Something Goofy

since I'm into killing time on the Internet, I thought I would promote the pass time. For this purpose I posting a link to a comedy trailer, to kill a minute or two.

Balls Mahoney, Man of Action

while I know there are a thousand other things I should be doing, I couldn't help but put together a quick trailer from a cell phone video that Fred (some of you may no him; others beware) sent me. It features him and one of his trademark sayings, "You ain't lyin'!"

I threw it into iMovie and made up some titles with Motion and BAM! There it was. You might want to blow it up a little bigger when you play it. I underestimated the font I used, so it might be a pain to read.

Anyhow, not bad for 30 minutes, huh?

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Support Indie Film

There's a couple of guys who I met back in my Corpus Christi days who have been involved in indie film in one way or another for quite some time and who have been putting out quality materials.

I was fortunate enough to meet Chris Ambriz during my time as editor of our college paper. At that time, he and his partner in crime, Louis Alvarado, were busy putting together a vampire film called, 'Darkblood.' It was screened at our college drama department and played to a packed house. Chris is incredibly talented and very driven. Chris is also a self taught special effects make-up guru. Visit him at Night Creature Productions and check out his work.

I met Robert Perez Jr. through his brother, Richard, also during my time at the college newspaper. We always had intentions of working on something together, but I ended up moving away before we ever did. Since I last saw him, he has tackled the duties of, not just acting and writing, but producing, editing and directing. He's got a great eye and serious talent. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Robert is also a musician. His production house, Zerep Films, has recently complete work on their latest film, 'Fate.' Click on the production house link for more information on his new film's release.

I'll also be posting links to their work on the index for future reference.


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Drunks, Day 3: Troublemaker

Setting up.

This last Sunday, I arrived at the bar with shot list in hand. I had copies for Sky and for Mike, so we could all be on the same page.

It took us about an hour to get fully situated and that was after a thirty minute unload. Its obvious that I either need to get my ass in gear or bring someone on to manage time better.

As usual, there was someone missing from the cast. This time, it was our bartender, Chris. Mike said he'd called him the night before, but it was obvious after some time, that we'd have to find a way to shoot around him. So we got started as best we could.

Now that we were inside the bar, we used Theo's clamp lights to sub for the light kit that Hank had used before. I think we got the light pretty much the same as Hank had lit it originally. Amazing what a few bargain lamps and high watt bulbs will do. Oh, not to mention the thick napkins we used to cool the light a little.

With the shot list, we were able to get things going much faster. But we were limited on what we could accomplish since we were missing a key player. In fact, the bartender's absence zeroed nearly half of what we were going to shoot.

Hope whacks Mike.

We had to go back and reshoot a key scene where Mike gets nailed on the face with a purse swung by Hope. Originally, we had completely omitted that action. Fortunately, we had everyone we needed to get that done.

Most of the extras we had from the first day of shooting showed up, minus two or three. But since we already had certain key scenes done with them in the background, I figured I could just go back and grab some room tone later to layer it on the new footage. If you can't see them, at least you can hear them.

It all went pretty quick this time around. Even the real bartender noticed the difference. As usual, she was cooperative and gave us room to do what we needed.

Theo laughs.

I did some hand-held stuff for cutaways using Sky's Canon GL2 for the scene where Theo falls with the bar stool. That was one of the good things about having to come back and do pick-up shots for that fall. I got to experiment with the look of the film. We did as much as we could, thinking of small ways to add to what we already had. When we got to a stopping point, Mike ordered some pizza and we took a break to eat and wait for Gerald, our bouncer, to arrive.

Gerald bouncing the drunks.

When Gerald arrived, we knocked out his stuff in three takes and broke down to set up outside. Heidi, the mom to Michael, was on time constraints and we were really getting to the wire. I figured while we were outside, I'd try to do some hand held stuff with the GL2 for the scene where Michael punches Theo in the gut. We were still dealing with that lighting issues, much as we did on Day 2.

The exterior setup.
Heidi & Michael.

The sun was bright and hot and ruining my shots. I thought with hand held shots, maybe I could move around and find the light as the actors made their way down the sidewalk. The look might be a little more "Hill Street Blues" than needed, but it might liven up the exteriors since the interior shots were all static.

And right about then, well, that's when trouble reared it ugly head.

The tattoo shop that had previously loaned us some juice to power our lights was now up in arms because we asked a couple of customers to step out of a shot. See, it started out like this.

Now that we had our original cop, Tim, we placed him out in the alley as we had always planned. Heidi and Michael would now come from the opposite direction, from behind a suburban. The suburban was parked directly in front of the tattoo shop and Tim was coming out right next to them. We were having all kinds of problems, again, with this scene when I noticed the three guys standing outside the tattoo parlor, smoking. Mike walked up to them and asked them if they could stand in the alley and smoke while we tried to get this shot. I guess one of them got irritated with him and notified another guy inside. This guy was a bit more confrontational.

Angry guy way in back.

The guy in question was wearing a white shirt, had a curly mop of hair tucked underneath a ball cap and came out militant as can be, asking for permits. Theo immediately launched into damage control mode and began to talk to this guy. We were all being polite. There had been no hard words exchanged or anything. But this guy kept insisting on seeing our permit and repeating that we could not tell people what to do on a public sidewalk. We explained that we asked, but this wasn't good enough for him. Before long, Mike, Theo and Tim were standing at the front of the shop. I walked over.

Me: Fuck this. Come on, lets get back to it. Let them stand wherever the fuck they want. We don't need this shit. Fuck it. Lets just shoot this.

I was pissed. This guy was just being a prick and I didn't want to have to hear his shit. But this is another one of those lessons best learned now.

We started to set up the scene again, disregarding the pedestrians outside the shop when two squad cars drove up. They slowed down when they saw us and promptly slid into the alley next to the tattoo shop.

There was a guy outside, a guy with lots of ink and some facial piercings standing at the doorway. He had a blackberry headset and was wearing sunglasses. When the cops strolled up, Mike and Theo walked over and we all began to talk. The guy with all the ink was the manager. And between him, the loud mouth with the hat and us, we all tried to state our case for the cops. They asked us for permits and we told them we didn't have any. I'd read that for filming in city parks and most city property, you needed to have a permit. But not for filming on the street. Unless you were going to divert or stop traffic. What we didn't count on was that pedestrian traffic also applies.

The law arrives.

We started to pick hairs about our asking for them to move and their right not to move. Or their right not to be on camera. By the end of the conversation, the inked manager was cool with us and we were cool with him. Just not with that asshole in the cap. He'd pissed everyone off. Had he just come out and not been confrontational like he was, we probably would have been fine with it all.

The lesser known, fat Ramone.

By then, the shoot was, well, for the lack of a better word, shot. So we wrapped for the day.

This makes my third run in with cops during a shoot. First on the 'Mexican, American' trailer, then on the defunct 'road' picture and now this. Its beginning to feel like a right of passage.

All in all, it was a good day. We got a lot of footage in the can, but we're still a day away from finishing it all. I think if we prepare right, we can wrap this coming Sunday. I hope.

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Drunks, Day 2: What Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong

June 3rd should have started different. It should have been easy and we should have gotten a lot done. Fact of the matter is, we got very little done and it wasn't very good. I dare say, it wasn't very useful at all.

It started harmlessly enough. I was late getting to the set to find that everyone was still outside the bar. Mike had been trying to reach the bartender, Melissa, to let us in and wasn't having much success. In fact, he wasn't having any. We were suppose to start at 9AM and we waited to start shooting until the sun was good and high in the sky, after Noon sometime.

I had spent the days prior to the shoot getting a shot list put together. I realized that I should have done this from the get go, but better late than never. With what we'd shot before and since we were set to start at so early, I figured we could get all the interior stuff shot and then move to the exteriors some other time. So when I mocked up the shot list, I didn't include any exteriors, save the intro to them.

After noon, we knew we weren't getting in the bar. So we figured we'd start the exterior stuff then. It was hot, we were frustrated and tired. Mike's son, Michael, and a woman from Mike's acting class, Heidi, came on for a scene that Mike had penned after the last shoot. It was a great scene that would added more laugh appeal to the film. And since it was so new and I didn't knock out a shot list to include it, we'd have to play it by ear.

Now, I learned a valuable lesson from that day. A lesson that I'm still learning even to this very minute. "Be prepared, junior, be prepared." That was Bruce Willis' last line in 'The Last Boyscout'. I've learned to rely on Hank on the set. He provides a wealth of ideas that I sometimes can't come up with on the fly. June 3rd has taught me that I have to be self sufficient, cause when the going gets rough, the going can kick you in the balls and if you're not looking when you get up, it'll do it again.

Theo lit up.

The rest of the afternoon was a nightmare. We had waited so long to start and were taking so long with each take that the sun was moving across the sky faster than we could get it together. The shadow line on the ground was crawling faster and faster. And with all that sun we had plenty of back light issues with Theo, who was standing facing the shadows. Fortunately Theo brought some clamp lights and we bolted two of them onto a light stand, ran an extension cord from the tattoo shop next door and hoped it would work. We also couldn't get my truck into the original parking space we had the week before, so we had to shoot around it.

Michael, walking away, taunts Theo.

It wasn't all bad. Michael, a very sharp 11 year old, came through with flying colors and really made us all work better. Heidi really wanted to work and it showed. Sky tried his best to give me what I wanted. And I tried as hard as I could to keep it all together.

I drove to work afterwards thinking about how bad I'd done. I didn't feel right about my direction, about my cinematography and about some of the performances.

Still, it was another lesson learned and another day doing what I ultimately hope to become my full time job.

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Drunks, Day 1: The Lay of The Land

The Bar
First days of shoots are always hard for me. It was especially difficult this day because I was directing a film I didn't write. Normally, I'm on the set with all the knowledge in the world that I know every line inside and out. Well, not always, but you get my point. I read the script a couple of times, but didn't commit it to memory like I should have.

Our shoot began May 27th. The bar we got to occupy was great. Had lots of character and all sorts of things to work with. But then, it also had stuff we needed to get around. Like the light coming from the windows. Fortunately, my trusty, creative cinematographer, Hank, was on the scene. We also had the help of Sky, an up and coming camera operator that Theo & Hope, two other filmmakers, discovered. Theo and I stay in very regular contact. As a matter of fact, Theo and Hope are both in this film. Greg, who worked on the now defunct "road" movie, also came on to crew. He ended up with a non speaking roll after the highly amusing barfly that Mike, the actor/producer, had originally given the roll to failed to show up.

Mike, left, and Theo

The bartender who came to let us in, Melissa, showed up about an hour late, but then let us stay an hour later to finish. We were shooting from 10AM to 2PM, but ended up there till 3PM. Once inside, Melissa was very helpful and gave us run of just about everything in the bar. She set up the counters and even went as far as to give us run of the taps to pour real beer.

Once we got set up, we ran through a few scenes, worked out a few details and tried to make up for the missing cast member with Greg. It was an adjustment with Greg since he's much bigger than the guy he was filling in for. The character was more for comic relief given the look of the original "actor". Greg still did great, even though I know he was a bit apprehensive.

Vicki, left and Hope

We rounded out the rest of the cast with Hope, a new actress named, Vicki, the bartender, Chris and an assortment of friends and relatives of Mike.

The first few hours ran slow. I was off my groove completely and was letting my lack of preparation really get to me. I hate to think I got a little nervous, but there were all these people in the bar. I've gotten use to getting things done with just a few people, counting actors. I think I'm just coming up with excuses for the plain and simple fact that I wasn't on the mark.

At least not until the second half of the shoot. We had a small stunt where one of the actors is suppose to fall back off a bar stool and hit the ground. The actor-slash-executive producer brought an inflatable mattress for the actor to fall on. We rehearsed the stunt several times, adjusting the mattress and doing anything we could to keep it from moving so that the actor, Theo, wouldn't break his neck and head. The stunt went off without a hitch and looks great on film.

After that we shot stuff with a guy named, Gerald, who we'd auditioned a while back during an open cattle call at a local mall. Gerald would play our bouncer. He's tall, over 6 feet. Just a big guy. He made short work of the drunks and threw them out into the street.

We wrapped the day with Theo and Mike being tossed into the street and playing it up hardcore. Mike threw himself into a parking meter and Theo ran into my truck, falling into the bed and then out of it with lots of comic edge. It was fantastic.

We didn't get as much accomplished as we thought, but I felt good after we were done.

Little did we know what would await us next.

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I'm Shooting Something, I Swear

Ugh. I've been trying to keep my head from exploding.

I'm currently directing a film written by someone else. Its...different. At one point, I had two cameras.

I'm still feeling a bit pressed at times. But I think I've found out how not to get that way.

Anyway, I'll post more about the two days of shooting tomorrow.

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