Finishing the Movie

We spent the last weekend taking some extra B-Roll for the film… I know what you’re thinking it’s been over a year and we still aren’t done with it. Well we just want it to be as good as it can be when you guys actually do get to see it.

Friday we picked up all the gear including the camera checkout from Panavision, which took the majority of the day.



We drove to Palo Alto from LA on Saturday morning with my car jammed with gear. For such a simple shoot we didn’t think it would be necessary to get a grip truck… turns out it would have been nice but we made do without.



We mostly needed static shots of empty hallways/classroom/lockers/etc so we spent most of our time at a local high school shooting late into the night. It was pretty cool because we got to really focus on setting things up simply for pretty shots without having to deal with actors, sound, or coverage. As the director I didn’t really have to do much. Mostly I just sat around and assisted Rachel (our DP) with whatever she needed.

Saturday during the day we took some more daytime B-Roll all around Palo Alto. The Law family was kind enough to let me fly in their little Cesna plane to try for aerial shots of Palo Alto. A BIG thanks to Mr. Law and Uncle Ron!



I’ve heard that aerial photography out of a little plane doesn’t work so well because of vibration and poor angles of view. But once we got up in the air everything seemed to work perfectly. I was jammed in the backseat with the camera handheld looking out the passenger side window. We were able to get the window fully open so that it wouldn’t obscure our shots. I could lean out the window a little and tilt the camera down to get about 45 degrees and then Ron (the expert pilot) could tilt the plane a little more and we could get around 60-70 degrees which is pretty close to 90 degrees (ie looking straight down).



Rachel didn’t really want to start shooting day B-Roll till the sun got low enough so that the lighting didn’t look toppy - so we sat around until 5ish and then drove around PA until dark, picking up random pretty shots here and there.

All and all a pretty cool weekend.

We’ve got one final re-shoot to do and then, I promise we’ll be done and releasing. Things are in the works… thanks for staying interested!

-Brad

Pick-Up Gallery

The gallery for pick-up filming is here:

Second Week of Pick-Ups

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

So we had our second weekend of pick-ups last weekend to get rid of the last of the "Scene Missing" title cards that litered throughout the film. We did two car rigs and a scene in a Psychiatric Hospital. This was the official last weekend of shooting, all that is left now is little inserts and B-roll footage - but we do have a film! Here are some pictures from the weekend:



We all thought we'd seen the last of the Tiede-Mobile. Here it is becoming a "drivable" picturecar.



If you were wondering why I put "Drivable" in quotes in the above caption, it is because this is what you see when looking out the windshield. It was a pain in the ass to drive but it got a lot of attention at the gas station.



Kevin our editor played the role of locaiton sound mixer for the weekend. Here he is doing nothing out of the ordinary.



The next morning we did our second rig, this time on a BMW. Notice how all of a sudden we found a bunch of furniture pads to protect the car from the mount - the Tiede-Mobile had no protection. And if we had put furnipads on the Tiede-Mobile it would be used to protect the Mount, not the car.



Hallway. Producer Dan having a cameo in the background.



This is what directing looks like in case you couldn't tell.



Human C-Stand.

There will be a gallery up this weekend with pictures from both pick-up weekends.

Filling the Generator

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

At the end of filming last weekend Dan (Producer) and I were on our own returning all the gear we rented. Keep in mind we had a 22 foot truck's worth of equipment. It took all day but the most eventful return by far was the generator. No, not because it was huge and difficult to navigate through LA traffic, but because we had to fill it up prior to returning it.

Now people that have been tuning in for awhile now realize that filling up the generator is something we did every few days in Palo Alto, "so why is Tony building this up?". Well the answer can be found in the following series of camera phone pictures.



So this is the hole for the gas tank. Notice the hole the nozzle is suppose to fit in. This generator also takes gasoline, and I almost screwed up big time when I didn't notice the sign as I held up the diesel pump. All the equipment we've used has been diesel until today, so an honest mistake. Luckily I noticed before any damage was done.



This is the nozzle. It is exactly the same size as the hole. In order to fill up the generator we'd have to "Make it work" by just holding the nozzel up agaist the other hole and hope gas would flow nicely.



"Wait" Dan said, "Why don't we just get a funnel". Luckily for Dan, he made this comment before any gas was pumped, but AFTER I attempted to pump, failing only because of a time out with the fuel system.



There is your paper funnel Dan. Have fun being the one holding it. Anybody that knows exactly how fast and in what shape fuel shoots out of a gas nozzle knows that the smile on Dan's face won't be there for very long



Oh wait, Luis, a man who undoubtedly acted upon seeing Dan and I almost make a very stupid decision, showed us the proper filling procedure.



Oh, it twists off! In our defense we didn't have a wrench. If we did we would have immediately found this solution.

Pick-Up Filming in Los Angeles

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

Last weekend we shot for two nights picking up little inserts and scenes we didn't have time for during principle production. Now that school has started for almost everyone involved we are limited to only weekends and we have a lot of extra crew memebers helping us out. Now because I know my writing isn't as interesting as pictures, I will now post a selection of pictures from filming.









Once we finished filming we needed to process and transfer the film right away so our editors could start working. We have deadlines after all. So after Dan and I returned the equipment on Monday (an new entry about this is coming), Dan dropped off the film Monday evening. Then Tuesday afternoon I grabbed the developed film and took it to IVC for a telecine session (digitizing the film for editing). I took some cool photos while I was there for anyone that gets excited about lots of buttons and switches. Thank you to Steve who operated the process.





It was a busy weekend. Now the editors have the digitized footage and can begin editing what we shot this weekend. After next weekend I'll post a new gallery for pick-ups.