Sunday, November 14, 2004
There’s a few shots that we didn’t get during principal photography. In the script, Theodora and Hector go on a ‘Viva Las Vegas’-style love montage that starts with them on a roller coaster and continues through their day of fun and frolic. It’s an important shot because it’s a turning point for Theodora’s character. It shocks her out of her malaise. Or that’s the theory. Anyway, we didn’t have time to find or shoot a roller coaster during our full production, so I got Claire, Travis, Melissa and Evan back together to grab a couple of pick up shots last Sunday. We used an Eyemo camera, which is a World War II era camera that’s tiny and virtually indestructible. It’s like a little iron crate that shoots 1,000 feet of 35mm film at a time (about a minute)—perfect for a little guerilla film making. Here’s some pictures.
Here’s another recap from the shoot:
DAY FOUR (Thursday, October 7)
Location: Fabric Warehouse / The Police Station
This was one of our more relaxed days. That’s a remarkable statement, considering we had to shoot over 10 pages of dialog-heavy script. The only location for the day was the police station interior located in the fabric warehouse where we’d been shooting the day before. We decided to proceed as if it was a 3-camera TV show—that is, light one end of the room and shoot in that direction all day. Eliminating the need to ‘flip the room’ (moving all the lighting and camera equipment to shoot reverse shots) was the only way we could get all of our pages done in a 10-hour day. It seems to have worked. We got everything done thanks to that hard-working crew I keep talking about and the fantastic actors we cast. Not a flubbed line all day and spot-on performances by everybody. And the film transfers look great—just like a police station in a 60’s film.
I have one more story from the doctor’s office location. Actor Jonathan Green, who plays scientist John Patterson, has a long, ridiculous monologue (complete with flashback) where he tells the story of how his parents disappeared while doing research in the Florida Everglades and how he’s been chasing the Skunk Ape ever since. Zeke, the boom operator, got the giggles and kept cracking up during his speech. He whole job is to be really quiet, so we can get great sound, but he couldn’t keep from laughing. I think he broke just one take, but was stifling laughter every time, which infected the whole crew. That’s definitely a tribute to Jonathan’s ability to delivery the speech in that 1950’s scientist seriousness without it being flat or emotionless. Brilliant. And encouraging.
Here’s some frames from the film transfer of the Police Station.
Nov 14, 2004
