Ext:
A barn in Washington Missouri

I missed the Tuesday update.  Sorry.  It was unavoidable.  I have a note from my doctor.  And one from my parents.  No, really.  Look.  It’s signed and everything.  Yeah, I know it looks like my handwriting, but it’s not.  I swear.

Anyhow’s  so due to Missouri having the freakiest weather ever, after a weekend of setting up the final shooting location in Vandalia, we thought that was it for the week.  Boy were we wrong.

A freak snow storm rolled in, and as soon as we started having accumulation, which I noticed at about 3:00 am on Sunday night, we were making plans and phone calls.  Snow in Washington, MO.  YESSSS!!!!!   Finally.   The last big snow missed them completely.  So we started making our check list and packing up everything we needed for the last shot with Trinka.

I was a little worried on our drive to pick up Trinka.  There didn’t seem to be much snow left, but as we headed toward Washington the ground was covered with more and more white slushy snow-like substance.  And when we arrived at the barn, the area surrounding it was covered.  Perfect.  A little bit of set-up, getting Trinka into wardrobe, (looking as cute as a button) a bit of directing…. and BAM!  Away we go.  A bit more directing.  A second take, just to be absolutely sure, and then a second setup.  And viola!  We’re back on the road.

Okay, that last part, everything except for Trinka looking cute as a button,  totally fiction.  It was a wet , cold and soggy mess, and we got set up, and shot, but when it was all said and done, everyone was cold and wet.  But we did get it shot, and it does look great.  So the next time we see Trinka will be the wrap party.

Funny enough, it was comforting being back at the barn.  I didn’t realize how much I missed that place until we walked in.  Almost nothing had changed or even been moved since the last day we shot there way back in July.  All those hot, soggy summer nights spent shooting have officially been filed away under “fond memory”.  When the weather breaks, I’m going to have to take a day, and go back and shoot some pictures.  It really is a beautiful place.

So close to finished now, everyone can taste it.  Sometimes that’s a good thing.  Sometimes, not so much.

The teaser is set to be released  early next week.  Oh, and crew shirts are still available.

Lots more to come…

Int:
A turn of the century warehouse in Hannibal.

Sunday was exactly what I expected it to be.  A lot of set up for two very short sequences being filmed.

There was a lot of driving, a lot of standing around, and a lot of gabbing, smiling, joking, etc.  The last day you film with any of the major actors is always a big deal.  This was Tim Lantz last day on the set, and it was fun.

We got to the warehouse in the afternoon, and after some confusion with getting in, we got all the equipment up on the third floor and started setting up.  There was a lot of wardrobe to situate, and setup to be done, and Karen and Tim jumped right in.  I feel a little guilty about it now, but while they were busting ass, the rest of us were mostly chatting and goofing off.  We could have helped, but last days no one wants to rush…

Just a few short weeks ago we were scrambling to recast Doc.  And here we are just a short time later, and we’re all done.  Tim did a great job with the character, and I couldn’t be happier with the end result.  Fall was tricky.  With the wrong cast, it could have been the act that sunk the rest of it, but Eric, Rhonda, and Tim gave it 110 percent, and as I start editing, it’s quickly becoming my favorite act.

Julian came along, and got a very different take on things as we shot the few bits in fall that his character appears in.  I don’t quite think he knew how to take it, but I hope he enjoyed his first day in Hannibal, even though he really didn’t quite know what was going on.

One more shooting day with Rhonda and Julian, and some of the other background characters, and we’re all done.  Only winter left.  I’d say more, but I can’t.  All I know is we have one hell of a mess to clean up.

Ext:
Vandalia, IL

Sunday was a nice relaxed pace.  Julian and Clark are again on their A game.  The temperature is supposed to reach the mid 50’s, but we get there earlyish, and there’s still plenty of snow on the ground.  Karen and Maria get the tent set up and ready.  They sort props, wardrobe etc.  and then a goodly amount of time is spent trying to get a smallish fire going.   It just needs to smolder.

Things pretty much go exactly as planned, and when as we spend the day filming, Maria gets the chance to do one of her amazing “COPS” style action shots, chasing Clark through the snow, in platform boots no less… it really is the most amazing thing you’ll see.

At 4’11” every pair of shoes she has are platforms, just enough to inch her up to a mighty 5’2″.  I wonder how well she’d do in plain old tennis shoes.

As we shoot through the day, the snow gets stomped down, and we have to carefully move the tent just a little bit, so the melted areas don’t show up on film.  By mid day, the spots where Kelly, Mike and I are standing have turned into a swamp.  but we manage to frame everything just so.  And we get some amazing shots.

By my figuring, we have one day of shooting left with the Fall cast, one day of shots with extras, two or three more days with Clark and Julian, and some shots for the intro.  And that’s it.  We’re finished.

By 3:30 we’re done.  And I’m relieved.  And I’m worried.

We’ve got plenty to shoot that doesn’t require snow, but at the end of the day, we need one more good snow.  It’s February 17th.  Winter is far from over, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t gnawing at the back of my brain.  It’s supposed to be in the 50’s and 60’s for a while.

Just one more good snow.  That’s all I need…

Ext:
A snow covered field in Vandalia IL

Saturday started early… Real early.  And it felt even earlier, because I can never sleep the night before a shooting day.  It’s roughly 50% adrenaline and 50% nerves, along with the last minute running around to get everything ready to go for shooting.  Batteries charged… check.  Cameras cleaned off and ready to go… check.  Sound equipment packed and ready… check.  Wardrobe. Props. Directions. Crew.  Cast. Script. Shot list.  It seems like a never ending checklist.  And by the time it’s all set and ready to go, 5:00 AM comes way too early.

We get going reasonably on time, and pick up Julian for the long drive.  I can see he’s as tired and anxious as we are.  It’s supposed to be in the 50’s all week next week.  The snow will be gone, and we have a lot to shoot.  No pressure Julian.   There’s only so much snow, and the forecast which originally called for 35 degrees is now calling for 44.  Oh well.  We’ll get done what we get done.  The upshot is we have Tim and Maria with us, so we can get more done, but Mike is absent which puts me back in the doubt zone.  Nothing I can do about it now.

Kelly drives three passengers.  Julian, me and Mister Barrister, who’s greedily hogging up seating for 2.

We arrive and Clark is his excited, chipper self, and Mandy is as great as ever.  I really do like the Pearson family.  Great people!  We saddle up, and get to the location.  And it’s on.  Fortunately the crew has done these shots before, so we can cut out a lot of the explanation.  Julian is set… and ACTION!

HOLY SHIT!

After working with four casts, you begin to get a feel for the different kinds of actors.  Some need a breakdown.  Some need answers.  Some offer suggestions, and some just feel there way through each take.  Julian and Clark just nail it, right out of the gate.  Honestly, this is the least amount of directing I’ve ever had to do.  They both just get it.  I can’t believe Julian has only had the script a week.  He has such a great feel for the character.  Other than a few tweaks to scenes, and a little bit of pacing, we fly through everything I wanted to get done.  And then we get to the moment…

Clark needs to have a very emotional moment.  It’s a scene that HAS to be right.  Mandy and I quickly discuss the scene.  She asks that we get set and ready to go, and she’ll bring Clark over when he’s ready.  We set up.  Mandy takes Clark aside, and they go through the scene.  When she brings him over, he’s ready.  I say “Action!”, and we go.

Damn it.  I need another take. And I feel like a jerk for asking for it…

And Clark again delivers. At the end of it, he stops, smiles and says… “I forgot a line”

I want just one more to make sure everything is right.  Mandy pulls Clark aside again, and in just a few minutes we go again.  And it is absolutely perfect.  When I yell “CUT!” Kelly is crying.  Julian just looks and says “That was intense.”

It’s flawless.

Clark smiles.  “What are we doing next?”  Mandy asks if we’re doing the next scene.

Nope.  That is plenty for today.

Grandma Pearson makes dinner again while we’re out shooting for the day.  She makes chicken and dumplings again.  Thanks again Grandma P!  I don’t think anyone is ever going to say “no” to your chicken and dumplings.  They are awesome!

We get home just after 7:00.  It’s dark out.  We quickly unload the van, and pull the footage immediately.  I do a quick sync so I can see what we have on that last scene.  We watch, and Kelly cries again.

Karen, Maria, and Tim get back a bit later, and I show them.  We all agree, it’s dead on.

Sunday is another filming day.  It’s supposed to get up into the 50’s. More on that to come…

Int:
A Windowless Office

So I’m pouring over weather reports for most of Missouri, and they all seem to have one common thread.  The early end of Winter. And none of them show anything lower than 40 degrees through the end of the month.  Damn you Puxatawny Phil!   Grrrrrrrrr!  I know people are going to hate me for this, but I need snow!

As much as I’m looking forward to Saturday, and shooting with Julian and Clark, I can’t help but feel a little anxious.  I’m scouring through the winter script, and pouring over the shot list, trying to figure out exactly what we can get shot this weekend, while we still have snow on the ground.  Also trying to figure out what might need to be changed to interior shots.  What, if anything, can be faked; which I hate, because fake snow looks like fake snow to me….

So much to do, so little time.  Karen and I discuss options for shooting all of the exterior scenes.

It’s frustrating.  I can do a lot of things, but I can’t make it snow.

I know Julien is enthusiastic.  I can only hope that he’s prepared to shoot like a mad man this weekend.  I’d like to knock out three sequences on Saturday.  Maybe four.  And that the weather folks are wrong and we get a good heavy snow sometime in the near future.  Don’t hate me for this, but, fingers crossed!

Scene
Ext: A snow covered field/ Int: an old riverfront warehouse

So in one weekend we’ve done a lot of driving.  A lot.  All I can say is I’m thankful for minivans, and for Kelly being back on the crew.  P.S.  The crew is exhausted, and I’m officially a week behind on the blog.  So I promise, I’ll get caught up this week.

It’s been a long six months of production, and it’s been a over a year since we started.  There’s been four casts, nine locations (so far) dozens of extras,  and thousands of miles driven to locations.  Anyone who tells you making a movie is a cush job is lying.

Saturday was our first day of shooting winter.  Opening with a few establishing shots.  We went with a skeleton crew of just Mike, Karen, Kelly and myself.  I just wanted to see what we could get done, and more or less gauge how much crew we were going to need.  No reason for everyone to stand outside and freeze their ass off.  And we gave shooting a dialogue scene with Ted and Clark a shot.  Sadly, a piece of audio equipment taking a spill in the snow cut that short, but fortunately, the equipment is fine.  FYI, if you ever drop electronics in the snow, pull the battery ASAP, pull any storage cards, and let it sit for at least 24 hours.  Where most folks go wrong is they immediately try to see if it will turn on.  This is when most shorts happen.

Following our cut short shooting day, Clark’s grandmother made us a lovely dinner of chicken and dumplings, which made the shortened day a lot less disappointing.  Thanks Grandma Pearson!

We’ve got our first shots of Winter done, and are down to our last shots for fall.  I’m so thankful that fall was a fun, stress-free shoot.  The location wasn’t quite as comfortable as I was hoping, but I think it makes the whole thing feel more genuine.  It’s beautiful on film, in a run-down, rustic way.

Tim brought it, big time last weekend, shooting four scenes where he had the vast majority of the dialogue.  His performance was spot on and even though it was our first weekend without Karen, who’s never missed a shooting day, I wasn’t sure how things were going to go without her keeping everything in order, and making sure all the details I never want to have to think about get taken care of.  Somehow, we managed to keep pace with the previous weekend’s shooting and wrapped up before 7:00.

I’ve spent every spare moment this week editing Summer, and we’re looking good.  And that’s it kids.  That’s all I got.  I’m exhausted.  Stay tuned!

Scene
Ext. An old warehouse in Hannibal

Sorry about the delay on this weeks blog.  I’m kinda all over the place this weekend, and I think this blog post will explain why.

In only three shooting days, I’m stunned at far we are on the third segment.  A lot fewer headaches behind the camera now. But the weather has actually decided to cooperate, so we’re splitting shooting up for the first time this weekend.  Saturday we’ll be shooting with Ted and Clark, and Sunday we’ll be in Hannibal shooting with the Fall cast. It’s a hard choice, and I hate breaking it up like this, but for winter, we have to shoot when there’s snow on the ground, and in keeping with the tradition of shooting in the farthest reaches of the Midwest, we are shooting in Vandalia, IL.  The upshot is we only have to pack wardrobe.  No sets to dress.  Not yet anyway.  We’ll save the interior shots for when we’re finished with Fall.

Not much left now.

Every time that we have a change of cast and location, there’s always that new break-in period where everybody is getting used to the work flow.  But we hit that really quickly with Fall, and we’ve gotten so much shot, so fast that I’m still a little amazed by the whole thing.  The production at this point has taken on a life of it’s own.  It’s no longer lumbering to completion, but sprinting to the finish line.

We started last Sunday off early.  The hour and a half drive to Hannibal seems like a lot less now, and got set up and ready to go.  Shot Eric’s character’s intro scene, which required him looking really nasty.  Jeff Bateman, who has been our most loyal extra, we plugged into a speaking part.  He made the whole thing look too damn easy.

So at this point we have just four scenes left to shoot with Eric and Doc, and one with Marianne, and I’m hoping to knock out most, if not all of them this Sunday.  That’s all on Tim now… This is more like it.

Last weekend also had us shooting with one of the folks I was looking forward to working with.  The Chocolate.  Devan Hennesy.  Don’t ask…. Just remember to call him Chocolate Devan.  He was someone that we read for a role, but due to a scheduling conflict we couldn’t get him.  But he showed up for a much smaller part in fall.  I hope he and Fred had fun.  They both have two shooting days.  After the first shooting day, I’m sure they’re thinking  it’ll be hard to make stranger requests of them, but we will!    All of this is leading up to a last day that I just can’t wait to actually watch first hand… There are some things in this life that you never expect to get to see.  I’ll get to check one of those off my list after the final shooting day, and Devan, Fred and Jeff get to do it.

Damn I love this gig!

As usual, it’s the night before a shoot, and I can’t sleep worth a damn… so here I am updating away…

Just a few other quick notes:

Don’t forget to buy a shirt.  All the cool kids are.
and…
Nichole Fischer updated her blog with her last shooting day stuff, and even more amazing pictures.  So by all means go check that out.

Oh, and Colby Raines was interviewed on the Benita Show, and you can watch that here.

Scene
Int. The same old kitchen.  Damn, it’s time to redecorate this place or something…

Eric was away in LA this weekend, and we had planned on shooting the few scenes that just require bit parts and extras, but because of circumstances beyond our control, that didn’t happen. But no worries.  It’s the kind of stuff we can shoot at any time, and doesn’t involve any of the primary cast members.

So what to do when you can’t get out in the field? Well, just about anything you can. Summer editing picked up speed, and I’m about 30% done with the rough cut. It’s going much faster then Spring, or I’m more caffeinated. Don’t tell me which.  I don’t want to know. And after a 20 hour editing marathon, it was time to show off what had been done. I’m loving how it came together, and can’t wait for the Wednesday meeting with the whole crew to show them.

Last weekend was our first weekend with our recast Doc, Tim Lantz, and he is fun, and funny and really nailed the character. There are three things you want in an actor. Someone who has talent, patience, and takes direction. Tim does all three well. Eric and Rhonda where wonderful as ever, and we had a lot of fun shooting.

We have almost everything prepped and ready to roll for Winter. Props and wardrobe are all set, we just have some location cleaning and set up that needs to happen. That will be going on most likely this week. In the event that we get a big snow, the working plan is to shoot exterior shots for winter when we can, and split that weekend shooting with Fall. Meeting with Ted for lunch on Saturday, we discussed his character Marcus in depth; going through his back story, and his motivations, and more importantly how exactly he wound up where he is as the Winter segment starts.   It was a detail I kept from Ted until now. Great meeting!

Finished designing and animating the title sequence. It’s a combination of creativity and tedium. It’s got to be short and sweet and visually memorable. I think we hit the nail on the head on this one thematically, and personally I’m loving it. Just wish it didn’t have to take so damn long.

Reviewed the fall footage that’s been shot, and couldn’t be happier with the end results at this point. We have some pick up shots to do, but what we have is rock solid, and our trajectory for building dramatically as we go is looking pretty damn good.

So at 1:45 I sit here, writing on the blog, feeling a bit guilty about not getting this entry added last week.  Sorry about that.  Busy week doesn’t begin to describe it. I’m starting to feel a bit relieved.  So much got done.

And to top it all off, as we near the end of shooting on TYAI, we began to discuss what comes next. After a lot of thought, and getting a lot of opinions, it’s pretty much set in stone that my next project will be an adaptation from a short story that I wrote a few months back. Finally venturing into the science fiction realm. Sorry… but that’s all you’ll get from me.  At least for the moment.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to buy a shirt.

I haven’t forgotten about the blog… just been a busy busy week. We have recast Doc, and just finished our first day of shooting with Tim, and the other main characters in the third segment.

We’re moving along at a good clip on Fall, and I’m trying to keep nose to the grindstone on this one, but I will have an update before the end of the week. I’ve got the final concept for the title sequence in production, and I’m editing the rough cut of Summer.

If you can’t quite get enough of the antics that went on during the summer shoot, check Nichole Fischer’s wonderfully well written blog at www.nicholefischer.com.  She has some great behind the scene pics too.

So I wanted to take a minute, and share a little bit more of my Mom’s film influence on me.

This isn’t a movie that she introduced me to, but she is the person that introduced me to Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.  It’s one of my favorite holiday films, and I just wanted to share it with you all.  The movie is The Lion In Winter (1968).  It stars a very young Anthony Hopkins, as well as Nigel Terry (who went on to play King Arthur in Excalibur) John Castle, and a very, very young Timothy Dalton (in his first movie role at all of 17), and it’s one of my favorite films.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s set in 1183 AD.  King Henry II’s oldest son has died, and his other three sons all want to inherit the throne. They and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine  plot to force him to choose.

Do not mistake this with the made for TV version with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close.  This is the real deal.

So if you’re looking for a movie recommendation, here’s mine.  And it ain’t no “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Enjoy…and feel free to leave your holiday movie suggestions in the comments

Scene
Int: of a truck, on a drive to Sullivan….

And with the choice of either waiting for January to start, or recasting…. we push into segment three, Fall.  So as we drive and go through the script and figure out what scenes we can shoot without one of the primary characters, while we block out the time to recast, it starts to snow.

The clock is ticking…

The upshot.  We aren’t weather dependent for Fall.  We can shoot whenever we need to.  But there’s always the fear that if we run long, we could wind up with scheduling nightmares that cause us to potentially lose cast.  It’s that itch you can never quite scratch.  You never feel completely comfortable until it’s all in the can.  And the only thing worse, is being in the middle of shooting and thinking “If we lose a cast member we have to throw out all of this footage.”

No doubt about it.  On this production, we’ve taken our lumps.

So we push forward, and plan to shoot what we can next weekend with Eric and Rhonda, and a few others.  We are Hannibal bound… but not til next weekend.

The bright spot is Mike and I met with Ted Jordan who plays Marcus for segment four, and with that cool smile and absolute confidence he reassures us, he’s in this to the very end.  A load off our minds.  We need a ringer to bring this whole thing home, and our fourth act has to have a presence that’s as absolutely charming and captivating as the lovely Trinka Crawford.  She really is this films center.  I try not to gush, but having just finished the second edit of Spring, it’s hard not to admire her talent.  And honestly I don’t brag on her enough.  She is truly wonderful in the role, just don’t ask her to open any cans.

Ted is the man that’s going to bring this whole thing in for the landing.  He has to be Trinka’s bookend.  I have absolute faith in him.

And as the ground turns white, and the roads get slick (literally coming millimeters away from a fender bender on the slick roads) all around us is a reminder that we are completely and totally weather dependent for winter.   No stress…

Grrrrrrrr