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!

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