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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