11/30/06
Logging and Importing Done
Tristan and I finished Logging and Importing. I have about 2 hours left of labeling to do on some of the takes and shots and then we can start editing tomorrow. I met my guideline. Other than that nothing much else happened. I did get a call from a film student interested in helping with editing. I’ll give him a call tormorrow. That’s all for post.
Day 2
Production Day 2 (or the Official first day of shooting)
So as to how the day started I don’t remember. It was a Saturday, but it seems really vague. I remember seeing Jon Baranick the first time with his hair cut for the film and he looked great! Day 2 was going to be one of our easier days of shooting. It was all the stuff on the mall. Like the jogging scene and the chase scene with Jon and Adam. Our contact that had rented us the police car also lent us a lighting fixture so we could generate emergency lights on a cop car with out a cop car present. We used them with the scene with Colin in the elevator. I wrote a letter to the police and dropped it off with my contact info and information about what we were doing, where we were doing it and the contact info for my prof. as well. Pretty standard really. I did this on all my movies shot at night on campus. During the day your fine but at night they ask questions and instead of running the risk of getting sent home you just tell them where you are and what you’re doing and they leave you alone. Easy. Just be honest. We started shooting on time and it was good to have the crew whole crew there. Some of them were a little bit dear in head lights but got better as the night went on. The location I wanted to start at didn’t work because we couldn’t find power outlets. Thankfully across the parking lot we found some and shot over there. We did the chase stuff first. Brad, the actor playing officer Navarro, helped us with lighting a bit because Kenny and Dan were pretty nervous. They did generate some great shots. Like the one with the emergency call box. We were way behind though. We had about 7 pages to shoot and at about 11 we had only gotten through 1.5 or so. I really started to panic. I had prepared a 6 page shot list and at midnight I literally threw it out. The jogging scene was supposed to be done in like 12 different shots and I ended up doing the whole thing in 3 shots, with one master and 2 small inserts. Man I hope it edits together well. We had Adam and Jon on tonight for their first night. Adam ended up providing his own costume because Linnaea and I weren’t able to get anything. I had called him a few days before and told him what I was looking for and he said he had exactly that. Linnaea had found a great shirt for Jon’s character. It fit him great and says “hotties ride for free”. Absolutely perfect for the character. Ali started that night too as the character of Sarah. She had to come really late and we ended up shooting until about 3am. One of our latest days. A lot of the scenes we did ended up being in one or two shots because we just didn’t have time. It was by far the worst night of shooting. The footage wasn’t nearly as good as the tunnels and turned out to be the worst of the whole shoot. We actually may have to redo it if it doesn’t edit together well. We’ll see. This is the first I’ve ever mentioned this but it just may happen. We got some really good stuff that night, like the chase, and Colin in the Elevator, but it was by far the worst night of shooting. We didn’t make our day either. We were about a page short at the end of the night. Sigh. We were off to a great start!:(
So as to how the day started I don’t remember. It was a Saturday, but it seems really vague. I remember seeing Jon Baranick the first time with his hair cut for the film and he looked great! Day 2 was going to be one of our easier days of shooting. It was all the stuff on the mall. Like the jogging scene and the chase scene with Jon and Adam. Our contact that had rented us the police car also lent us a lighting fixture so we could generate emergency lights on a cop car with out a cop car present. We used them with the scene with Colin in the elevator. I wrote a letter to the police and dropped it off with my contact info and information about what we were doing, where we were doing it and the contact info for my prof. as well. Pretty standard really. I did this on all my movies shot at night on campus. During the day your fine but at night they ask questions and instead of running the risk of getting sent home you just tell them where you are and what you’re doing and they leave you alone. Easy. Just be honest. We started shooting on time and it was good to have the crew whole crew there. Some of them were a little bit dear in head lights but got better as the night went on. The location I wanted to start at didn’t work because we couldn’t find power outlets. Thankfully across the parking lot we found some and shot over there. We did the chase stuff first. Brad, the actor playing officer Navarro, helped us with lighting a bit because Kenny and Dan were pretty nervous. They did generate some great shots. Like the one with the emergency call box. We were way behind though. We had about 7 pages to shoot and at about 11 we had only gotten through 1.5 or so. I really started to panic. I had prepared a 6 page shot list and at midnight I literally threw it out. The jogging scene was supposed to be done in like 12 different shots and I ended up doing the whole thing in 3 shots, with one master and 2 small inserts. Man I hope it edits together well. We had Adam and Jon on tonight for their first night. Adam ended up providing his own costume because Linnaea and I weren’t able to get anything. I had called him a few days before and told him what I was looking for and he said he had exactly that. Linnaea had found a great shirt for Jon’s character. It fit him great and says “hotties ride for free”. Absolutely perfect for the character. Ali started that night too as the character of Sarah. She had to come really late and we ended up shooting until about 3am. One of our latest days. A lot of the scenes we did ended up being in one or two shots because we just didn’t have time. It was by far the worst night of shooting. The footage wasn’t nearly as good as the tunnels and turned out to be the worst of the whole shoot. We actually may have to redo it if it doesn’t edit together well. We’ll see. This is the first I’ve ever mentioned this but it just may happen. We got some really good stuff that night, like the chase, and Colin in the Elevator, but it was by far the worst night of shooting. We didn’t make our day either. We were about a page short at the end of the night. Sigh. We were off to a great start!:(
11/29/06
Post Begins
We’ve started post production even though we haven’t officially completed shooting. Below is a copy of an email I sent to cast and crew a few weeks ago with some information that might be of interest to you.
Cast and Crew:
Good morning. I apologize for the long silence. I've spent the last week logging like crazy and doing some data analysis work. Since the production started on September 27th we've shot roughly 23 hours of footage on 36 tapes. Not my best of shooting ratio's but 1/11 isn't that bad...well...comparatively. So far we have shot 94 pages in 23 days of production. 2 of those days were hard 12-14 hour days for the crew. I know that every one's anxious for a wrap party but we still have 5 pages of this monster left to do. Unfortunately these five pages involve a lot of you, a lot of different locations, and the philanthropy scene. Danielle, Dan, and I will be getting together in the next few days to hack out a schedule. you can rest assure that we will schedule things at least 2 weeks in advance so you can free you schedule and be done with this film.
I actually finished logging the day I wrote that email. It took FOREVER. For the last week I’ve been working on logging my shot logs into the computer as well as capturing and working on the trailer. I have to have a trailer edited for my final for my post production class. I was thinking about releasing it Friday but it won’t be ready because it still needs a score. I’ve actually decided I’m not going to release it until February; I want to make it timely. I don’t want to post a trailer so far in advance that people forget about it. So basically I’ve been living in the lab for the last 3 weeks. Literally I’ve been there almost every hour it’s open. Tristan Ringenoldus (an executive producer) has been helping me for the past few days. He assembled a few scenes and is going to help me get a rough assembly of the film done by Dec 13th. The lab closes then for winter break.
Dan, Linnaea, and I met with my post production professor, Miguel, and the directing professor to talk about where we are in the capstone and what we need to do to finish. I gave them a rough outline for deadlines which are below:
Dec 13 Rough Assembly (Lab Closes)
Jan 16 (Lab Reopens)
Jan 30 Rough Cut
Feb 13 Fine Cut
Feb 27 Picture Lock
March 13 Foley and ADR Recorded
March 27 Score and Rough Sound Mix
April 17 Final Sound Mix
April 24 Final Picture done and turned in
May 1st or 2nd campus premiere.
They said this was a tight schedule and hard deadlines but they think it’s a good calendar. I’m going to bring on a few others to help finish the film. I’ve sent out a few invites and am waiting for a response. It’s great though to have my professor looking at the footage. Everyone was so hesitant before and Crystal, my post production professor says the footage is looking really good. Yes. Score one for me.
Kenny and I have started work on the one sheets. I sent him some movie posters that I liked and we’re gonna start brainstorming.
I’m going to peruse a marking person to help devise a marketing plan for the movie. I’ll make that reach tomorrow.
Cast and Crew:
Good morning. I apologize for the long silence. I've spent the last week logging like crazy and doing some data analysis work. Since the production started on September 27th we've shot roughly 23 hours of footage on 36 tapes. Not my best of shooting ratio's but 1/11 isn't that bad...well...comparatively. So far we have shot 94 pages in 23 days of production. 2 of those days were hard 12-14 hour days for the crew. I know that every one's anxious for a wrap party but we still have 5 pages of this monster left to do. Unfortunately these five pages involve a lot of you, a lot of different locations, and the philanthropy scene. Danielle, Dan, and I will be getting together in the next few days to hack out a schedule. you can rest assure that we will schedule things at least 2 weeks in advance so you can free you schedule and be done with this film.
I actually finished logging the day I wrote that email. It took FOREVER. For the last week I’ve been working on logging my shot logs into the computer as well as capturing and working on the trailer. I have to have a trailer edited for my final for my post production class. I was thinking about releasing it Friday but it won’t be ready because it still needs a score. I’ve actually decided I’m not going to release it until February; I want to make it timely. I don’t want to post a trailer so far in advance that people forget about it. So basically I’ve been living in the lab for the last 3 weeks. Literally I’ve been there almost every hour it’s open. Tristan Ringenoldus (an executive producer) has been helping me for the past few days. He assembled a few scenes and is going to help me get a rough assembly of the film done by Dec 13th. The lab closes then for winter break.
Dan, Linnaea, and I met with my post production professor, Miguel, and the directing professor to talk about where we are in the capstone and what we need to do to finish. I gave them a rough outline for deadlines which are below:
Dec 13 Rough Assembly (Lab Closes)
Jan 16 (Lab Reopens)
Jan 30 Rough Cut
Feb 13 Fine Cut
Feb 27 Picture Lock
March 13 Foley and ADR Recorded
March 27 Score and Rough Sound Mix
April 17 Final Sound Mix
April 24 Final Picture done and turned in
May 1st or 2nd campus premiere.
They said this was a tight schedule and hard deadlines but they think it’s a good calendar. I’m going to bring on a few others to help finish the film. I’ve sent out a few invites and am waiting for a response. It’s great though to have my professor looking at the footage. Everyone was so hesitant before and Crystal, my post production professor says the footage is looking really good. Yes. Score one for me.
Kenny and I have started work on the one sheets. I sent him some movie posters that I liked and we’re gonna start brainstorming.
I’m going to peruse a marking person to help devise a marketing plan for the movie. I’ll make that reach tomorrow.
SAG
Screen Actors Guild
In my preproduction post I forgot to mention my goings on with SAG. Well I got all the paperwork after I submitted my initial information sheet via email from my representative. I called my local contact and found out he was on vacation till the 14th. Well we started shooting on the 27th and I had to have all this paper work in 3 weeks before we started shooting. Great. It’s not that it was hard or a lot of paper work. I’m just not a lawyer and don’t understand what some of the stuff means and I wanted to make sure that I did everything write and didn’t get in trouble or anything. Well I ended up call the emergency number left on my local contacts voicemail and talked to the regional director. It was a miracle I got her. Her assistant had the day off so she was answering her own phone calls. She helped me for about an hour as I asked her all kinds of questions. I couldn’t believe how nice she was. I filled out all the paper work and sent it in. it was a little late but the regional director assured me it would be fine. When the time came I called my contact when he got back from vacation and informed him on where we where in the process. I had to give the SAG office a deposit of 350 for the Sag actors to ensure that they got paid had we run out of money or something. Well as we got closer and closer to production I got nervous because I wasn’t hearing anything. I called and called and called and it was impossible to talk to anyone that wasn’t someone’s assistant. Like I said, it was a miracle I got the regional director when I did. Anyway we didn’t get final approval until 2pm the day we started shooting at about 20min before we needed to start shooting with our first sag actor. Talk about cutting it short. From there I had to keep a log of the sag actor’s time and the meal and send the paper work off right way to sag along with a check for the performer. Fun times. ;)
In my preproduction post I forgot to mention my goings on with SAG. Well I got all the paperwork after I submitted my initial information sheet via email from my representative. I called my local contact and found out he was on vacation till the 14th. Well we started shooting on the 27th and I had to have all this paper work in 3 weeks before we started shooting. Great. It’s not that it was hard or a lot of paper work. I’m just not a lawyer and don’t understand what some of the stuff means and I wanted to make sure that I did everything write and didn’t get in trouble or anything. Well I ended up call the emergency number left on my local contacts voicemail and talked to the regional director. It was a miracle I got her. Her assistant had the day off so she was answering her own phone calls. She helped me for about an hour as I asked her all kinds of questions. I couldn’t believe how nice she was. I filled out all the paper work and sent it in. it was a little late but the regional director assured me it would be fine. When the time came I called my contact when he got back from vacation and informed him on where we where in the process. I had to give the SAG office a deposit of 350 for the Sag actors to ensure that they got paid had we run out of money or something. Well as we got closer and closer to production I got nervous because I wasn’t hearing anything. I called and called and called and it was impossible to talk to anyone that wasn’t someone’s assistant. Like I said, it was a miracle I got the regional director when I did. Anyway we didn’t get final approval until 2pm the day we started shooting at about 20min before we needed to start shooting with our first sag actor. Talk about cutting it short. From there I had to keep a log of the sag actor’s time and the meal and send the paper work off right way to sag along with a check for the performer. Fun times. ;)
Shooting Day 1
Wednesday, September 27th, Production Day 1.
For those of you that pay attention to me and my blog you’ll notice that the first day of shooting was always listed as Saturday the 30th. Well, that was all a rouse. The actual first day of shooting was on Wednesday the 27th and had been for a very long time. It was our Tunnels day. We kept it secret because facilities management is very very touchy about the location. For one they try to keep it secret from students that the tunnels even exist. Most people wanted to go into the tunnels. So to make sure people didn’t tag along or show up we kept the shooting day a secret. So the necessary cast and a select group of students for crew, which mainly consisted of me, Dan and Joel, were allowed into the tunnels.
Because there were so many different requirements of the tunnel locations, (like ladders, doors, stairs, intersections etc) we spent 3 days down there during preproduction looking for all these places. We found them all after the 2nd scout and I made a plot map of campus with each location and then figured out the most time and cast efficient way of going to the different locations. On Wednesday the 20th, a week before we started, Dan, Danielle, and I and our two facman contacts went and did a walk through of our path for the day of shooting to time the location moves. We had nine pages to shoot on the 27th and it was going to be one of the hardest days of our 16 day schedule. Danielle and I borrowed some walkie talkies from the campus film club to stay in contact. She would run the home base (kind of production office) in the mu and I’d radio to her when we need new actors or where moving or whatever. We had a plan.
The Tuesday night before we started Colin arrived and I started my shot list for the next day. It was exciting to do that. It ended up being like 5 pages long single spaced. I basically wrote the scene number, then all the shots and their descriptions, things like panning from under grate, or two shot of Tyler and Jeremy.
Because the locations were underground and because the facman guys could only help us during there business hours we had to shoot from 7:30am-4pm. doing day for night would be fine because no sunlight was going to make it in there.
On Tuesday we picked up just the equipment we would need in the tunnels, a tripod and a fig rig and a mic and a camera. Sorry, no lights. There was no way we could light down there and run power cords. The facman guys said they would bring a portable florescent that they used often when fixing things. They also said they’d bring a full florescent incase we needed some serious light. That was nice of them.
So Danielle picked me, Colin, and Joel up at my house first thing in the morning and we got the MU about 7:30. Cast was called at 8am. The facman guys were there early. Linnaea was stuck in morning traffic so we had to wait for her to get there before we could start. We started shooting 30min late. Linnaea had forgotten Colin’s Characters bandanna and had to go get it so I had to switch the schedule right away. We ended up taking mike zduniak out into the tunnels at a different location which also messed up our plan. As we walked there we realized that our walkie talkies weren’t working because the distance was so great. We went into the tunnels and set up the first shot and used the slate. But as we set up the second shot I decided to leave the slate out and leave it at the mu when we got back because it was just costing time and it was one more thing to carry. We had to wait for 15min for a facman guy to go grab an extension cord because we forgot one. We had to wait again because this one wasn’t long enough. To make a long story short we ended up shooting 3 shoots in an hour. It took it equaled about 3/8ths of a page in the can at 10am. We had nine pages to shoot. Man was I panicked. I immediately cut the scene where mike hangs himself from my shot list which was about a page long because I knew we wouldn’t get to it and it was one of the least important scenes. It was a cool scene, a character moment, but it didn’t further the story so I cut it. When we got back linnaea was back and we started shooting with all 3 guys. We went to the original location were we were supposed to start and randy Rubin our DVD guy came along with it. We ended up getting him and extra camera fro the DVD stuff. We spent the next few hours shooting at a few different locations and got some really really great stuff. It took the guys 10 takes to get the big camera scene down but it’ll be great in the movie. While we where shooting Danielle and noel were furiously sewing on official patches onto the cop uniforms, something that we had forgotten to do. We took a break and went back to the MU to get some water and then ventured out again. We went to this room where we shot the scene where they split up. It was 110 degrees in there I kid you not. You should see the footage between takes. It was so hot and uncomfortable. You can see the sweat on the guys in the actual footage. It was great though because that’s why they split up, because it was too hot. Method acting hahaha. Well we’re still way behind schedule and I was panicking. I later found out the facman guys were talking to the actors and crew because they’d never seen me so stressed. When we broke for lunch all my cops where there and in uniform. They looked GREAT! So good. After lunch we went to the next location and did the cop stuff in the tunnels and it became about 3:00pm. I made a decision to finish the cops stuff so I wouldn’t have to bring them into the tunnels again, especially our sag actor, john. I was able to finish the cop stuff and by the end of the day I had 56min of footage and only 5 ½ pages done of the 9 we had started with. I was panicked. Then one of the facman guys approached me and told me that he would help me out and bring me into the tunnels again if I needed to on another day. The original agreement was one day but he said that his assignment was to help us out and if we weren’t done we weren’t done. Oh thank god for these facman guys. They saved my movie. I told them I’d be in contact with them on when to finish so I thanked them and we wrapped up. I had absolutly no idea when we could shoot in the tunnels again because our schedule was so tight. but i knew i'd make it work some how. We went back to the house and watched the dailies and I was very very pleased to say the least with the amazing footage we got. I don’t remember what we did that night or in the next few days but the next day of shooting was Saturday the 30th, the “official” first day.
For those of you that pay attention to me and my blog you’ll notice that the first day of shooting was always listed as Saturday the 30th. Well, that was all a rouse. The actual first day of shooting was on Wednesday the 27th and had been for a very long time. It was our Tunnels day. We kept it secret because facilities management is very very touchy about the location. For one they try to keep it secret from students that the tunnels even exist. Most people wanted to go into the tunnels. So to make sure people didn’t tag along or show up we kept the shooting day a secret. So the necessary cast and a select group of students for crew, which mainly consisted of me, Dan and Joel, were allowed into the tunnels.
Because there were so many different requirements of the tunnel locations, (like ladders, doors, stairs, intersections etc) we spent 3 days down there during preproduction looking for all these places. We found them all after the 2nd scout and I made a plot map of campus with each location and then figured out the most time and cast efficient way of going to the different locations. On Wednesday the 20th, a week before we started, Dan, Danielle, and I and our two facman contacts went and did a walk through of our path for the day of shooting to time the location moves. We had nine pages to shoot on the 27th and it was going to be one of the hardest days of our 16 day schedule. Danielle and I borrowed some walkie talkies from the campus film club to stay in contact. She would run the home base (kind of production office) in the mu and I’d radio to her when we need new actors or where moving or whatever. We had a plan.
The Tuesday night before we started Colin arrived and I started my shot list for the next day. It was exciting to do that. It ended up being like 5 pages long single spaced. I basically wrote the scene number, then all the shots and their descriptions, things like panning from under grate, or two shot of Tyler and Jeremy.
Because the locations were underground and because the facman guys could only help us during there business hours we had to shoot from 7:30am-4pm. doing day for night would be fine because no sunlight was going to make it in there.
On Tuesday we picked up just the equipment we would need in the tunnels, a tripod and a fig rig and a mic and a camera. Sorry, no lights. There was no way we could light down there and run power cords. The facman guys said they would bring a portable florescent that they used often when fixing things. They also said they’d bring a full florescent incase we needed some serious light. That was nice of them.
So Danielle picked me, Colin, and Joel up at my house first thing in the morning and we got the MU about 7:30. Cast was called at 8am. The facman guys were there early. Linnaea was stuck in morning traffic so we had to wait for her to get there before we could start. We started shooting 30min late. Linnaea had forgotten Colin’s Characters bandanna and had to go get it so I had to switch the schedule right away. We ended up taking mike zduniak out into the tunnels at a different location which also messed up our plan. As we walked there we realized that our walkie talkies weren’t working because the distance was so great. We went into the tunnels and set up the first shot and used the slate. But as we set up the second shot I decided to leave the slate out and leave it at the mu when we got back because it was just costing time and it was one more thing to carry. We had to wait for 15min for a facman guy to go grab an extension cord because we forgot one. We had to wait again because this one wasn’t long enough. To make a long story short we ended up shooting 3 shoots in an hour. It took it equaled about 3/8ths of a page in the can at 10am. We had nine pages to shoot. Man was I panicked. I immediately cut the scene where mike hangs himself from my shot list which was about a page long because I knew we wouldn’t get to it and it was one of the least important scenes. It was a cool scene, a character moment, but it didn’t further the story so I cut it. When we got back linnaea was back and we started shooting with all 3 guys. We went to the original location were we were supposed to start and randy Rubin our DVD guy came along with it. We ended up getting him and extra camera fro the DVD stuff. We spent the next few hours shooting at a few different locations and got some really really great stuff. It took the guys 10 takes to get the big camera scene down but it’ll be great in the movie. While we where shooting Danielle and noel were furiously sewing on official patches onto the cop uniforms, something that we had forgotten to do. We took a break and went back to the MU to get some water and then ventured out again. We went to this room where we shot the scene where they split up. It was 110 degrees in there I kid you not. You should see the footage between takes. It was so hot and uncomfortable. You can see the sweat on the guys in the actual footage. It was great though because that’s why they split up, because it was too hot. Method acting hahaha. Well we’re still way behind schedule and I was panicking. I later found out the facman guys were talking to the actors and crew because they’d never seen me so stressed. When we broke for lunch all my cops where there and in uniform. They looked GREAT! So good. After lunch we went to the next location and did the cop stuff in the tunnels and it became about 3:00pm. I made a decision to finish the cops stuff so I wouldn’t have to bring them into the tunnels again, especially our sag actor, john. I was able to finish the cop stuff and by the end of the day I had 56min of footage and only 5 ½ pages done of the 9 we had started with. I was panicked. Then one of the facman guys approached me and told me that he would help me out and bring me into the tunnels again if I needed to on another day. The original agreement was one day but he said that his assignment was to help us out and if we weren’t done we weren’t done. Oh thank god for these facman guys. They saved my movie. I told them I’d be in contact with them on when to finish so I thanked them and we wrapped up. I had absolutly no idea when we could shoot in the tunnels again because our schedule was so tight. but i knew i'd make it work some how. We went back to the house and watched the dailies and I was very very pleased to say the least with the amazing footage we got. I don’t remember what we did that night or in the next few days but the next day of shooting was Saturday the 30th, the “official” first day.
11/27/06
The Rest of Pre-Production
Phew. Wow. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Man things have been crazy. It’s been roughly 11 weeks since I last posted. In the last 11 weeks we’ve shot 94 pages of the screenplay. 5 pages left. What I’m going to do is go back as far as I can and look at my calendar and try and fill in the last 11 weeks. The easiest way for me to do this will to be to take each aspect of the film and go through what happened up until production. I just can’t remember the dates. So here goes:
Sept 10th-27th.
Dorms
I keep trying to find out if reslife will work. Everyday I call to see if they’ll help us out. Around this time I got an idea. One of the AFA events was taking place at the dorms at the downtown campus so I decided to call them and see if we could film there. The lady was really nice. She said I could just come down whenever I wanted to take a look at the location. On some Thursday or something Danielle and I had gone to the west campus to meet with the police commander for the second time and decided to just stop by the downtown campus and see the dorms. We walked in and met my contact. She couldn’t have been nicer. She showed us the facility, the courtyard, the halls, the show rooms, and even an empty room. She said that she thought the residents would be excited because it would be something neat happening in the dorms. She did for a second sit us down and talk serious. She wanted to know exactly what we where filming. Especially when she found out a few of the scenes involved police officers. After an honest answer to her concerns with things like the only crimes committed were trespassing and underage drinking she was at ease. We still wanted to use the main campus dorms so we told her we’d get back to her if we wanted to use them. In the next few days I continued to pester my reslife contact and things weren’t working out. He just wasn’t’ returning my calls. Out of desperation I had an idea. Miguel’s office used to be a dorm. When meeting with him I looked around and realized that the theatre and film office would make a great dorm because it used to be one. It was renovated in the 70’s or something and was turned into offices. I went to the dean’s office and they showed me an empty office and it was perfect. It was a dorm room. I had to talk to the head of the department and she was wary of letting us film there. She said that if there was an empty office it needed to go to faculty. I pursued for a little bit but eventually gave up the path because it didn’t seem like an option. I was getting to a point of desperation. I thought the dorms were going to go to public events who are the bane of my existence. Public events would shut us down in a second if we didn’t pay them all kinds of fines and stuff and have the script approved. I got so desperate at one point and worried that I actually went to the public events office and decided if reslife was going to go to them I’d do it first. While I was waiting at the office my phone rang and it was reslife. OMG. I answered and it was my contact and he said he was sorry but he’d been busy and he was finally ready to meet with me. Well I had had my professor and the head of the department a few days earlier email him because he wasn’t responding. Guess it worked. Man it would have been so bad had I made it to my public events meeting. Grace of god on that one. So we met with my contact a few days later, Danielle and I, and the dorms were absolutely perfect. But the problem was that we had about 2 or 3 days till we started shooting and we needed to know if we could do it. Apparently they were selling the rights to the property and reslife would no longer be in control of the property, so they couldn’t tell me when we could film there. It would be empty but they just didn’t know when the contracts would go through. It came to the point were we had to start shooting and I made the decision to use the down town campus. I didn’t want to for a few reasons. One it looked like a hotel more than a dorm, (because it was a hotel before it was a dorm) two, resident’s lived there (which means an uncontrolled environment) and three, the commute, it’s about 20 minutes from where most of the shoot is. But, it was these dorms or no dorms so I made my diction and we ended up shooting at the down town campus for the dorms.
Police Station
I finally got a response from the police commander. I set up a meeting with him for Thursday. See for some reason he got transferred to the west campus while I was working on the script. So he set up a meeting with him and with the main campus police commander. I met with them and it was a miracle. Everything I asked for they said they could do. All the police cars, the stations, etc. I showed them my schedule which required them for 3 days and they were fine. They said they just had to clear it with the chief of police. And the chief of police wanted a copy of the script. So I did a little doctoring to make it less of an R and to make the police stuff look a little friendlier and turned in the script. A few days later I met with the main campus commander and he said that the chief hadn’t read it but he did say that what we were asking for was too much. He said that the main campus was just too busy. If we wanted the police’s help we could use them for maybe use on car for an hour on one night. HA! I had THREE FULL DAYS! And needed 3 cars for 2-3 hours. What a slap in the face. How was I going to do this movie with out the police? I called my contact at the west campus because we had talked previously about possible using the west campus station and cars. I left messages but didn’t’ get a response so Danielle and I decided to just drive to the west campus and try and catch him in his office. We went to the station at about 10am and it appeared to be closed. The one thing I was most worried about for the police station was the front lobby scenes. The main campus station had a front lobby that was great. I couldn’t’ recreate it. It had a window for the dispatch office and all kinds of memorabilia. The rest of the station could easily be doubled anywhere for any office like place. So anyway, the station appeared to be shut down. We decided to just wait outside. While we were waiting we saw a police car drive down the road. I joked about following it but we just decided to leave. As we were leaving we passed the cruiser parked so I decided to actually go looking for the officer. Danielle dropped me off and I went walking all around this building looking for this officer. I didn’t find and officer but I did find a police aide. The police aide said that the commander was in his office so he took Danielle and I back to the station and let us in. the commander said he was happy to see us and that he apologized for the appearance of the station being closed. They just didn’t have anyone to manage the front desk so they kept it locked. Anyway, he said he didn’t have good news for us. He said the chief did end up reading the script and he didn’t like it. And neither did he. He said they weren’t going to be able to help us out. I started to protest. For one I knew he wouldn’t’ like the script. He’ wasn’t the demographic the screenplay was designed for. I assured him that this was a school project, etc. to make a long story short I pleaded and pleaded and he finally said that we couldn’t use the cars but we could use the west campus station for all the interior station stuff. And the best part of that offer was that the west campus stations’ front lobby was better than the main campus station. The commander was so generous that he even offered for us to use the east campus because they had genuine jail cells with sliding bars and everything. The only stipulation he put on us was that we had to pay a police aide $27 an hour to basically baby sit us. We agreed because there were no other options and we needed the location. The Tuesday before we started shooting we went down the east campus police station and looked at the cells. Initially after the chief denied us access to the main campus station we thought we were going to build cells in the studio. Man they’d be crappy but we were going to do it. But these cells were perfect! So perfect! So it looked like our police station was going to be made up of both east and west campus stations.
Cop Cars
So when the Campus Police said we couldn’t use their cars I panicked. I had no idea what to do. Danielle and I tried to talk to a few different options. We contacted the local police departments and nobody ever got back to us. Danielle did some research online and found a local collector of police cars and emailed him. She even talked to the local film commission. The commission got back to us and had a service that they set up with the local police in which you pay the officers $51 an hour, $7 an hour for the car, plus something like $.57 a mile. Well we didn’t have that money. We needed the car(s) for at least 2 nights. We need 3 for a few hours and 1 for 2 days of shooting. Danielle’s collector got back to us and gave us a GREAT DEAL. Apparently he did this sort of thing in LA, lending his collector vehicles to film productions. Since we were students he let us hire him for $50 a day and food on the Set. OMG he saved the movie. We hired him right away and he provided one Crown Victoria and he also lent us a light fixture to simulate flashing cop car lights. We picked that up on Tuesday the day before shooting.
Production design
Over the 2-3 weeks we had before we started shooting Linnaea and I tried to get together as much as possible. It was really hard because she was working almost full time and going to school full time. Plus she had to go to Wyoming for a weekend to pick up some of her mom’s stuff. We did the best we could as far as props and costumes are concerned. The most important costume/prop was the cop stuff. The uniforms, belts, boots, etc. Dan found this uniform store that was for Law Enforcement specifically so Linnaea and I went there. The class A uniforms cost us about $250 a piece. The thing we were most worried about was the belts and holsters. They were so expensive. Were’ talking $150 a holster. We couldn’t afford that at all. I went around to a few different Halloween places (seeing as it was close to Halloween). I found some toy guns called “Secret Agent” guns that I ended up using for the cop guns (you’d never know). But I couldn’t find holsters anywhere. Then I had an idea. Gun shops! I found a few gun shops slash pawn places and went to one of them the guy rented me 3 police belts, clip holders, cuff holders, and holsters for like $40 for the month! Wahoo. I was a little worried about the costumes and other props but they were easily found enough. I’d been picking things up for a while anyway. Like the dart board in will and rahid’s room. I got that in June. It took me a long time to get all the paperwork to linnaea that she needed. She spent the few weeks before production gathering the different stuff she had that would work and also she and I made lots of errands. Man things were starting to pile up in my house.
Tunnels
The tunnels were the easiest location to deal with. I did have a quick scare though. There was a period of a few days where we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get a person to accompany us in the tunnels because one of our contacts was going away to some training or conference or something. I actually went to the office of facman pleading for them to help me and someone there of importance assured me they’d make it happen. Man that was scary. One of my contacts ended up giving me his cell phone number so that I wouldn’t have to deal with middle management anymore. He said they got all confused because it had already ben approved so why was I dealing with them? That made things a lot easier.
Dinner
After travis’ futile pursuits with ihop we decided to try other avenues. But all of travis’ contacts dried up. Nobody wanted to help us. Not even the village inn. I decided to try a 50’s style dinner that’s located in the school and run by campus dinning. They were totally cool with us filming. Basically they said just call a few days before and they’d lock us inside when the restaurant was closed and we could just leave when we were done. We didn’t have to have anyone watch us or anything. HA! They even said they’d turn on the fountain so we could have free soda! How about that?
Construction site
Danielle and I just decided to walk into the big construction sites and strait up ask the people there how we could get permission. It was actually a fun day. It rained like crazy and I almost ruined my Birkenstocks. That would have been a travesty. Well we talked to a construction worked on Saturday and he told us to come back on Monday and talk to Rick and R.C. When we came back on Monday we found out that it was Rick and Arcey. Yeah, way different than R.C. but these guys were awesome. They thought it sounded easy enough. We only needed to be there for a few hours. One of he regulations was we had to where hard hats which sounded like fun anyway. Also had to have close toed shoes. No objections from us. After calling them every other day or so for a week or two they finally gave us the go ahead. We’d meet a night foremen at about 7pm and he’d hang with us till we were done.
Budget
So one day, I don’t remember which, Danielle and I got together and did a budget. We figured out we’d spend about $5000 and raise about $1000 from friends and family to help with a contingency incase we went over. Most of our budget came from me, Then Dan and his mom, then Tristan Ringenoldus ( a good friend of mine), then Danielle, then Kenny, etc.
Cast
When %25 of the cast didn’t show for the read through you can rest a sure I was concerned. I spent the few weeks before production talking to a few of the cast members and trying to woo them into their parts. The hardest was getting Jamie McKeel to play Michelle. She wasn’t too excited about the role at first and I had to kind of talk her into it. Ever since Dan and I did OK with her I really wanted her to be involved in Freshmen. I had asked her to audition but she never did. Then when an actress turned down the role of Michelle I ran to Jamie. She didn’t really agree to the role until the day before we needed the character, which was the second day of shooting. The third day was her first, which was the stuff in the van on the day we were at the dinner. I also had a terrible time trying to find an actor for the Ricky Carr role. Everyone I approached turned it down. I even interviewed a friend of Josh McDermitt’s for a role in the film and he was a real nice guy, good looking, and if he’s got josh’s support he’s got to be good. Unfortunately he was too old for Ricky Carr and too young for a cop. We had a few actors like that in auditions. So I ended up playing myself. Linnaea’s son Jason Kimble ended up as one of our officers and I was able to get a friend from my past job, Jeff Rensel, at the MU to play the other officer. Still no Ricky Carr though. I was finally able to get a hold of Vic and he had a lot going on in his life at the time we were about to start shooting. I told him I’d love the part but would understand if he couldn’t do it. He said he wanted to and I was stoked! Vic was one of the Very First actors I had in mind for the movie. In fact you could say I wrote the role of Ashton for him. The girl who was playing Sarah also dropped out of the cast and I had very little time to fill the role. I was able to get Jamie Israel’s girl friend, Ali Rae, to do the role (I’d worked with her before). Still no Ricky Carr so I ended up playing the role. Oh yeah, and David emailed me out of the blue saying that his girlfriend all of a sudden felt weird about him kissing a girl at the end of the movie. Rahid kisses Michelle. So I told him he didn’t have to do it. I mean this wasn’t Romeo & Juliet or anything. They could do other things beside kiss. But then during production I found out that she broke up with him and he was too embarrassed to tell me. Him. Glad he put the movie first. But then he got back together with his girlfriend so whatever. He still couldn’t have kissed in the end. Is that a pun? Colin flew into town on Tuesday night the night before we started shooting. It was great to see him.
Crew:
We had crew interviews and I made a huge mistake in scheduling them at 30 min a piece. It seriously took about 5 min per interview and the rest of the time we played around on you tube. We gave everyone a job and our crew turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Joel flew in from LA on Monday and spent the next few days with Danielle and I doing preproduction things. He can Colin became good friends real fast. We had our crew orientation on Tuesday. Man what a “success” that was. Only like half the people showed up and it was kind of awkward. At least for me. I had this whole plan and we were even going to shoot a mock scene to get used to working with one another. Yeah that didn’t happen. Not enough people showed. But Joel got to play around with the camera a little and Kenny and Stephanie showed me the lighting equipment they wanted. man oh man. Kenny and Stephanie scared the shit out of us. It was the day before we started shooting and they we had only planed to use lights in interiors at locations we could control, we’re talking like 4 of you 16 days, and they told us they wanted, wait no… needed lights every day of production. Jesus. Well we bit it off and dove in.
Equipment
So from the school we got Panasonic DVX100b’s, a Fig Rig (Which was amazing), 4 c-stand, a mole Richardson light kit, apple boxes, sand bags, stinger (extension cords), a condenser shot gun mike and boom pole, and on the occasion, a 12 foot strait track dolly. Molly’s friend who has a Costco member ship got us some tape. 40 tapes for $100
Extras
Yeah, Extra’s was something I was worried about but never really gave much thought too. I know we need them, and a lot of them, but there was so much to be done and had that I just didn’t know what to do. When the days came that we needed a few I knew I’d just make the crew do it. But the big days. I hadn’t resolved that yet.
Then we started shooting…
Sept 10th-27th.
Dorms
I keep trying to find out if reslife will work. Everyday I call to see if they’ll help us out. Around this time I got an idea. One of the AFA events was taking place at the dorms at the downtown campus so I decided to call them and see if we could film there. The lady was really nice. She said I could just come down whenever I wanted to take a look at the location. On some Thursday or something Danielle and I had gone to the west campus to meet with the police commander for the second time and decided to just stop by the downtown campus and see the dorms. We walked in and met my contact. She couldn’t have been nicer. She showed us the facility, the courtyard, the halls, the show rooms, and even an empty room. She said that she thought the residents would be excited because it would be something neat happening in the dorms. She did for a second sit us down and talk serious. She wanted to know exactly what we where filming. Especially when she found out a few of the scenes involved police officers. After an honest answer to her concerns with things like the only crimes committed were trespassing and underage drinking she was at ease. We still wanted to use the main campus dorms so we told her we’d get back to her if we wanted to use them. In the next few days I continued to pester my reslife contact and things weren’t working out. He just wasn’t’ returning my calls. Out of desperation I had an idea. Miguel’s office used to be a dorm. When meeting with him I looked around and realized that the theatre and film office would make a great dorm because it used to be one. It was renovated in the 70’s or something and was turned into offices. I went to the dean’s office and they showed me an empty office and it was perfect. It was a dorm room. I had to talk to the head of the department and she was wary of letting us film there. She said that if there was an empty office it needed to go to faculty. I pursued for a little bit but eventually gave up the path because it didn’t seem like an option. I was getting to a point of desperation. I thought the dorms were going to go to public events who are the bane of my existence. Public events would shut us down in a second if we didn’t pay them all kinds of fines and stuff and have the script approved. I got so desperate at one point and worried that I actually went to the public events office and decided if reslife was going to go to them I’d do it first. While I was waiting at the office my phone rang and it was reslife. OMG. I answered and it was my contact and he said he was sorry but he’d been busy and he was finally ready to meet with me. Well I had had my professor and the head of the department a few days earlier email him because he wasn’t responding. Guess it worked. Man it would have been so bad had I made it to my public events meeting. Grace of god on that one. So we met with my contact a few days later, Danielle and I, and the dorms were absolutely perfect. But the problem was that we had about 2 or 3 days till we started shooting and we needed to know if we could do it. Apparently they were selling the rights to the property and reslife would no longer be in control of the property, so they couldn’t tell me when we could film there. It would be empty but they just didn’t know when the contracts would go through. It came to the point were we had to start shooting and I made the decision to use the down town campus. I didn’t want to for a few reasons. One it looked like a hotel more than a dorm, (because it was a hotel before it was a dorm) two, resident’s lived there (which means an uncontrolled environment) and three, the commute, it’s about 20 minutes from where most of the shoot is. But, it was these dorms or no dorms so I made my diction and we ended up shooting at the down town campus for the dorms.
Police Station
I finally got a response from the police commander. I set up a meeting with him for Thursday. See for some reason he got transferred to the west campus while I was working on the script. So he set up a meeting with him and with the main campus police commander. I met with them and it was a miracle. Everything I asked for they said they could do. All the police cars, the stations, etc. I showed them my schedule which required them for 3 days and they were fine. They said they just had to clear it with the chief of police. And the chief of police wanted a copy of the script. So I did a little doctoring to make it less of an R and to make the police stuff look a little friendlier and turned in the script. A few days later I met with the main campus commander and he said that the chief hadn’t read it but he did say that what we were asking for was too much. He said that the main campus was just too busy. If we wanted the police’s help we could use them for maybe use on car for an hour on one night. HA! I had THREE FULL DAYS! And needed 3 cars for 2-3 hours. What a slap in the face. How was I going to do this movie with out the police? I called my contact at the west campus because we had talked previously about possible using the west campus station and cars. I left messages but didn’t’ get a response so Danielle and I decided to just drive to the west campus and try and catch him in his office. We went to the station at about 10am and it appeared to be closed. The one thing I was most worried about for the police station was the front lobby scenes. The main campus station had a front lobby that was great. I couldn’t’ recreate it. It had a window for the dispatch office and all kinds of memorabilia. The rest of the station could easily be doubled anywhere for any office like place. So anyway, the station appeared to be shut down. We decided to just wait outside. While we were waiting we saw a police car drive down the road. I joked about following it but we just decided to leave. As we were leaving we passed the cruiser parked so I decided to actually go looking for the officer. Danielle dropped me off and I went walking all around this building looking for this officer. I didn’t find and officer but I did find a police aide. The police aide said that the commander was in his office so he took Danielle and I back to the station and let us in. the commander said he was happy to see us and that he apologized for the appearance of the station being closed. They just didn’t have anyone to manage the front desk so they kept it locked. Anyway, he said he didn’t have good news for us. He said the chief did end up reading the script and he didn’t like it. And neither did he. He said they weren’t going to be able to help us out. I started to protest. For one I knew he wouldn’t’ like the script. He’ wasn’t the demographic the screenplay was designed for. I assured him that this was a school project, etc. to make a long story short I pleaded and pleaded and he finally said that we couldn’t use the cars but we could use the west campus station for all the interior station stuff. And the best part of that offer was that the west campus stations’ front lobby was better than the main campus station. The commander was so generous that he even offered for us to use the east campus because they had genuine jail cells with sliding bars and everything. The only stipulation he put on us was that we had to pay a police aide $27 an hour to basically baby sit us. We agreed because there were no other options and we needed the location. The Tuesday before we started shooting we went down the east campus police station and looked at the cells. Initially after the chief denied us access to the main campus station we thought we were going to build cells in the studio. Man they’d be crappy but we were going to do it. But these cells were perfect! So perfect! So it looked like our police station was going to be made up of both east and west campus stations.
Cop Cars
So when the Campus Police said we couldn’t use their cars I panicked. I had no idea what to do. Danielle and I tried to talk to a few different options. We contacted the local police departments and nobody ever got back to us. Danielle did some research online and found a local collector of police cars and emailed him. She even talked to the local film commission. The commission got back to us and had a service that they set up with the local police in which you pay the officers $51 an hour, $7 an hour for the car, plus something like $.57 a mile. Well we didn’t have that money. We needed the car(s) for at least 2 nights. We need 3 for a few hours and 1 for 2 days of shooting. Danielle’s collector got back to us and gave us a GREAT DEAL. Apparently he did this sort of thing in LA, lending his collector vehicles to film productions. Since we were students he let us hire him for $50 a day and food on the Set. OMG he saved the movie. We hired him right away and he provided one Crown Victoria and he also lent us a light fixture to simulate flashing cop car lights. We picked that up on Tuesday the day before shooting.
Production design
Over the 2-3 weeks we had before we started shooting Linnaea and I tried to get together as much as possible. It was really hard because she was working almost full time and going to school full time. Plus she had to go to Wyoming for a weekend to pick up some of her mom’s stuff. We did the best we could as far as props and costumes are concerned. The most important costume/prop was the cop stuff. The uniforms, belts, boots, etc. Dan found this uniform store that was for Law Enforcement specifically so Linnaea and I went there. The class A uniforms cost us about $250 a piece. The thing we were most worried about was the belts and holsters. They were so expensive. Were’ talking $150 a holster. We couldn’t afford that at all. I went around to a few different Halloween places (seeing as it was close to Halloween). I found some toy guns called “Secret Agent” guns that I ended up using for the cop guns (you’d never know). But I couldn’t find holsters anywhere. Then I had an idea. Gun shops! I found a few gun shops slash pawn places and went to one of them the guy rented me 3 police belts, clip holders, cuff holders, and holsters for like $40 for the month! Wahoo. I was a little worried about the costumes and other props but they were easily found enough. I’d been picking things up for a while anyway. Like the dart board in will and rahid’s room. I got that in June. It took me a long time to get all the paperwork to linnaea that she needed. She spent the few weeks before production gathering the different stuff she had that would work and also she and I made lots of errands. Man things were starting to pile up in my house.
Tunnels
The tunnels were the easiest location to deal with. I did have a quick scare though. There was a period of a few days where we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get a person to accompany us in the tunnels because one of our contacts was going away to some training or conference or something. I actually went to the office of facman pleading for them to help me and someone there of importance assured me they’d make it happen. Man that was scary. One of my contacts ended up giving me his cell phone number so that I wouldn’t have to deal with middle management anymore. He said they got all confused because it had already ben approved so why was I dealing with them? That made things a lot easier.
Dinner
After travis’ futile pursuits with ihop we decided to try other avenues. But all of travis’ contacts dried up. Nobody wanted to help us. Not even the village inn. I decided to try a 50’s style dinner that’s located in the school and run by campus dinning. They were totally cool with us filming. Basically they said just call a few days before and they’d lock us inside when the restaurant was closed and we could just leave when we were done. We didn’t have to have anyone watch us or anything. HA! They even said they’d turn on the fountain so we could have free soda! How about that?
Construction site
Danielle and I just decided to walk into the big construction sites and strait up ask the people there how we could get permission. It was actually a fun day. It rained like crazy and I almost ruined my Birkenstocks. That would have been a travesty. Well we talked to a construction worked on Saturday and he told us to come back on Monday and talk to Rick and R.C. When we came back on Monday we found out that it was Rick and Arcey. Yeah, way different than R.C. but these guys were awesome. They thought it sounded easy enough. We only needed to be there for a few hours. One of he regulations was we had to where hard hats which sounded like fun anyway. Also had to have close toed shoes. No objections from us. After calling them every other day or so for a week or two they finally gave us the go ahead. We’d meet a night foremen at about 7pm and he’d hang with us till we were done.
Budget
So one day, I don’t remember which, Danielle and I got together and did a budget. We figured out we’d spend about $5000 and raise about $1000 from friends and family to help with a contingency incase we went over. Most of our budget came from me, Then Dan and his mom, then Tristan Ringenoldus ( a good friend of mine), then Danielle, then Kenny, etc.
Cast
When %25 of the cast didn’t show for the read through you can rest a sure I was concerned. I spent the few weeks before production talking to a few of the cast members and trying to woo them into their parts. The hardest was getting Jamie McKeel to play Michelle. She wasn’t too excited about the role at first and I had to kind of talk her into it. Ever since Dan and I did OK with her I really wanted her to be involved in Freshmen. I had asked her to audition but she never did. Then when an actress turned down the role of Michelle I ran to Jamie. She didn’t really agree to the role until the day before we needed the character, which was the second day of shooting. The third day was her first, which was the stuff in the van on the day we were at the dinner. I also had a terrible time trying to find an actor for the Ricky Carr role. Everyone I approached turned it down. I even interviewed a friend of Josh McDermitt’s for a role in the film and he was a real nice guy, good looking, and if he’s got josh’s support he’s got to be good. Unfortunately he was too old for Ricky Carr and too young for a cop. We had a few actors like that in auditions. So I ended up playing myself. Linnaea’s son Jason Kimble ended up as one of our officers and I was able to get a friend from my past job, Jeff Rensel, at the MU to play the other officer. Still no Ricky Carr though. I was finally able to get a hold of Vic and he had a lot going on in his life at the time we were about to start shooting. I told him I’d love the part but would understand if he couldn’t do it. He said he wanted to and I was stoked! Vic was one of the Very First actors I had in mind for the movie. In fact you could say I wrote the role of Ashton for him. The girl who was playing Sarah also dropped out of the cast and I had very little time to fill the role. I was able to get Jamie Israel’s girl friend, Ali Rae, to do the role (I’d worked with her before). Still no Ricky Carr so I ended up playing the role. Oh yeah, and David emailed me out of the blue saying that his girlfriend all of a sudden felt weird about him kissing a girl at the end of the movie. Rahid kisses Michelle. So I told him he didn’t have to do it. I mean this wasn’t Romeo & Juliet or anything. They could do other things beside kiss. But then during production I found out that she broke up with him and he was too embarrassed to tell me. Him. Glad he put the movie first. But then he got back together with his girlfriend so whatever. He still couldn’t have kissed in the end. Is that a pun? Colin flew into town on Tuesday night the night before we started shooting. It was great to see him.
Crew:
We had crew interviews and I made a huge mistake in scheduling them at 30 min a piece. It seriously took about 5 min per interview and the rest of the time we played around on you tube. We gave everyone a job and our crew turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Joel flew in from LA on Monday and spent the next few days with Danielle and I doing preproduction things. He can Colin became good friends real fast. We had our crew orientation on Tuesday. Man what a “success” that was. Only like half the people showed up and it was kind of awkward. At least for me. I had this whole plan and we were even going to shoot a mock scene to get used to working with one another. Yeah that didn’t happen. Not enough people showed. But Joel got to play around with the camera a little and Kenny and Stephanie showed me the lighting equipment they wanted. man oh man. Kenny and Stephanie scared the shit out of us. It was the day before we started shooting and they we had only planed to use lights in interiors at locations we could control, we’re talking like 4 of you 16 days, and they told us they wanted, wait no… needed lights every day of production. Jesus. Well we bit it off and dove in.
Equipment
So from the school we got Panasonic DVX100b’s, a Fig Rig (Which was amazing), 4 c-stand, a mole Richardson light kit, apple boxes, sand bags, stinger (extension cords), a condenser shot gun mike and boom pole, and on the occasion, a 12 foot strait track dolly. Molly’s friend who has a Costco member ship got us some tape. 40 tapes for $100
Extras
Yeah, Extra’s was something I was worried about but never really gave much thought too. I know we need them, and a lot of them, but there was so much to be done and had that I just didn’t know what to do. When the days came that we needed a few I knew I’d just make the crew do it. But the big days. I hadn’t resolved that yet.
Then we started shooting…
11/26/06
New Blog
So I know I told most of you that I would start posting tomorrow but I'm in a productive mood so I started a new blog with the correct address for the new title. That's write. A new title. http://madisonhall.blogspot.com
Title
I know I said I'd start this blog tomorrow, but I'm feeling rather productive so I thought I'd just go ahead and post on this new site. I've officially changed the name of the film from Freshmen, and all it's various subtitles from "The night of their lives" to "The 13th grade" to Madison Hall. It just makes sense. That's the name of the dorm all the students live in and it's the reason they all know each other and the title just makes sense. So...
Welcome to the Blog for Post Production on Madison Hall.
Tomorrow I'll release the finishing touches of preproduction and through out this week I'll blog about photography while keeping you updated on post. Oh yeah, the trailer should be done by the end of the week. Depends on the music.
Welcome to the Blog for Post Production on Madison Hall.
Tomorrow I'll release the finishing touches of preproduction and through out this week I'll blog about photography while keeping you updated on post. Oh yeah, the trailer should be done by the end of the week. Depends on the music.
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