The Saw Mill

Usually by this time the cast and crew would be ready to leave or kill you. But since less footage was necessary to shoot and we actually had time to eat and sleep now, it wasn't a problem.

Now we were able to shoot each scene multiple times, with lots of coverage. With all the time I was now able to dedicate to each scene now, I wonder how the hell I was ever able to shoot the huge amount I was doing before when Yvonne was around.

So even though less needed to be done each day, we were still spending the same amount of time doing it. And there were some complicated scenes with lots of characters in them that were coming up. Two of which could only be done during magic hour in order to do them right.

The saw mill scene was one of them. I had a choice, either shoot the scenes during the afternoon which I knew would be hard with the schedule at hand or get four hours of sleep and shoot at around 5:30 am. As much as I hate waking up early I chose the latter.

We got there in morning and it further showcased why acting and filmmaking are not as glamorous as people make it out to be. We drove out to the saw mill on a saturday knowing no one would be there, and shot some exteriors while the sun was rising. Then started filming with Jacob(co-star) and I working, just like we once did years ago in real life. We grabbed two shovels and went to work, we threw some sawdust on ourselves to look dirty like we would and with all the filming and non-sleep we were getting it gave us the tired look we needed.

Then a problem happened, one of the actors had to perform a number two. But we didn't have access to the buildings that supplied the bathrooms. We had some pages from the script that had already been filmed so....yeah.

So we went back to filming, then an optimal member of the crew also had the same problem, so with the other pages of the script that had already been filmed he...yeah.

I've read scripts I wouldn't wipe my ass with, so I took this event as a good sign.

Acting like we were at work was just as hard as when we used to actually work there. When you're toting a huge log across the mill and having to drop it at just right angle, over and over and over. You get pretty damn tired.

We were done just before it was too bright and hot to be there. Now we had to shoot three more scenes. Thing is the house we had been shooting in was not about us shooting there on this saturday, we had understandably overstayed our welcome. Which was okay because these scenes could be shot in another location without a problem, just a small rewrite and we were good. It actually made it better and added another location to the film.

Uh oh. The new location that was good with us filming there had a change of heart and now we've got nowhere to film!

If it's not shot on that day than it's going to be very hard to find time to shoot it. And I've only got my actors and crew for a few more days!

Find out next time.

Shooting with a deadline

Hey, hey, hey now, it be me with another one of these. I could take you through everyday individually but this all took place in June and I was too distracted to write in my journal(not a diary) to be exact so I'll give you a good culmination of the things that took place and the lessons you can learn from them. So get ready to get educated.

My main goal for right then besides learning everything as I go, was to get all of Yvonne's(actress) scenes shot before she had to back on tour in her musical, Spelling Bee.

So the next day, with the little sleep I had, I gathered up my non pro's and pro, got them breakfast despite the fact that I would be late meeting my DP at the location, got there and got chewed out for being late. Which I deserved.

It was supposed to be a simple scene that day since we were shooting a pool scene, makeup was not necessary and there were not many lines, but the thing was it was about to start raining so we had to rush to get the scene done.

Good thing about rain is it doesn't pick up on camera too well, so unless it's really fat rain you can shoot without it picking it up at all. The bad thing about rain is...it's rain. And worse was the fact that this rain would be on the heavy side.

The rain came and left, so we would periodically go out and film then go back inside and start over again.

With such a tight schedule we changed the following scene to an indoor scene without really sacrificing anything.

We filmed till about midnight. The next day we started all over again.

We filmed and filmed from early in the morning till about midnight. I barely even had time to feed my cast and crew, due to how much footage we had to get shot with the deadline we had.

I could also tell that my host house that we were shooting in was beginning to get a little annoyed. It's fun at first, but once you've got fifteen people walking all around your house with equipment on top of forcing you to stay in one room as quietly as possible, it takes a toll on hospitality.

One of my main duties as a director was to make sure that everyone was having a good time. When you're not handing out six figure checks to each employee you have to be resourceful and charismatic in order to keep things running smoothly.

Those two attributes come in hand with everything, from me obtaining my cast and crew, to securing the locations.

Which brings me to the final night of shooting with my actress. We shot at the movie theatre in the next town over, luckily I had gone to high school with the manager so he had no problem helping me out. It was actually a late matinee that night so it wasn't a problem staying there past 2 AM.

My DP had shot in movie theatre's before so it came out looking awesome. We had Wolverine play without sound on the projector so it would give us the authentic movie theatre lighting in addition to giving our actors something to work off of.

After a 15 hour day of shooting I drove Yvonne to the Little Rock airport two hours out of town, drove home and crashed, knowing that the toughest part was out of the way...or was it.