As soon as the day started for me I was itching to shoot. I think I’ve been jonesing to shoot this since I first wrote it. Now that the day is here, and the scheduling mess is behind us, I can’t wait to shoot and this 6pm call time is killing me.
I try to get even more ahead of the game and do some storyboarding while I wait. Things go alright. Nothing really to tell here, except that I storyboarded some shit. Alicia also wants me to bring her Season 2 of The Wire for her and Jesse to check out after we wrap tonight. I’m glad she’s digging the show.
I don’t know what it is that when you like something you need other people to dig on it too. Maybe it vindicates that you have taste. I don’t know exactly what it is, but The Wire is the shit, and everyone should see that thing. It’s unbelievable. Ever since Sue and I finished off the fourth season, we’ve been climbing up the walls waiting for the fifth and final season to be released on DVD. August 12th baby!
We’ve also decided not to use the Brevis on this episode. For Desolation Row, we were trying a lot of new things all at once. The Brevis and the whole 35mm adapter game is a pretty steep learning curve in itself, but then throw in the 2:35 aspect ratio and you definitely have your work cut out for you. While I love the look of 2:35, I was thinking that using that, and the Brevis for Lot B, would be too much of a change of the look we’ve already established in the series. I was thinking we could still use the Brevis, and introduce that small change for the series in this episode, and maybe introduce 2:35 later on, but we deferred not to. Bill was actually the defining voice in this logic, and was pretty adamant about keeping the look of the series the same.
I also manage to get some more writing done for the director; continuing to flush out my ideas. I’m going to email them to him before I head out for the call time, but I manage to misplace the pad I wrote his email address on. This bugs me, but only slightly, as there’s a few elements in the whole world I’m going to write about that don’t quite work for me yet.
So I’m about to head out early as there’s some stuff at Bills that still needs to be done before we can roll. I need to change the counter-balance spring in the tripod again, some settings in the camera need to be tweaked, and of course, the lights need to be set up. The plan when I first penned this episode was to use mostly natural light, and slightly tweak it artificially. Well, the first three days of this shoot are in a basement, so natural light down there is going to be shitty light, so lights need to be thrown up.
Just as I’m leaving, Sue arrives home from work with a coffee. The Devil that she is, she tries to get me to sit down and drink the coffee with her while having a smoke. Two of my many vices. I agree to her offer until Alicia calls and asks if I want a coffee. Sue’s been trumped. I grab my coffee from Sue, hop in my car, and drive to the location where another coffee is waiting for me.
When I get there, Bill starts setting up lights to where I want them, and Harry is in makeup with Alicia getting made to look like the shit got kicked out of him. Man, did her makeup brush ever kick the shit out of him. The way I did blood effects in the past was basically to keep throwing more and more blood in their face until I was happy. She’s definitely got me beat.
I replace the counter-balance spring and realize that the plate for the tripod is still stuck to the rails that go on the camera that we used for Desolation Row. I call Sue, but she’s not home, so I have to run home and grab the plate, leaving Bill to set up the rest of the lights on his own.
This doesn’t even faze me now. When this constantly happened on Desolation Row, I would get a little mad and upset at myself. Now, I kind of expect myself to forget shit and act like a retard. Oh well, the next time someone asks me to pack their parachute, I’ll know this about myself, and decline the offer.
When I get back, I ask Alicia if Kyle is coming today. She doesn’t know. We wait around while she calls him, and he tells her that he’s not making it today. Bill comes up with a replacement for Kyle: the ceiling.
So boom mic fastened to the ceiling, we manage to get Pat Murphy, Mike Conley, and Mac Benard away from the window where they were yelling at kids playing soccer across the street, to come down into the lair to start rolling this beast. Pat and Mike are returning in their roles as Boppers, and Mac is playing the new Bopper who goes through an initiation in this episode.
We also have Sean Porter, who I call Irish, playing The Mick and joining the series. It’s nice to see him again. He played a small role in The Weight, but when we fired an actor in those scenes and had to re-shoot them, he couldn’t make it out to the re-shoots, so we were forced to recast him as well.
Down in Bills basement, we’re set up and ready to go. Then the Boppers start…
Shit. I forgot how fucking funny these guys are. I know Pat and Mike have been away at school, but I’d swear they were going to some comedy type school. The shit they’re coming out with is about 20 times funnier than the last time.
Irish and Harry deliver their scene and they’re wrapped pretty quickly. Irish was a little worried about the accent, which made me worried about the accent, but I think he did great. The makeup was nothing short of awesome too. We only have the one scene planned for the day, but I’m thinking we can also bang out tomorrow’s work today as well. We started late, but we’re moving at a really good pace, so we can get tomorrow’s work done no problem.
Steve comes downstairs after preparing all the props and hands me a couple of goodies. There’s the scrap piece of paper with an autograph and a phone number on it, and The Mick’s business card. This shit is tight. Steve is so detail oriented, that it’s great looking at these props he comes up with. Even after everything on Desolation Row, I still can’t get over what this dude comes up with. Steve hands the props off, tells us where everything is for the future, and he and Cheryl head out.
Harry and Alicia have both told me that this is the funniest episode yet. I know all the things that can go wrong with the production, so I take their comments with a grain of salt. I think there’s some funny shit in the episode, but I’m not sure how funny it will actually be. Not everyone checks in with my sense of funny. I was the only one in the theatre laughing towards the end of Kill Bill Vol. 1.
So we move onto the next scene where Pat and Mike finally have lines. Mac doesn’t really have lines because he’s getting initiated into the Bopper gang and hasn’t really earned the right to speak yet. His character is more of the strong, silent type anyway. What he lacks in words he makes up for in lead pipes across the face.
The way that Pat and Mike are delivering their lines is something I never even expected. I think we all had to restrain our laughter during the takes because these cats are just too damn funny. I’ve heard that if the shit’s making you laugh on set, then it won’t make you laugh when you watch it. I hope that isn’t the case.
We wrap The Boppers for the day and there’s one final scene left to do with just Cyrus, played by Brandon Ludwig. We slow down a bit here, knowing that the majority of the pressure is off, but we bang out the scene in good enough time for Bill to still make it to work.
Brandon is wrapped for the day, and we now have tomorrow off.
While we’re packing up, Jesse arrives to pick up Alicia. He informs me that Morgan Freeman has been in a car accident and he’s pretty badly hurt. There’s a Driving Miss Daisy joke in here somewhere.
Bill hears of this news and acts like his uncle just died. For some reason, that guy LOVES Morgan Freeman. He can’t believe the news and hops on google faster than a fat comic book geek virgin on a paid for prostitute to verify the news. He breaths a sigh of relief when he finds out the injuries aren’t as bad as he previously thought. For some reason, I think when Morgan Freeman actually does die, Bill will cease to watch or care about movies ever again.
So why did we move so quickly today? There’re a few reasons why. I think the main reason is because we’re still on top of our game from Desolation Row. Some more reasons is because there were no really complicated camera moves, there wasn’t much movement of actors, and the scenes were pretty short.
Also, Bills basement is not the fiery inferno that his living room is when we get everyone packed into it.
Another reason may, or may not be, because we weren’t using the Brevis. The camera looked so puny on top of the tripod without the Brevis attached, and neither Bill, nor myself, were really used to shooting without it. Bill actually commented at one point that it was harder for him to get focus without the Brevis.
It’s funny when we shoot these things, because I don’t feel like much of a director as much as a guy that tells people where to stand and where to put the camera. Harry has been playing the character of Bulldog since Streets of Wonderland back in 2004, so he knows the character pretty well. The Boppers, well, I don’t know, but they don’t need much direction either. They played these roles before, and for some reason, I don’t think it’s very hard for them to get into these characters of theirs. Brandon and Mac were able to handle their characters without any problems as well.
The first day of the shoot we managed to do two days worth of work, and I’m hoping we got some good shit here. Here’s hoping the rest of the shoot goes this well.
Hella lotta screenshots yo!
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