Happy turkey day !!

~L

Filming day #6 - POSTPONED!

Argh. The weather ruined our last day of the shoot. Which means that very early this morning, there was a lot of phone calls to tell everyone saying: "It's raining, the shoot is cancelled, thanks, but now go back to bed."

Now everything, and then some, is moved two weeks out to December 6th.

See everyone then!!!

Filming day #5

Simple day of getting pick up shots. Very laid back and lots of fun!
For a while I was hunkered down and hiding in the back seat of the stunt car to tell our lead when it was "Action!" (I was on my cell phone with Kat who was filming from another car with various crew folks) and making sure he always had a lit cigarette. Yup, there I was lighting up and trying no to inhale. Not that I'm too worried about my health, but the taste was horrrid. For a non smoker, lighting up must be the equivalent of licking an ashtray. yuktoowy!

Still though, a very very fun day!

Filming Day #4

Day Four of filming started out as another super cold day, and turned into a super cool day. The best part of the day was when Kat, Scott and I were coordinating a bunch of cars, to come together at a traffic light. Everyone was on their cell phone to the cast and extra’s in their various cars, and to the extras’ on the street, and it was fantastic to see it all unfold with the call of “Action!” I’ve done some pretty neat things working on this film, but none of them have equaled the rush I got when I yelled action. It was thrilling. Absolutely great!

Filming Day #3

Nothing like setting up for cast,crew, and extras, in a dark downtown parking garage at 5:30 in the morning, and the wind is blowing and it’s 30 degrees outside. Holy Moly was it cold!!!
It turned out to be a clear day though and we got some great shots. Many thanks to Zen for providing us a hot lunch and for the enthusiasm of the extras!

back to filming!!

Tomorrow we all get back to location and filming. The van is packed, my book of "Everything I have to remember" is ready to go and I'm feeling mighty prepared. I'm feeling like I can take on the world. During this time, I've thought a lot about a friend of mine who I've looked up to as a Producer and a really cool person She always came across as calm, put together, in charge and she really knew her stuff. Thinking of her has given me so much strength. From the bottom of my heart - Thank you Stacy!!

Two of Me and Guilt

There is the "producer" me and the "family " me. And juggle as I might, they just don't mesh very well. Is there ever any balance?
Maybe I've gotten back into this too soon. Little Guy is only 10 years old. He still wants me to volunteer at his school, do arts and craft projects with him and snuggle on the couch and read books and tell stories. At 15, Big Little Guy is getting to the stage, where I really need to keep an eye on him! But working on a film is awesome too. Meeting new people, pushing myself and moving past my comfort level, seeing something materialize through a team of talented people. It's like magic really. But for some reason, I can't seem to do both as well as I would like and one area always suffers for the other.
Damn, I think I have guilt. argh! no! guilt!
~sigh~

Happy birthday KAT !!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

No FIlming Day 1

I am completely wiped out!!!
This filmmaking stuff is exhausting!!

Filming Day 2

So the idea was to get a little bit more sleep this morning. And I really wanted to sleep an extra thirty minutes. but I couldn't. At 4am, I was up and going and again, got to the set earlier than my 5:30am call time. No problem though cause Will, who's house we were using for our location, was also up.
This morning's shoot was so easy compared to yesterday's. Simple set ups, shots, action etc. Oh, so easy. I was beginning to feel completely unnecessary. Then lunch, and off to the next location where we set up for extras, etc.
Once at the next location, Curtis, our lead actor, basically ran and ran and ran, for the rest of the afternoon. He ran around corners, down streets, around people and through a group of adorable school children. There must be an hour of footage just of him running!

No doubt, we were really tired by the end of the day, but the weather had been so beautiful and everyone seemed to have had a great time on set. The footage looked great and the crew again impressed me with their enthusiasm and skill.
Overall, it had been a great day to shoot a film!

First Day of Shooting

After a broken night's sleep and a wake up call at 4am, I got to the set a little before 5am. I was nervous and excited and thrilled to finally start filming. It was such a big day production wise, so much planning and a zillion details to keep after. Unfortunately the morning didn't start off as smoothly as I had anticipated and my enthusiasm took an about face. No doubt about it. This day was hard. But as I told myself throughout the day, "Challenges are life's way of seeing how badly you want something." and "if it was easy everyone would do it!"
My objective was - be a positive producer and keeping the production moving forward.
Fortunately, we have an awesome cast and crew assembled. They totally cranked it into high gear and we became a movie making machine!

Friday - Getting Ready, Part 2

After my second near death experience from the Starbucks employee prank, I was very happy to get the Uhaul and get to the furniture store, so our burly helper crew men, could start loading it up.

El Paso Imports furniture store, was absolutely awesome in loaning us all the furniture we needed to dress our set. It was darkly stained, deeply carved, gorgeous wood pieces, that all together may have easily weighed 1200 pounds. Really. I'm not exaggerating. These were massive pieces. MASSIVE! and the guys had to load and unload the van and then bring them up a narrow flight of stairs - All within a few hours.

While they broke their backs, Kat and I picked up more production gear and headed over to the school where we would film tomorrow morning.

For the look of the film, we really needed to use a school for our location. It just wasn't something that would look good if you tried to fake it. Fortunately, we got into one that looked great, and the admin and teachers were helpful and gracious. Thank you for opening your school to us!!

The idea was to clean out the classroom, bring up the furniture, and dress the set, while Kat rehearsed with the actors and Costume could finalize the clothing for the actors.

My third stab of panic came, when I realized we were going to totally clean out the classroom. Like as in - Everything was coming out. These are 2 (out of 90) pictures I took to help us know where to put stuff back.

Fortunately, the crew on this detail was fantastic. I had devised a system to get everything out of the room and Wonderful Associate Producer Alicia found a great way to organize the shelf detritus, so that it would go back the exact way it came off.

This is what the hallway looked like after we got everything out of the classroom. The stuff goes to the end of the building.

Then because of the hard work and keen eye of our Set Designer Extraordinaire Alexis, the room miraculously began to transform itself from a Super Hero themed 4th grade classroom, to polished, imposing, prep school headmistress' office. It looked fantastic! I'm sorry I don't have a better picture of the finished product, (there are two more huge bookcases you don't see in the picture), but we were all pretty busy.

It took us from 3:30 to 7pm to dress the set. It was exhausting, hurried and we were hustling! But we totally kicked it out. and tomorrow, with a call time of 5am, I know we will be ready to do some serious movie making! Saturday Part 1, coming soon!

Friday- Getting Ready. Part 1

To get ready for tomorrow's shoot, it was important that today, everything run smoothly from the get go. There was a ton of stuff to do and not a lot of time. Unfortunately, I awoke to a God awful smell and discovered that during the night, my old dog had become a canine Jackson Pollock of poop. Talk about a waker-upper! So after cleaning that up, I raced the kids to school, grabbed a cup of coffee, met my Associate Producer Scott to go pickup our prop car, dropped it off at Sunday's filming location, drove him to Uhaul to get our moving van, and then almost died twice from panic. First attack happened when I went to pay for the moving van and discovered I had left my purse at Starbucks. The second time was after Scott had called ahead and a Starbucks employee assured him that they still had it, but when I asked for it at the counter, he said someone just claimed it. I had been punked by a starbucks employee and he thought it was pretty funny. I bet he wouldn't have thought it was funny if I strangled him!

Anyway, I didn't die and neither did anyone at Starbucks, and I got my purse back, so back to getting ready for the shoot.

The First Family of America !

magic

This morning, I was only going to glance at my emails as I hurried out the door. Just check it briefly, see if there was anything super important to deal with and out I go. I had things to do, places to go - film folks to meet up with, find money/donations for the film, price a few items that are needed for the set and if, just if I had time, stop by DSW to check out their latest batch of shoes. (have I mentioned I love shoe shopping!) Anyway, when I opened up the inbox there were about 30 emails yelling at me to be answered. So I sat down and started answering a few and then the strangest thing started happening. For every email I answer, three more came back. I'm not talking about spam or a glitch in the system either. It was like there was some strange reproductive process going on behind the send button. So many emails kept popping up in my inbox you'd think it was a veritable love fest! EGAD!

The funny thing about being a producer, on a small indie film, is that producing is really the "Do Everything" job. I mean, I'm swamped and I'm delegating like crazy and hoping the director, associate producers, design team, craft services, camera dept, and my sweet family don't go crazy. Perhaps the term movie magic should refer to how takes a bit of magic from everyone involved, to bring an indie film to the screen.

same job, different hats.

Running around meeting people, making lists and checking them off. Get more food donations, Help find tattoos for the gang guys to wear, set up hair and make up, Does she have a rack to hang the clothes?, getting emails all the time and don't' have time to respond to them all. etc, etc, etc,.
But also,... Need to help in kids classroom, figure out kids basketball schedule, find someone to stay with kids while I'm on set, need to pick up milk (as usual), help kids with homework. Be there as mom to kids, be there as producer for film.
Actually they are very similar jobs :)