Day 4

Our last day of shooting!

Akasha Villalobos (Amy), Brian Villalobos (James), Alex Poncio (Benny)

Our final day of shooting was at a local gym in Southwest Austin.  Out of all the gyms that we contacted (10+), they were by far the most willing and accommodating to letting us shoot as well as the cheapest option.  The owners were nice enough to allow us to use their location in exchange for some videos that they wanted produced later for their gym.  One of the trainers even gave me and my actors a private training session to see what it's like to be personally trained!  We had found this location only a week or so before shooting, as some of our other options fell through.  So we ended up stumbling into a better-looking, cheaper, and friendlier gym.  Lucky, eh? 

DP Jeff Buras talks with Brian Villalobos. 

Scripty Melissa Porter with Huay-Bing Law

The Assistant Director position is one of the more stressful positions on set.  Or at least it should be.  Along with maybe the cinematographer, they're one of the only positions that is always working nonstop.  A good AD sets the pace and momentum of the set, keeps the production on schedule, and can motivate the crew to work hard without being an @$$.  Which is why I was EXTREMELY lucky to get Micah on board (who's been kind of a mentor of mine throughout film school).  He manages to fit all these critera and beyond.  One of the great things about him is that he's always trying to find ways to make everything run smoother, even if there hasn't been any problems so far.  If he's not directing crew around or pushing us to get our next set up going, you'll see him sitting to the side and trying to discover a potential problem to fix.

1st AD Micah Barber talks over logistics.  Huay's not happy.

My only beef with him is that he was always playing mind games with me - telling me that we were running late when we were actually on time.  But he said those tricks were always calculated; we always get everything we needed so maybe he's just got some major skills.

Reviewing the last take in Video Village.

Camera Assistants Evan Ho and John Anderson

Camera crew!  Jeff, with Evan Ho and John Anderson, did an amazing job.  It seemed like every time I turned around, camera was set up and ready to go and I had a monitor set up for me to watch.  I don't ever remember having to wait for camera dpt. once. 

Co-Actors and real-life husband and wife, Akasha and Brian Villalobos.

Make-up artist Brittany Ladolcetta working on Akasha.

The only photo of Huay smiling.

The G/E crew was crazy smooth and efficient.  And the reason I say that is because I never noticed them.  Jeff and his team lit every scene crazy fast without sacrificing anything aesthetically.  They moved fast and quiet, and got by with breaking only a few things.  (Just kidding, it was minimal damage and we have location insurance).

G/E Carlos Boillat and Gaffer Ben Oliver. 

Thank you to gaffer Ben Oliver, Mike, Diego, Rhett, Carlos, Taylors, Joe, Justin, David and anyone else who helped out in the lighting department.

Sound Mixer Isaac Hammons hard at work.  (Just kidding, he was super-pro on set.  I'm sure this was a posed photo)

Production Designer Katie McDowell.

I'll also give a shout-out here to production designer Katie McDowell, who did an amazing job set-dressing the house location.  There wasn't too much work for her to be done at the gym, but she was a major help on set even though she was juggling projects of her own at the time.  

1st AC Evan Ho with Huay-Bing Law

I can't say enough about the quality of my cast/crew on this set.  Everything ran 1000x better than I could've ever imagined.  Thank you to everyone for the support on and off the set, and hopefully those 4 days were as fun and rewarding for everybody there as it was for me.  

Most of the Merchant Prince Cast/Crew.  85%-ish.  

Day 3

We started out in the morning at a new location.  We rented a car mount for the RED to shoot some car driving scenes, so needed to find a good path for the car to drive around.  Some of the parameters we were paying attention to were: 1) a smooth road surface 2) overhead trees to break up the sky 3) no traffic and 4) the appropriate background buildings/houses.  After quickly scouting out some places around Austin, we decided to go with a neighborhood in South Austin and mapped out a route that the car would circle around over and over.  

Jeff and Evan adjust the camera.

Hostess Tray Car Mount

We were falling behind a bit during this setup.  It was a bit more complicated, as a new camera angle would require setting up a new rig to attach on the car.  But the actual reason we ran behind was that I had spent a lot of extra time on the scene with the actors.  After improv-ing the first scene we shot with them, I decided that we would lose the script and improv everything between Alex and Akasha from here on out.  The words that they were able to come up with was far more natural and inventive than anything that Evan and I had written for them.

Screen Grab from RAW footage

However, we still maintained the overall structure of each scene.  For instance, Evan and I knew what we wanted from each character from the scene.  We knew where they had come from emotionally and physically previously and where they needed to move towards.  So for this scene, our lead character Ben had just finished a workout with Amy and now catch up a little bit in the car ride back to his house.  With the help from my scripty Melissa, the actors and I drove around and had them improv various topics that they would talk about.  Melissa and I took notes down on certain areas or lines that we had liked and began to narrow it down to the bare essentials.  We would feed to them in bits and pieces what we liked and didn't like, and eventually everything was morphed into what we had shot.  This was essentially the blueprint from here on out with their scenes.  

Producer/Editor Mindy Le downloads footage. 

Downloading the footage, transcoding, and the overall workflow deserves its own post really.  But for the shoot, we basically backed everything up to 3 different harddrives.  Can't be too safe.

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Work hard, play hard.

When we finished up the car stuff, we made our way back to the house to finish up a scene in the exterior of the house.  The rest of the day was a little tricky for us to schedule, because shooting in the car had taken longer than anticipated.  We had one of the climactic scenes in the film to shoot that afternoon.  One of the concerns we had was that we wouldn't have enough time to be able to take our time and make sure we get everything we need from that scene.  Some options were to either cut one of the scenes that was less important or to try to bust ass and squeeze everything in.  With the professionalism and talent we had in the crew that we had, we decided to bust ass.  And we fit everything in with some time left to spare!

Dolly shot.

Reviewing the last take.

Just a random thought: One of the biggest keys to keeping a crew happy is to feed them well with some unexpected surprises thrown in every now and then.  My producers were able to give us 3 meals a day, small sandwiches and water trays being passed out in-between meals, and made sure that everyone stayed happy on set.  When we were at the house location, the blazing sun was starting to wear down on everyone.  Beth saw a snow-cone stand down the street and bought everyone a cup - it boosted morale like crazy!  Your first priority is to make a great film, but a very very very close second is to take care of everyone on the crew.  If it's to set aside a large portion of the budget for better food and snacks, then I say do it.

1st AC Evan Ho, DP Jeffrey Buras, Director Huay-Bing Law

Our last scene at the house!

Publish Post

Day 2

Day 2 began the same as every other day during production.  Sleep at 3am-ish.  Wake at 6:30am.  Head to set and prepare.  It's strange how the lack of sleep never really affected me on the 12 hour days.  I'm thankful that it was only a 4 day shoot, so that I wouldn't have to eventually feel the sleep "deprevity" during the filming process.  Adrenaline rush for 96 straight hours.

One of the biggest challenges I had during the shoot was to figure out how I wanted to shoot this one particular scene.  I don't want to go too much into detail, but it was an emotional moment that the lead protagonist Ben (played by Alex) has by himself that is one of the climaxes of the film.  It was a scene that I knew I didn't want to reset over and over and cover from different angles.  I felt that in order to get the best performance from him (and not run him dry), I would need to have him run the entire scene once or twice and have camera adjust to whatever he is doing.  Let the actor dictate his own movements, and have camera be follow (hey hey, Malick!).

Camera crew following Alex and Akasha.

So this is where you really must have trust in your cameraman and your actor.  This entire emotional climax was unscripted, unrehearsed, and a total improv.  We didn't allow any crew member to talk to him 30 min prior - or even look at him for that matter.  The only people in the room were my cinematographer (Jeff Buras) and sound mixer (Isaac Hammons).  They were already both set, as we put the actor into place.  I yelled "Action" and then the scene played out.  It ran roughly for 7-10 minutes, before we ended the scene (It'll be cut down dramatically later).  We did it one more time with a few more adjustments.  Afterwards, Alex and I talked to each other to assess how we felt about the scene and we both agreed we nailed it.   Camera and sound were perfect too (as they pretty much were the whole shoot).

Mindy Le and Beth Chatelain (My Line Producers!!)

Evidently, we didn't take too many photos the first two days.  But the next two posts will have tons!!

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My next big challenge was when we shot the first scene with the female protagonist, Amy (played by Akasha).  The entire film is dependent on the chemistry between Ben and Amy, so it was a little bit nerve-racking as we first started to work the scene.  If they don't work well together, then our movie's gonna really really stink.  It'd be kind of like watching one of those rom-coms and the chemistry is so bad from the start, you think to yourself why are you even watching this?  So much relies on these characters' ability to connect to one another - reveals the dynamic of their past, where they are in their lives right now, and how these two people can relate to each other.  Micah was lenient enough to schedule in for me some additional time to work with them to figure out the scene.

So when we started rehearsing, I threw out the script.  All the dialogue, blocking.  Everything.  It simply wasn't working with the space we were in or the characters that the actors were creating.  The actors and I decided that we should try something new, so we improved the entire scene.  We talked about where each character was coming from from the previous scene, and they acted it out several different ways.  With the help of my scripty Melissa Porter (who directed an amazing thesis project this semester), we narrowed down their improv to specific beats and topics that we liked.  This opened up a whole new dynamic with the characters' relationship.  The actors talked and acted more natural and freely.  Everything became more spontaneous.  It may be a bit more difficult in the editing room to be able to match consistency, but I feel like I was able to get far better performances from it.  It felt less scripted, more natural.

Day 2 complete!

Day 1

I woke up at 6:30am and didn't go back to bed for fear of oversleeping.  I triple-checked everything in the apartment to make sure I had everything I needed, especially my script with directorial notes I made the night before.  These would be especially helpful when giving adjustments with the actors.  Essentially, every night I would read the scenes we'd be shooting the next day and anticipate different adjustments I may use and write them down, so that I wouldn't draw blanks when talking to the actors.  There were times in auditions/rehearsals when I knew what I wanted to change, but it was incredibly hard for me to find the "correct" direction for the actors to use.  This may be Directing 101, but it was foreign to me as a student filmmaker that was usually working more with the camera/lighting side of film.  *Identify the problem or adjustment, and then find the right method to give feedback to the actors so they can organically create it for themselves* Working with a bunch of different actors during auditions for short bursts was a great way for me to practice different techniques.  

52nd St. House Location

I got to set at around 8:00am and sat in the truck to go over the day's schedule and notes.  We had the 1st half of the day scheduled pretty solidly, but the 2nd half was still up in the air.  Due to injury, we lost the actor playing Walt, the protagonist's dad and was in a major scramble to try to find another actor.  Luckily, we were able to cast someone the day before shooting started but it was someone that I had never met before and could only reference to through phone call and facebook photos.  We had dad-son scenes scheduled in the latter part of the day, but I was unsure if I wanted to shoot that scene with an actor I had never met before.  How much rehearsal would he need?  Would he even fit the part?  

Scene List

Beth, one of the line-producers, showed up soon after and we set up a canopy, breakfast, and crafty for crew.  As we hit our 9:00am call time, the crew slowly started to show up!  We had about 20 people each day in cast/crew, so it was a decently sized set for a student short.  After some brief introductions and breakfast, we started our first scene on the walking montage.  As soon as we started rolling those first few takes, everything started to move really really quickly.  Micah, our AD, really kept the momentum and flow of the set moving along so that everyone was always doing their part at a great pace.  Because of his incredible ability to motivate people and his general awesomeness, we managed to stay on schedule (and probably even ahead) as we went into the interiors to shoot.  

2nd AC John Anderson, Sound Mixer Isaac Hammons, and 1st AC Evan Ho's butt setting up.

One major logistical hiccup I had was that I didn't check with the neighbors before approving my gaffer/electrician to making some modifications to the electricity (which happened to share with the adjacent house).  They saw him working with the breaker box, and was immediately unhappy with not being notified.  We had left notices with all the neighbors about us filming, as well as obtained all the necessary location release forms and permissions for shooting house, but I had a mental lapse with that particular house.  They had said that while we were working on the electricity, it may have caused a surge of power and broke their stove.  Their gate was locked and I couldn't talk to them, so I had to simply wait for them to come out so we could work something out.  At this point, I was worried about losing the location.  

Cinematographer Jeffrey Buras and Director Huay-Bing Law.

As we finished the daylight interior scenes, we had to make a decision on how to approach the remainder of the day.  Did we want to shoot the father-son scenes as originally planned or perhaps push it back so that I could have more rehearsal time with the actors.  Clint, the newly cast Dad, arrived on set midway during the day and I sat down with him and Alex, my lead (Ben), to talk to him about the story. We went over the script and read a few lines, before I decided that he was fantastic fit for the part!  We had to black out the windows to recreate a night-time setup, and then rehearsed a little bit more with the actors in place.  Before I knew it, we wrapped on the first day!  It was as smooth as I could've possibly asked for.  There were a few bumps here and there, but we got everything we needed.  I was relieved, but then my attention focused on what to prepare for Day 2.

Clint Hansen and Alex Poncio acting a scene out.

The Night Before

My next few posts are going to cover each day of production, as best as I can remember it.  I was considering blogging during production, but that didn't quite work out.  Turns out directing a film eats up a lot of your time.

The night before:

Call time was at 9am at our first location - our protagonists' house.  I had trouble sleeping the night before, so I made a Walmart run to try to calm my nerves.  I probably circled around the store 5 or 6 times, and somehow ended up buying some random last minute items I though I might need on set like clipboards, sharpies, a new wallet, and an Elmo shirt (see day 3). By the time I got home, it was probably around 1am or 2am.  We did as must prep as we could, but I couldn't get that feeling like I'm forgetting something.  I lied in bed for a while and fell asleep probably around 3am.

Shooting Tomorrow

10 hours til production. 

The last day before production was an action-packed one. 

Rented a truck and checked out equipment - which went incredibly smooth by the way for the number of items that we checked out.  We finished in less than 2 hours.  Crazy efficient.  Special shoutout to Jeff, Evan, Isaac, Taylor, Carlos, and Mindy.  Afterwards, stopped by gear to pick up some more rentals, expendables.  Then headed back to the school to have a quick meeting with my AD and cinematographer to go over tomorrow's schedule. 

Then I got some unfortunate news that one of my actors had injured himself.  To the point where he was unable to walk or move around, so he would likely have to drop out of the production.  Then it became a mad race to try to find someone to replace him.  Tim, assoc. producer, started contacting previous actors from the auditions as well as grabbing referrals from anyone he could.  And even if we did get an actor, the tough thing is that I'd be casting him blind.  It'd be a huge risk in my eyes, but I really don't have any other choice.

At 6, I had a "workout rehearsal" at a gym.  The owner of the location we're shooting at was willing to give my actors a workout to give them an idea of how he trains people personally.  Extremely nice and helpful people.  We'll be shooting a video for them in the future as payment for the location.  After the workout, my actors and I headed to the local Dick's Sporting Goods and picked out some costumes. 

Tim gave me a call back later and was able to give me a few options for actors that I could choose from.  Again, this choice was a blind leap of faith but I can only hope it will work out. 

Last minute calls.  Last minute emails.  A lot of little details here and there that need to get done.  It can weigh on you, but I'm lucky to have so many great people in each position.  It'll be a fun shoot.

Things are gettin' busy

2 days until production.

The past few days have definitely picked up steam.

(4/2) - I had a full cast read-through and rehearsal with my wonderful actors Alex, Akasha, Kenneth, and Brian.  It was the only extended rehearsal I was able to get with all of my actors together, as they're all busy thespians and also from out of town (San Antonio, Pflugerville, Elgin).  But we were able to work out some amazing scenes from the time we had together.  My co-writer Evan sat in with me and transcribed a lot of the improv so that we could rewrite the draft for the actors as they would naturally speak.  Pictures to come!

(4/3) - Production Meeting: I met up with Micah (AD), Mindy (producer), Jeff (cinematographer), Alex (2nd AD), and Beth (addit. producer) so we could get everyone on the same page.  We went over the script, the locations, actors' availability, and pretty much every single logistical detail we could hash out that pertained to the management and scheduling of the project.  These guys will essentially be running the set - each with their own small department - and how well we plan now determines the efficiency and effectiveness of the shoot.  I'd say it went pretty well.

(4/4) - I've never sent so many emails out in my life.  This day alone, the count had to have been over 100.

We secured the perfect gym location today! (Thanks to my producers Tim and Mindy).  It's in exchange for some videos that they had wanted to do for their business, so it's a win-win I'd say.  We don't have to break the bank and they get a little production team to shoot their ideas in return.  Jeff and I scouted it out , took some photos, and planned out some shots.

I met up with Evan afterwards to write the final version of our script.  Writing with two minds can get tedious at times, but it's always nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.  But today, for the most part, we were simply translating what we had seen in rehearsal a few days earlier down on paper.  Twas' a long night.