keith’s scenes. It’s funny, because the last time we shot his scenes, it got mentioned that every time he does a project with us, we always only bring him down for a day. Well, rue what you wish for Assoun! He’s down a second day on a project, and there’s a running joke about how we’ll do things the third time we shoot his scenes.

So, Alicia set our call time for 9am at Bills. Again, we have a lot of pages to cover, and she’s sure we can do it. We’ll be without Steve all day though as he’s got a prior engagement.

Sue spends the night with Chevonn, because I guess that’s what Maid of Honors do. I couldn’t tell you if this was right, I didn’t see the Patrick Dempsey movie of the same name with the clever pun of “Made” instead of “Maid.” That’s why Hollywood’s a huge industry I guess.

So with Sue out for the night last night, it’s up to me to set the alarm. I shouldn’t have stayed up so late doing up the last diary, but it needed to be done or else the three people that read this online will be disappointed.

I have never set this alarm before. Sue usually has to get up before me, so she sets it for herself, then sets it for me, where I oftentimes just roll over and shut it off again. I figure it’s an alarm clock, how hard can it be? Apparently harder than I thought. Alicia finds this funny that I can work a camera but not set an alarm clock. It’s a funny joke, but even funnier thinking that if I could work a camera, we wouldn’t have to shoot after the “elaborate rehearsal.”

I wake up to the phone ringing at nine o’clock, and it’s Alicia. Turns out Bill isn’t up either and she’s at his house. I tell her to get his dog going by knocking harder and he’ll get up. A second later I hear the dog going. That’s taken care of.

As quick as I can, I get ready and head to Bills where Joe, Bill, Baby Reilly, and Alicia are waiting for me. No one looks too ready to go yet. It’s going to be a day where we drag ass, and that’s fine with me. I’m sure we can get our pages done today even with us dragging ass.

I set up the Brevis onto the camera, we grab the minimal gear we’ll need and we’re off to shoot the “cock sucking sequence” as it’s now called. Basically, it’s a voice over of Grant going on a huge rant about how the corporate world is just a bunch of cock sucking to get ahead while he applies for work. We decided to move this shoot up from the 20th to today to give us more time later on, as it’s a busy day, and we haven’t been the best for keeping our schedule.

We head off to our first location, which is a Donut Diner. We sit Joe on a bench, and go across the street to shoot him. Well, I guess the guys on the picnic table next to him didn’t like Joe sitting at that table, so they get up and move Joe’s picnic table while he’s sitting on it. Wow, I guess they either don’t like picnic tables, or they don’t like Joe. Once Joe points us out across the street, they put the picnic table back, and we finish shooting the scene.

While in the car to the next location it hits me why this project hasn’t been going too smooth. This project clearly lacks the musical stylings of Steven Lynch. I introduce Joe, who’s riding with me, to Mr. Lynch and his very insightful lyrics as we boot around town shooting the sequence.

As we’re finishing up, Keith arrives. I don’t feel like going all the way to the Falls to shoot the first scene we’re doing with him like we did the first time, so we go to the parking garage in St. Catharines instead. This seems like a Depahded scene to me; the one with DiCaprio and Sheen up on the roof at 344 Wash, except the buildings don’t go as high as they do in New York (most of the film was shot in NYC to take advantage of tax breaks, so I’m assuming this scene was one of the scenes shot there). Sweet deal. I’m totally digging this location a lot more than the original one. If I can reference anything Martin Scorsese does, I’m a pretty happy boy.

After that, we go over to Timmys, my home away from home, to grab a quick bite and the actors can get changed. Since none of us really have too much energy, we dine in and hit up a chat fest about old Arcade games and themes to 80’s TV sitcoms. Alicia rocks at this game as she nails Full House, Step By Step and a couple more. We then head out to bang off a couple more scenes. As we’re just finishing the second last scene downtown, it starts to rain, and then it pours down. Guess our next scene isn’t taking place outside.

Alicia thinks we should hit up Montebello Park, where they have a couple of gazebos we can shoot under. We head over there, but there’s people lounging around inside the gazebos, and one dude’s rocking an acoustic. There’re probably too many people here for us to scare away, so I walk back to Bills truck asking what he thinks we should do. He asks me if there’s anything along the canal that has an overhang. I say no, but then an idea immediately hits me.

A couple of days ago, Bill and I took the camera rig downtown to make sure there was enough available light to shoot the scene before the climax of the film. There wasn’t, that’s how we knew to bring the generator to that shoot. However, we decided to drive around a bit and scope out any other locations that would be cool, appropriate for a generator, and wouldn’t disturb too many people with the noise. During our adventure, I took him to a spot underneath a bridge that crosses the canal.

Both our eyes light up because we both wanted to shoot there. We get there and head underneath the bridge. I’m thinking The Depahded again; the scene where DiCaprio punches Marky Mark in the face. So we improvise the body language of the actors for this different location (the original scene was to take place in a car in an alley), and the way it has to be done for this scene is not at all how it was staged for The Depahded. Who cares, this location still kicks the car in an alley locations ass.

As we head under the bridge, it’s discovered that my binder is nowhere to be found. This is not good news, as I have all the notes and research for my epic next feature in there. I really need that stuff. Bill and Alicia go back to our last location and look for it while I rehearse with the actors. There’s not much rehearsing going on, just a bunch of shooting the shit. That’s more fun anyway.

Alicia and Bill get back with my lost binder. Wow. Someone’s looking out for me today. Big shout out goes to G-O-D for making that shit happen. I wasn’t so much worried about the storyboards and shot lists in there for this flick; I pretty much know them all, but I was really worried about the notes. I hug my binder and we stage the scene for the camera.

I really hope this scene comes together well, because the location is pretty badass. We’ll see when I start hacking the footage.

We go off to Bills again, where the actors put on their final wardrobe change, Bill can feed his dog, and Alicia and I go to the original planned location to see if there’re any kids running around like last time. The rain has stopped now and I’m hoping it drove all the ankle biters indoors. No dice. There’re even some of them playing in the splash pad. I kind of don’t get this, but kids are stupid, that’s why they’re kids.

So we head back to Bills, and then we’re off to our last location of the day. We don’t even try the canal again because of the curse we have with that place. We get to the last location and use up the final light of the day to finish off our scene and wrap for the day. We finish a bit earlier than last time, and even though we dragged ass, we made our pages.

Keith is wrapped again and we all kick it in the parking lot, talking about old 80’s movies, Corey Haim, how my scripts have gay undertones because I’m apparently secretly gay, and how we’re going to shoot these scenes the next time.

Here are some screen shots.