shoot 1.22.11

actor came over at 4 to do voice-over, which starts the movie. he nailed it on the first take. we did it again for safety's sake but it was moot. around 5 dp arrived. we got into my car and drove across the river. we needed shots of actor on the max train - for the beginning and end of movie - but i had planned nothing out per se, going to steal the shots as it were so i felt quite at the mercy of fate. the three of us walked onto train, dp w/ hd camera w/ 35 mm adapter on it, and did our best to look inconspicuous. transfered lines and ended up downtown. we walked back to car and stole walking shots where we could, some from across the street, parallel w/ actor as he walked. by coincidence we went right by a series of food carts (the script has mention of downtown food carts in a - one hopes - amusing way) which fit right w/ script. only thing we needed was a shot of actor entering bar. decided spur-of-moment to get him descending down staircase into a restaurant/bar. several takes of that as dp had to do his own rack-focus...then across the river, to a vintage store in portland. they have great lamps that they leave on when store is closed and i'd hoped to get shot of actor crossing in front, but alas the store, though closed, still had all overhead lights on, which nullified any visual value. we got a shot off but i prob. won't use. we were just getting back into car when i saw a great neon COCKTAIL sign w/ a martini glass so we got a quick shot of actor walking under it.

back home for last scene. other actor arrived as did camera help. camera dept lit the living room while i ran the scene w/ actors. didn't want to give too many notes or over-direct. finally started shooting. i'd planned to do it all in one shot but decided on set to do a close master and two singles. got what i needed quickly and wrapped.

shoot 1.17.11

shot yesterday at the blue monkon SE belmont. rehearsed the afternoon before at home w/ both actors, one of whom had just stepped off a plane. the shoot went pretty well i think but some issues popped up. we shot in the downstairs part of the bar which happens to be directly under a bar next door (if you follow that)
and right in the middle of a long two-shot we started to hear pounding and rumbling sounds. turned out to be people drinking early and shooting pool. i had met w/ dp at blue monk previous friday but - since it was night and there people about and a small band onstage - this never occurred to me. i won't say it ruined takes but more than once the sound threw/distracted one of the actors so much so that he lost his lines. the refrigerator kept cycling too. quite loud...

there were two big issues, both of which were solely my responsibility 1) i hadn't fully worked out the visual approach. b/c it's such a talky scene (18 pages of talking!) i didn't want to cover the whole scene in a two-shot and run the actors down, so there were parts i did in two-shot and parts i did in singles. however this kind of disrupted the flow of what's meant to be a continued, real-time conversation. this left me uncertain about the visuals as the camera started rolling and i ended up altering a series of shots on-set, which in turn erased a great technical idea the dp had. 2) had trouble getting the exact pattern/rhythm i wanted in a long speech. the actor was mostly doing everything right, based off what i told and was telling him but it was still not hitting the beats i heard in my head. i think we ran that speech more takes than anything else and I think i finally got it but i should have worked on it longer in the previous day's rehearsal. i should have stayed on it then, not waited until the day of the shoot.

second half of shoot is this coming saturday. walking shots, train shots, and one final scene between husband and wife.

approaching destination

shooting first part one week from today. one actor flying in from SLC. landing sunday AM. rehearse w/ him and other actor Sunday PM. Start shooting the next AM. Accelerated schedule will either be a boon or an obstacle. TBD. Meeting w/ DP at location on Wed PM to go over shooting approach. I haven't storyboarded anything yet but there's very little to storyboard since it's a 18 min conversation. We can do a master, we can do two singles and that's about it. hoping to refine my approach in the coming days. I am sometimes nervous and jittery, sometimes calm and ready.

motion

less than a month from shooting next project, a 20 min comic piece homage/ripoff of 'my dinner with andre' but here set in portland featuring two friends sharing a brew, titled my beer with bill. Any ideas I had this time last year about how once I finish i'm your man things will be a little easier for me by virtue of the fact that I'll have directed i'm your man went out the window months ago. the same sort of challenges and limitations, some of them identical: lack of budget, difficulty finding location/s, surfeit of self-doubt etc.

However, locked location yesterday, which after weeks of being adrift in an ocean of inactivity was like finding dry land. as with i'm your man i desperately need a producer but since i don't have one i have to do this shit for myself which is good in the long term i suppose but in the short term only makes things more difficult and my inability to do them triggers my vicious interior voice which eviscerates me for not having done them. extremely uncomfortable. in fact the doubt got so loud this past week I actually began considering not doing this project at this point in time because things weren't breaking my way and the stress/strain was too much and, in downward spiral fashion what's the point anyway because the movie will be terrible etc. And then at breaking point I got a random comment from a stranger about i'm your man and it re-invigorated me. And i realized this might be as good as it gets. And that's fine.

s c r e e n i n g

movie completion

the short has been done for a few wks now. been trying desperately to find a venue to have cast/crew screening and encountered some difficulties of all varietals: price, personnel, schedule, format, take your pick. it's frankly been frustrating and instructive at once. instructive in that i realize my frustrations stem from the mindset i carried which, to put it directly goes something like once i make the movie everything will fall into place. feel a bit child-like in voicing that expectation, like i was equating the completion of this task with the announcement to the universe that i am here, take notice (maybe 'childish' is the better term). couple possibilities are still on the line.

in related matter, was able to finally burn dvd copy of film so i can enter in local film festival. i say finally b/c there were multiple issues regarding format, FCE (which i have) vs FCP (which i do not), QT (which can read movie), IDVD (which cannot), IPHOTO (which i had to import movie into to finally get IDVD to read it) and somewhere along the way there was slight image compromise. on dvd, the brights are almost blown-out. but i'll take it for now.

progress

almost done. editing went in a fever pitch, in part due to outside circumstances (ie access to avid coming quickly to close) so i'm only able to comment in generalized ways, as opposed to breaking down each edit.
we shot a few parts in long masters (or 'one-rs" as i learned is industry-speak) so some parts of edit was merely a matter of laying shots together. that got done pretty quickly and then came the more difficult parts: the show open, the driving shots, in the exam room.

Since the first few minutes feature a couple running late for an appointment i wanted it to feel slightly chaotic, out of sorts, arhythmic. Judicious use of the jump cut came in handy.

The driving scenes provided a few challenges, primary among them a cell phone call wherein wife calls clinic to say 'we're running late'. We shot it stationary, the car parked. (this b/c I didn't want to make Lanie, playing the wife, feel uncomfortable driving and talking b/c a) she's not insured on my car b) days prior to the shoot a law took effect in oregon stipulating no driving and talking on cell phone. So when we shot it i assumed we'd just fix it in post. ha. The stagnant shot of them sitting as she talks on the phone completely killed the movement of sequence. Evonne laid the audio over some of the interior moving shots of the car and it worked perfectly, even down to performance, making it appear that Lanie is using a bluetooth and talking to receptionist as she's driving thru neighborhood.

inside the exam room had some challenges as well (despite a couple one'rs). initially i asked evonne to keep most of the start of the scene on husband/wife, implying a sort of connection between them but these only made the scene feel odd and lopsided. intellectual ideas do not always translate so well to the screen. When i watched dailies i thought i had a mess on my hands (completly a directorial problem), 3 performances that would have trouble when it came time to cut together. however, things fell into place wonderfully once we started cutting. the scene is strange and appropriately awkward. in the best possible way.

and then the end. i designed it to happen in three nice and easy shots: couple exits elevator w/ baby while other couple enters, reverse from inside elevator as couple watches baby couple, close on baby pushing in to couple in elevator as door closes. okay. fine. got the last two shots easily enough. but on set I failed to properly get shot one. the takes cut before the couple actually steps onto the elevator so when we went to the 2nd shot, the reverse, there was a huge disorienting jump that undermined the whole sequence. it was quite devastating for a few hours for me. i actually considered some manner of reshoot but there too many complications to make this more than a pipe dream. i know how it happened: on set, i was juggling two couples, a facility contact, the timing of an elevator door, and a baby. the performances and camera both looked great, but i called 'cut' about ten seconds too soon. each take. all three of them. I didn't cover it b/c i had designed it so well. ha!  we ended up solving it by letting shot 1 go as long as possible.