Raw Footage From The First Few Days

Something we improvised during the clean-up montage:

Another clip from the dojo:

A couple shots from the opening:

More soon…

Screen Grabs Of The First 3 Days

Here are some quick stills taken from video (not so good quality) of the first 3 days of shooting.

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!

Finding A Female Lead 5 Days Before Shooting (craigslist high five)

Sunday September 2nd: We waited to hear from our leading lady about a previously scheduled rehearsal session. I had never met her, but Mookie seemed pretty sure she would be good for the part (plus she was available and willing) so I felt pretty comfortable with starting to shoot the next weekend.

She ignored all attempts to contact her. Here is where we start sweating.

What do we do if we have no leading girl and we start shooting in a week?

Craigslist!

First I tried an ad in the Long Island section. Don’t bother doing that, no one reads it. The next day Mookie bought a paid ad for all of New York ($25) and the responses started POURING in. We got around 50 in the first day.

Within those was a girl named Afton Boggiano. She looked the part and had experience in commercials, plays, etc. We contacted her and set up an audition the next day (she had to take the train out here from Manhattan, about an hour or so). We read, decided she was the one, and had a little rehearsal.

We shot a bunch of scenes with her on Saturday and things went great. [I'll get some real screen grabs up here asap]

Use craigslist.

Photos from the first 2 days…

Thanks to Fiacco for bringing his camera.

Introduction

 

Welcome to our new production blog. Allow me to set the scene:

The film is a comedy about Rock, Paper, Scissors (wikipedia). Max Santoro (me) and Mookie Thompson conceived the plot together, brainstormed with some friends and members of our former sketch comedy group, wrote an outline, and forgot about it for a while. Eventually, Mookie took a sketch writing class at UCB in manhattan and decided to take on writing a proper script for the idea. In a few days he had made a lot of progress. We talked it over, ironed out the details and made some decisions, and soon he finished draft one. We revised together and soon the final script was born.

Wasting no time, we decided to start shooting a month later in September. We cast every willing actor we could think of, including ourselves, and Mookie drew up a 13 day shooting schedule that has us done by October 1st. Much planning and collecting of costumes and props ensued.

We come into our story just after the first two days of shooting (sept. 8 & 9), which went rather well.

Saturday Sept. 8:
The cast/crew assembled at 3PM in Mineola, NY. The shoot ran from 3PM – 4AM (looooong) in a handful of locations.

Sunday Sept. 9:
We all slept in Mineola for about 4 hours (not long enough), got up and went back to the location to shoot the opening scene of the film. The footage from this day came out great and we finished up around 4PM. Everyone zombied home and went to sleep early.

Now you are up to speed. I will be posting more detailed posts in the days to come about problems, ideas, and solutions. Pictures and eventually clips of footage as well.