Week 3 Gallery

Week 3 Gallery here:

Production Photos

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

In anticipation of the new gallery I will hopefully have up tomorrow, here are a few choice photos from the last week of production. The full gallery should be available soon:











More pictures in the gallery coming soon.

Production Ferrari

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

Last night we filmed a scene outside the character Patrick's (Ben Savage) house. Now the night before, a Palo Alto resident drove by set in a beautiful white Ferrari. He was interested in the production, handed us his card, and told us to contact him if we needed anything.

The following night I decided that Patrick's father should own a Ferrari to help motivate his son's pursuit of the "dream car". I called up my new Ferrari buddy and he came to set and dropped her off. It may seem needless and unnecessary but Brad (director) and the other producers really liked the idea because it boosted production values and helped the house stand out more.



The owner had a second identical Ferrari that he said we could use a stunt double for the first one, but we never made it to the car explosion scene sunrise. Oh well.

A Message from Dan

By Dan Engelhardt producer

It has been extremely exciting for me and the rest of the crew to be shooting a film about PALO ALTO on the streets of Palo Alto. The locations are, of course perfect, and the community has been amazingly supportive. Many of the houses we have photographed have had limited connection to the movie, but have been willing to help. Also, surrounding neighbors have been understanding to our crazy hours (6pm - 8am). This project has really become a collaborative effort between the production and the city of Palo Alto - we are doing our best to limit any potential disruptions to the neighborhood, and homeowners have welcomed us, providing shooting locations and storage.

City officials also arranged for our permits to be donated - thank you very much to Mayor Judy Kleinberg, and Assistant City Manager Emily Harrison. The Mayor, in fact, honored us with her presence on set the other day. Ben Savage (Patrick), a graduate of Stanford, was thrilled to meet her. He is happy to be back in Palo Alto, and couldn't believe he had the chance to meet her. We are all looking forward continuing production in hometown, and extend our deepest thanks to everyone who has provided support.

Party Scene: Stunt Sequence

By Mike Martinez Stunt Coordinator



The party scene involved a fall from the balcony, when Ben Savage’s character is pushed while threatening to jump. While Ben was acting the scene, I had a wire on him so he could feel free to act out the scene, and the production didn’t have to worry that he would actually take the fall; this kept him safe, but made it difficult to climb over the railing, because it’s hard to climb over something with constant pressure at your waist. But Ben managed to get through it.

After that, we set up the crash pads, and had the stunt double, Tom Ficke, take the fall, over lapping the action of the character getting pushed and falling, backwards, from the balcony. I won’t get into how the crash pads
were set up, because there are too many “Jackass” moments out there already.

The scene also called for the character to hit a table to break his fall—(along with the table)—which Ben was going to perform himself. As a stunt coordinator, I have to be willing to be an irritant to the production company, in order to be sure nobody gets hurt, especially when the actor is performing the stunt himself. We were running out of time, extras were going to be released soon, but I still had to work with Ben to
be sure he knew how to hit the table properly.

We set up a crash pad, with a cardboard “cut-out” the same size as the table. Ben practiced falling from a platform, falling backwards, blindly onto the target. He caught on quickly, and we were ready to shoot.

It’s one thing to fall backwards onto a piece of cardboard lying on top of a big crash pad, and another, falling onto a small table, set to break under you. I told Ben that, this is where he needs to be totally confident with his skills, and do the stunt just like he did it on the pad. If you hesitate, or hit the table half-assed, that’s when it’s going to hurt. He understood this, and went for it full out, three times.

We finished the shot in time for the extras to be released on time. Good job Ben

Party Scene

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer



Last night we filmed our first major party scene. We had to throw a big fake party with 100 extras. It was pretty insane.

First of all, the extras were all our friends and family from the Bay Area. They weren't proper extras that are paid and ordered around. This meant that the extras were all doing us a gigantic favor. We had to be as considerate as we could without compromising too much of the film. This started with a 2 am dismissal for the extras even though we needed to film the party scene until 5:30 am to make the night. We rearranged our shot list to put all the wide shots with all the people in the beginning and all the close ups with minimal background activity at the end.

At about midnight people started to get very anxious. I thought it would be exciting because making films is exciting to me, but I guess not everyone thinks like me. Not yet anyways. The reality of a film set is that there is a lot of just standing around. It takes 8 hours to film a 5 minute scene so you can imagine how much time the extras are just doing nothing. Some people I've talked mention how glamorous it must be to be making a film but they really have no clue what's up.

When the extras are your friends it is especially difficult to manage everything. Anyone that has done extra work will tell you that extras are usually bitched around set all day - but our extras bitched to us more than anything. Some of my best friends from high school were there and I couldn't treat them all like regular background people. If any of you are reading this I am sorry I couldn't be more available to help you guys out.

More pcitures comming soon.

Septic Tank Tony

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

One of the things we need to do for each shooting location is make sure that we have basic things like bathrooms and stuff set up for our actors and crew. Last week we were filming in a parking lot and didn't have a bathroom available to us so our solution was to rent an RV.

It worked out very well for a the few days we had it. The grip team stopped yelling at production for putting our chairs and stuff in their truck, and the actors had a place near set they could hang out.

But then it slowly dawned on us that all the fun bathroom time happening in the RV was going to come at a price. The waste gate needed to be empty of all the lovely solid and liquid...you know. I remember watching the "Training" video when we picked up the RV but never really thought about emptying the waste. I was too busy laughing at the two actors in the video who I swear to god were the happiest people I've ever seen cleaning out their own poop from ann RV.

At 6 am, the end of our last day with the RV, we were reminded that it needed to be returned 20 miles away by 11 am. We weren't exactly sure where the waste would go, or what the proper procedure was. Dan and Steve Gersh (executive producer) drove off anyways and hoped to just find a solution. After they left, an image of a half mile long stain of toilet juices on 101 with Steve giving a big thumbs up popped into my head.

So what did Dan and Steve do? Where did they dump the waste? Did they return everything on time? Well, it turns out the fine for not removing the waste is only $50 so they just returned the RV with full pipes and we took a little hit. Sorry it wasn't more interesting.

Week 2 Gallery

Week 2 Gallery here

Our First Car Rig

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

The other night we had scheduled our first car rig shot. We had plenty of other shots to get done that night and only about 2 hours to make a car rig and film the scene. Now a proper car rig requires a bunch of different considerations.

Lighting
At night, the actors need to be seen, so there needs to be light. How are you going to get lights on/in the car? Will it be enough light? Will you be able to light it nicely?

Power
All those lights will require some juice. A standard construction generator will give you about 4000w which is enough for maybe two of the lights you'd want to use.

Sound
Wind noise? Generator noise? noise from light fixtures? If there is dialogue in the scene then you need quiet everything.

Camera
Will the camera be fixed? Will the camera operator need to fit in the car?

Safety
hah. not important.

Here are some photos of our success.

Teaching Shoshana Stick

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

One of our prop cars fell through and at the last minute we secured an old 66 mustang to fill the roll. Only trouble was that it has a manual transmission and our actress Shoshana could not drive it. The car also had a really harsh clutch, no power steering, and something like 300 horsepower - so it wasn't the easiest car in the world to drive.


As soon as she arrived on set I took her to an empty parking lot and we practiced driving a litte bit. All she needed to do was drive out of frame and around the corner so it wasn't all that difficult. We practiced for about 20 minutes until I thought she had it down. It was important that we see her in the car driving off because we wanted to take it all in one shot.

However, when the time came to actually shoot the scene, Shoshana had to practice again. The tricky part became timing, because Shoshana could launch off alright but it took about 4 seconds for her to get the clutch in a comfortable position. We took the drive off shot about 7 times until we got the timing correctly. In the end I was very impressed with Shoshana's skill. She was even able to chirp the tires a little.

Photo Shoot

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

A couple days ago we got our set up early and had some time to kill. Our DP took her digital still and grabbed a few pictures of our crew. I thought it might be fun to share a couple so that you don't think it is crazy stress all the time.

Set Dressing on the Cheap

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

So earlier in the week we had to film a scene in the ballroom of an abandoned mansion. Pretty easy in a sound stage but pretty impossible for a found location. Brad (director) had the crazy idea to film in his old elementary school, which he remembered had an auditorium we could use.

Now if we had lots of cash and time we would prep the location for a couple days before shooting. What happened was we showed up at call time and found the auditorium filled with junk. Files, toys, equipment, etc. It ate about 3 hours of prep time just emptying the room but we had to keep it organized because the room needed to go back to the way it was.

Before the shoot Brad had gone to some rummage sale and bought a lot of random items that might be found in an abandoned house. Once again we don’t really have a dedicated production design person, so set dressing is pretty much the hardest thing ever. But we pulled it off I think:

Typical Shooting Day

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

So I thought that on production’s “day off” I’d write a little something about why we need a “day off” and why I am putting “day off” in quotes.

Crew Schedule
Call for crew is typically 6pm everyday which means they need to be up by 4:00pm in order to get ready to leave the house by 5:30pm. Once they get to location at 6pm (they’re usually late) the crew start to unpack the truck. They need to power up the generator, set up the power distribution, set up preliminary lighting, etc. This usually lasts until 9pm when it’s dark and the gaffer (Eon Mora) and the DP (Rachel Morrison) can start really lighting. Once lighting is tweaked and actors rehearse blocking we start filming in the first set up at about midnight. Basically 6 hours of prep for the first shot. Every time we reverse the angle lighting needs to change so we don’t catch all our old lights in shot. Once the sun comes up at around 5:30 the crew spends the next two hours breaking everything down and packing it into the truck. They are all usually in bed by 8:30 am. Little over 14 hour day.

Cast
The talent shows up at about 10pm every night once the lights are set up. They go work through blocking and rehearse the whole scene. They are finished by about 11pm and at that point they go to wardrobe and make up. While in make up the lights get tweaked and we run through some rehearsals with the camera in position so the DP can practice her motion and the AC (Rachel Lassee) can mark focus points. If we are lucky the first shot starts at 12am. Each shot takes about 15 minutes depending on the number of takes and the length of the shot. After 15 minutes the actors leave set and crew spends the next 30 min setting up the next shot. When the sun comes up at around 5am the cast gets wrapped and they get to go hone and sleep. A 7 hour day.

Special People
Some special people, like production design, DP, director, and often I have to be at set earlier to go over logistics. The director (Brad) and I usually try and figure out blocking and if there is any way to minimize our shots for the night. The DP figures out an efficient lighting set up that would require the least amount of resetting between shots, and production design works on dressing location to make it look like what we want. We then stay through the night until the set is broken down. 16 hour day.

Producer Dan
Dan schedule is tricky. He is on set every night to deal with logistics like facility managers, neighbors, catering, etc. He also needs to be up in the mornings because he has meetings with locations that are coming up later in the week. Basically by about 4am he usually falls asleep on set or we send him home because he needs to be up by 10am most days. 18 hour day.

Now I say this is my “Day off” because it isn’t really. Crew has the day off but higher ups have plenty to do. I am updating the website, sending out picture approvals, backing up tap, working on securing big equipment and props, and trying to fit in the latest episode of Top Gear and Entourage somewhere in there. Dan is running around securing more locations probably. And chances are Brad will call me tonight to go over shots at location for tomorrow night. I don’t blame him we have a lot to do.

So that being said, anyone in the Bay Area want to join our crew?

Week 1 Gallery

Week 1 gallery here:

Ben Flies in for the Night

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

So the other night Ben Savage (Patrick) came up for night to film his cross over scene with Autumn (Jaime) and Johnny (Nolan). He flew in just for the day but it was a good change of pace. Autumn and Johnny were starting to smell and we were already for a new actor.

The way we are shooting the film is one story at a time so we have our actors for each story fly up for about 8 days. Once we finish the Jaime/Nolan story, Autumn and Johnny will go back home and we’ll get a fresh shipment of new actors to film a different storyline. Since the storylines overlap a little, certain actors fly up for other story lines like Ben did. In a couple days Aaron Ashmore (alec) and Ryan Hansen (Anthony) will be up here for a night to film their crossover with the Jaime/Nolan story line.

Ben’s scene was outside a house party so we needed to throw a fake party. We gathered some local kids to be extras and threw them on the front lawn with those signature red plastic cups. If you were at the shoot you wouldn’t know it was a party scene because everyone was silent except for our talent. A cop came by during the shoot and just kept on driving without stopping. Someone made the point that if you want to throw a party with under aged drinking you should throw a couple lights up and say you’re filming a movie. The cops will just pass on through. Well, at least in Palo Alto that’s what they’ll do. The night went pretty well and we fought the sunrise as usual. I have to say we threw a pretty kick ass fake party.

Dusk for Dawn

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

The film takes place all through the night and into the morning where the final scenes occur. Lately we’ve been filming until sunrise each night and have even had to pull some American Graffiti action on a couple shots. Anyone who has seen American Graffiti will know what I’m talking about. So for scheduling reasons we always thought that our morning scenes could be filmed directly after sunrise while we still had all our equipment out from the night before. Makes perfect sense right?

It turns out that in Northern California the sun doesn’t manage to clear the overcast until about 10 or 11 am. I guess living in LA for a couple years has made me forget. This meant that if we were going to film until sunrise at 5:30am, we’d have to stay an extra 5 hours at location just to start filming the morning stuff we wanted. That means two things: the crew would be working at 19 hour day, and the sun would be too high in the sky to suggest early morning shadows. So we decided to use a little movie magic and shoot dusk for dawn. We wrapped at 5am like usual and called everyone back at around 5pm to shoot the “morning” scene. Anyone who lives at location will tell you the sunlight is facing the wrong direction but we figured we could take that risk. We started filming at around 6pm and at that point the sun was casting nice long shadows. This made everyone very happy.

This was the first day we took out the crane aswell:



The crew also got a taste of what it is like to shoot with daylight. We fired off about 4 hours of nighttime filming in one hour because we didn’t need dozens of lights set up. The DP could shoot 360 degrees without worrying about hitting one of her lights. Everything went very smoothly and made me question why we set the story at night.

It’s too bad that the next script I am working on is set at the summit of Mount Everest in a hovering helicopter. In the middle of the night. During an Earthquake. That will be fun.

Back in Palo Alto

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

We are back in Palo Alto and it has been great so far. Going back home to film a movie about kids who go back home has created a very interesting feeling in us all. I say “interesting” because I am too tired to open up my adjective vault. Yea I’m a writer.

Filming outside of LA is wonderful. Families come to the curb and watch us film, traffic generously stops when we take, and when cops roll by they usually stay and watch. In LA you’ll be kicked out the moment you put down a tripod. But Northern California is not perfect. It is very cold. I have to double sweater it on most nights when we shoot outside but in Southern California I could bust a t-shirt and be fine.

The first couple days in Palo Alto were spent filming the last scenes of the Jaime (Autumn Reeser) and Nolan (Johnny Lewis) story line. This wasn’t ideal, but due to scheduling issues we had no choice. If we shot the story a little more in sequence it would help us and the actors realize the proper character arches. The way we have it now means the characters are very different each day and we have to keep track in our head where the scene falls in the film.



Me, Brad (Director), and Rachel (DP)




We have encountered some interesting problems that I’ll talk about in a future post.

Second Day of Production!

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

Today we are at USC shooting the School Bus exteriors. This is also the first day for Morgan (Tom Arnold) and we should have some fun with the scene. The last time we talked to him he had some great ideas for his scenes and I am excited to see how they play through.

So lets talk about night exterior shots. In case it wasn’t already clear, Palo Alto is set entirely at night. Exterior night shots are intense because they require a lot of light everywhere. Lighting the actors in the foreground isn’t too bad, but then you are left a completely black background and the audience won’t know where the actors are. For this reason we needed to throw a lot of light off rooftops into the background. Rachel (DP) will explain about lighting in detail later.

Everything below this line is now being written after day two, in past tense. I am not clever enough to figure out a better transition.So the night was very interesting.

We had 18 shots to take compared with 5 from the night before. As usual we started late and had our first shot at 11pm rather than the scheduled 10:30 pm. It was partly because USC wouldn’t let us set up until 8:30 pm and partly because we had a lot of exotic lighting rigs.

Lights up on the roof:


Lighting the School Bus:


We also had to block the action of Morgan driving the school bus up onto the curb which ended spilling some blood around too:


At around midnight we were way behind shooting schedule and we discussed the possibility of cutting a few shots from our list. Unfortunately the list was already trimmed down so nothing ended up being cut. On top of all this someone informed our grip team that some of the sprinklers hadn’t been shut off and they were going to go on “sometime in the early morning”. Luckily we had a solution for this:

Once it started to get late, we had to a call USC for an extension. Luckily they were very nice and generously gave it to us. The new problem became the Sun, which ruins the set at 5:20am no matter what. It would take some kind of super villain to help us out in that department. Another early morning issue turned out to be chirping birds. They pretty much chirped through most of our takes and we decided to hope it could be edited around.

Ultimately the sun rose with 4 shots still left to take. Poor Autumn Reeser had been waiting around for a couple hours and we never even got to her last shots. She was a good sport about it though. So what happens when production has to wrap early? Pick ups. We are returning to USC tonight to pick up the rest of what we didn’t get as well us the stuff scheduled for tonight.

In retrospect it is good that we went over because it gave us an idea about how much we can handle. This will help scheduling in the future. It is just lucky that we had USC two nights in a row otherwise we’d be much poorer.

First Day of Production!

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

The first scene we shot was in a laundry mat with Nolan (Johnny Lewis) and Jaime (Autumn Reeser). It is a cute scene between the two characters after they’ve just met.

Since this is the first day of shooting we gave ourselves a lot of time. The shot list consisted of four shots and one insert. We had the laundry mat for ten hours total and used three for set up, one for break down, and six for shooting. Now you’re probably wondering how much dicking around we did to only accomplish four shots in six hours but the truth is we were pretty much on the ball the whole night. A lot of work goes into lighting set up and rehearsal time. Even more difficult is shooting on location because we have to be respectful of the area and are only allowed a small amount of time to do everything we need. In fact, if we were in the laundry mat for even one minute past 5am we would be charged another $100.

Anyways everything went smoothly and we were mostly out by 4:30. Tomorrow is going to be big though because we have 18 shots and they are all outside.

Training

By Tony Vallone

So I am sitting here in the cab of our grip truck watching a little red headed kid hover 30 feet in the air. It’s training week for Palo Alto and we’re all a little excited. Each of our crew members come from different experiences and backgrounds so it was crucial that they all get to know eachother and learn how things on our set will work. So for four days we are making the crew practice setting up a variety of different equipment and learning the various names and places for everything.

Everyone (myself included) is learning a lot about lighting and grip work. One of the newest things to everyone is our 700amp generator which needs to be delicately balanced and monitored at all times. Right now we are taking a little break as everyone goes for a ride on our crane. If anybody was on 405 North near The Bridge and saw people poking up over the trees, that was us.

Equipment Pick-Ups

By Tony Vallone

Pick-Up day is one of the most exciting days when you’re working on a film. It is the first real moment that gets you thinking, “wow, we are actually making this movie”. I think Ian (assistant director) put it best when I opened up the grip truck for him and he said, “Wow, we are actually making this movie”. Pick-Up day is usually day one of your equipment rental. This is the day you pick up your camera package(s) and lighting package(s) for the entire production. It sounds like just a glorified shopping trip but it is a bit more complicated than that.

Brad (director) and Rachel L. (AC)) went to Panavision to pick up our camera package that requires a thorough, million point inspection, of every element in the package. We are essentially renting about 50 different things from Panavision and each one needs to be inspected and invoiced before we can feel comfortable taking it, and Panavision feels comfortable giving it. Our camera package came in about 15 different boxes and required an entire Ford Expedition to transport it.

I was given the task of bringing home our 700amp (a crapload of power) generator that is about the size of an SUV and getting the grip truck to Westside lighting to fill it with lighting equipment. Once the truck and generator made it to Westside, I met with Rachel M. (director of photography) who had been there all morning organizing the equipment and making sure it was all there. Checking the equipment took about 7 hours because we had literally hundreds of items. Everything from the 10,000 watt lights to the half single scrims needed to be checked off. Once that was finished, Eon (gaffer) and I helped Rachel M. load the grip truck. That was actually pretty fun because anyone that knows me will tell you that I love to keep things organized. In fact that is a passion of Eon too. Same with Rachel M. and Brad now that I think of it. Maybe a passion for organization is something grows after working on films that require lots of equipment.

See the photogallery: