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.