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.