Editing / Planning

I just met with Mookie about wrapping things up. We start editing next week. After that, we’ll survey what we’ve got, decide if anything doesn’t work. We’ll retool parts of the script featuring the police, none of which has been shot. There are a few little things to shoot over the next couple months. The final shoot will be the tournament, which we have decided to shoot during spring break in a warehouse. I’ll post clips and updates during the editing process.

 We started shooting on Sept. 8, 2007. We have decided that this project is not allowed for any reason to extend beyond that time this year. If everything goes half right, we should be able to have our first screenings this summer.

Update

Not too many updates lately due to not having internet here at my new house in Queens. We’re still shooting, getting closer to wrapping up! The other day we shot around Long Island with Afton doing some reporter stuff. Wednesday we did Exteriors in Mineola with Myself (Beau), Zed (Luc), and Matt (Papers).

Some Clips and Some News

This is a clip of footage from the “Shear’s Lair” shoot. Our death defying actors do their own stunts!

This one needs a little explanation. We were shooting a close up of this boombox when Pat (plays Billy) started beatboxing into the boom mic. Add in a little clip of nonsense between takes, and we’ve got a very odd clip on our hands.

As far as production news goes, we’ve been working out the shooting schedule for everything we couldn’t get done last month. Looks like we’ll be going until the end of October. In the meantime though, I’ve purchased myself a quad core super fast monstrosity of a computer in order to properly run the Adobe CS3 production package. I had been using a sub-par computer and it was really not cutting the mustard. This thing on the other hand, is the fastest I’ve ever seen. I’ve got all of the footage captured and sorted into bins by scene, with a sequence file set up for each. Editing will be a systematic and efficient process. I have worked far sloppier in the past.

More updates soon!

Fastest Growing Blogs List

I just realized that last week we were #67 on the List of Growing Blogs on WordPress.com.

That’s pretty neat, eh?

P.S. Subscribe to this blog via RSS using this link.

Last Minute Cancellation / Last Minute Show

So we shot in my parent’s basement on Wednesday and it worked out swimmingly. Unfortunately, we were also were informed of multiple cancellations by important actors for the big shoot on Friday. Up until this point we hadn’t had many scheduling issues…now all of a sudden our biggest shoot was destroyed.

The biggest problem with that is we rented a hall for that shoot ($600). There was no way to cancel it or anything like that so we had to figure out some way to use it, and hopefully make some of that money back. We got on the wire and tried to find bands to play. We had a bunch of Colt 45 left over from the Grease Shack shoot and knew that would come in handy.

We ended up booking 6 bands. The place is huge and has 2 floors and a full kitchen so we hoped to use it to its full potential. We stocked the fridge with 40’s and random beer, and bought some burgers and knish’s to cook.

We only had 2 days to whip this all together and get people to come but I’d say it worked out great. We ended up making back most of the money and we had a swell time. After most of the people left, a pack of us dudes acted like animals running around and yelling and throwing things…I’m not sure how that happened but it was insane. We cleaned and locked up and the night was over around 4.

Thanks to everyone who came, all the bands who played, Tim Bracco, and the Koz Bros for helping out so much.

Now we have to reschedule that shoot…

The flier for the show

Double Wonderful rocks the house, Dudes gone wild, A couple dudes play Chinese football, Pat (Billy)

Shear’s Lair

Tomorrow we shoot all scenes located in “Shear’s Lair”, the place where the bad guys (the scissor gang) hang out. Basically Mookie and I trashed my parents basement to create this set. The air down there sucks but it’s airing out and hopefully none of the actors pass out. Check it out :

I bet you had no idea we were such incredible graffiti artists!

Time Off / New Domain Name

Since Monday, we’ve had no shoots scheduled for this week. That has given us some time to relax and prepare for next week (5 shoots!) which includes the big tournament scene at the Hungarian Hall. We will need lots of extras, details to be posted soon. It’ll be a blast (we have a ton of colt 45 left over from Earl’s Grease Shack).

Mookie and I just took the camera to shop to be fixed. The place is Al-Art video in Lynbrook, nice guys. Sounds like we’ll have it back in a few days, which is awesome. If we sent it away it would be weeks and we’d be completely relying on borrowed cameras. Which reminds me, our friends Sean and Drew have both offered use their cameras, they really saved our asses. Thank you.

This blog can now be reached at ROSHAMBEAU.COM. Eventually that url will go to a sweet site with a trailer and all that (and a link to this blog) but for now this is all we got.

Anyone have any questions? We can be reached at rpsmovie@gmail.com

Stay tuned for some HOWTO posts showing techniques for props and equipment we made / used.

Footage Clips

Beau and Earl at the Grease Shack:

We shot this on Friday after hours at a place called CHICKEN DELICIOUS in Lake Ronkonkoma, NY (631) 471-7500. We are forever indebted to them for letting us use the place, they even made us food. It took about 2 and a half hours and we pretty much stayed right on schedule. We didn’t even bother with lighting the place, since the place was so bright already.

Luc wakes Beau:

This shoot was Monday at my own house. We did all of the interiors of Beau’s house. Originally the script calls for a MOM to be involved in a breakfast scene. We couldn’t find a Mom in time so we cut her and made Earl my sole guardian.

Disaster Strikes

Well, we started early today around 10AM in Brooklyn. We were scheduled to shoot in Pat and Zed’s apartment (Papers’ apartment in the movie) until about 5PM. Unfortunately in the afternoon the camera (DVX100B) started giving us an error:

AUTO OFF
S_REEL LOCK

Basically the camera said “I’m broken. Stop using me and get me serviced.”

So we had to cancel the shoot and tomorrow’s shoot as well. Luckily there is another DVX100 we can borrow from my friend Sean so we don’t have to cancel Monday.

Day 3: The Dojo

Q: What do you do when your main character needs to have a dojo to train in?

A: You change the script to have the character convert his garage into a dojo!

Day 3 (wed sept. 12) started off with preparation of the garage (belonging to our friend Courtney, thanks!). We started at 8 AM cleaning it out, got it all set up, and then messed it up again so we could have a montage of our characters cleaning it up. Things were going well besides being a little behind schedule…that is until the sun started to go down.

Since we were shooting in a garage, we took advantage of the natural light and the ability to position the camera outside of the door. Things looked great. We shot everything out of order due to actors coming and going at different times. Unfortunately we had a couple scenes to shoot in there once sunset hit. We had to fake the light coming in the door and we are a bit worried about matching it up when we cut those scenes back together, but hey, that’s the way it has to be.

What we should have done: We should have scheduled 2 days. We worked for 13 hours straight (too long), and ended up with a lighting fiasco. Lesson learned.

This day also marked the first shoot with Matt Roren, who plays Papers, my mentor. We applied old age make-up and created stubs for both of his arms (he has no hands). I will be posting pictures and video of this process along with a how to.

Even though there were some problems (we had a little blunder with underestimating required car space), the day was still a success. Our actors gave some great performances and the footage looks great.

We shoot again on Friday in a fried chicken restaurant, we’re off to prepare!