I Am Worthless

December 21, 2009

It’s Monday. We shot our first scene of the movie Saturday, and I couldn’t be happier with the footage we have. We ran in to about as many problems as I expected, but I think we handled them all pretty well. It’s so much work to be the person in charge of a shoot. Thank God I have a producer, but I still have to let him know what we’re going to do so he can figure out the logistics.

Wednesday, three days before we were set to shoot the scene, the girl we had casted as Meghan backed out. She was pretty close to perfect. Had the look, read the comedy aspect well, and she had a lot of attitude that would be great. She had only read the first two scenes she appears in, and they both have some amount of language, but I guess not too much. So after calling and locking her down, I sent her the full script. The next day I get a call from her… she has a contract which doesn’t allow her to be in movies with excessive adult content. Sounds bullshit, but maybe not with the huge volume of unwatchable Christian-funded-and-themed features there are around this area. I mean there’s nothing that far out there in the script, no sex or nudity or whatever, just a good bit of language and dirty jokes. Really I cut out a lot of the language, knowing it will come back in improv.  Maybe I just shouldn’t give out full scripts to certain people.

So we had two days to find a new actress, or have the awful omen of canceling the first shoot day. So Brian set up another audition at the same hotel. The girl who read is only eighteen, at least four years younger than what I originally wanted, but after reading with her I knew she would work. She didn’t quite have the attitude of the first girl; she read the scene in a quiet, innocent way. I like the idea of her being likable, regardless of back story.  I realized she actually might work better than the first girl, age be damned.

Now we have an actress and Saturday is back on as our day to begin shooting. I already received the tapes in the mail, locked down two Canon XH-A1’s and Lowell / ARRI lights (nothing bigger than a 1K), found a location for our exterior night shoot, and got a hotel room booked just in case we go too late. Most of the equipment is possible to get because of the community we have here in South Carolina.

I wrote the lead for a friend of mine—also a filmmaker—Isaac, who is perfect as a sarcastic everyman with quick dick quips. I co-starred in a mumblecore feature he made this past summer that’s still in post-production, and had a really great time. I sure as hell can’t act, but the whole mumblecore movement kind of rewards non-actors. I haven’t seen any footage from that one, and I’m nervous to see myself in front of the camera, but I’m sure I’ll have a good time drinking a lot of beer and making fun of myself when it’s finished. Isaac came into town Saturday afternoon so we could talk through the scene, figure out wardrobe (we went with what he showed up wearing—like I said I wrote this part for him), and buy some small props. Plus we would just get to hang out before meeting the actress at the hotel at three to lead her to my house for rehearsals. The goal was to begin shooting the moment the sun went down (5:30.)

Rehearsing was a lot of fun. We all kind of felt awkward throwing out dirty joke possibilities working with the eighteen year old actress who is pretty quiet and reserved, so we usually didn’t push anything too far. I’m pretty sure we didn’t offend her, especially since we made her laugh quite a bit, and she read the scene believably every time. The more we did the scene, the better it played. It was going great, not perfect, but great by the end of rehearsing. A lot of jokes and beats emerged that I hadn’t thought about, the scene was still a little bit heart-breaking (it was a break-up after all, albeit an unorthodox one), and I felt really good about our casting. So we now have to go set up lights, hopefully beating sunset so we can see what we’re doing in the wet grass (it was supposed to snow the day before and possibly Saturday as well—yet again something that would make our first shoot day impossible—but instead just sleeted and poured down gross rain all day Friday.)

One error I made was to schedule my first day the same weekend Avatar opened. Didn’t seem like it would make a difference, but my B-camera operator (I operated A-camera) and co-gaffer went to an afternoon showing—had to find one that was going to be in 3-D—and wouldn’t be showing up to set until 6:30. An hour after I wanted to be rolling. But okay, that’s fine. We can shoot some single-camera dolly shots (the cheapest home-made dolly ever, which really isn’t that smooth but works better than nothing) and B-roll. So I light the scene by myself; luckily we had come a couple nights before and set up lights to see what would look best, so it was kind of paint-by-numbers at this point. And it’s all looking pretty good. Really good actually, probably better than expected.

The actors re-hearse a couple more times as we get close to set up, and we quickly pop off a couple shots with no audio. About that time a couple more people show up—our audio guy and the associate producer (I don’t know what to call him yet; he’ll also be in the movie.) So now we have a crew of four (the executive producer, aka one of my best friends who is helping me financially survive this ultra-low-budget shoot, has been with us all day helping out) and after another couple minor problems—no batteries for the mic or mixer and I forgot to organize dinner—we’re ready to shoot when the B-camera operator and producer show up. Everything’s going well. A couple lighting tweaks for B-camera and we pop off the first take of the actual scene.

It’s a five page / five minute break-up, so with two cameras we decide to run through the entire scene (it all takes place in a car) each take. The first take is heart-breaking. It’s not like the rehearsals, most of the jokes are really muted and sad. It really feels like I’m watching one of my break-ups. It’s great, but it might be too heavy for an opening scene. So I tell to Isaac to be more of a dick (yeah, I’m an awesome director), and we run the scene again with the shots a little different. And I love it. I mess up a couple times on camera because I’m laughing too hard. It’s better than the rehearsal, better than my script, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m actually shooting the first scene of my first self-directed feature. I’m not going to pretend everyone will find the scene hilarious or heart-breaking, but I’m just trying to make something I really enjoy and am proud of. And so far I feel great.

Other things went wrong of course, but we pushed through them and were finished three hours after rolling the first shot.  We’re all used to running way behind schedule and wrapping at two or three in the morning, so everyone seemed a little surprised when I announced we were wrapped at ten.  But it was freezing, everyone was slightly miserable (though no one complained), and all of the equipment was being coated by a layer of ice.  One of our guys ran up to what he thought was a group of cats in the dark road, only to have the shit scared out of him when a kid popped up and ran, hiding at the edge of a pond.  After we were able to stop laughing and making fun of our guy, we went over and found the kid (stealth mode in the dark against the bank) and invited him to come watch and have a cookie.  He might’ve heard a few obscenities, but I think he really enjoyed seeing what we were doing, even if he wore flip flops and ate ice cream while we all shuddered.

I’m hoping to get my iMac fixed soon so that I can start editing the scenes as we shoot them (if not, I’ll use a friend’s computer whenever it’s available.) Either way, I’ve started and I’m not giving up. I will make this movie if it kills me. I’ll post photo / video whenever I can. Now to breakdown the rest of the script and figure out the full shoot schedule. Not excited about that part, but luckily my B-camera operator has done a lot of Line Producing / A.D. work and is willing to help me out.