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.