Week 4 Gallery

Week 4 gallery here:

A Message from the Director of Photography

By Rachel Morrison Director of Photography

FADE IN:

If I weren't so exhausted, I would have written much sooner, but I will do my best to start from the beginning. Alas, the beginning seems like so long ago...

When I first signed on to shoot "Palo Alto," I was told my entire crew would consist of fairly inexperience high school (and a few college) students. Needless to say, I was nervous. Very, very nervous. "We will teach them," Brad said, without hesitation. Ok???

...And so the process began. With the extraordinary assistance of Larry Parker, we scheduled lighting workshops at Mole-Richardson stages to train the kids on everything from basic set safety, to the ins-and-outs of cinema lighting.

Many of the crew had barely worked on a set before, let alone anything even close to what we were setting out to do - a 30 something day shoot, comprised entirely of nights. No sooner had we got our equipment, than we started an intensive program of night lighting - attempting to familiarize everyone with the gear, the walkie talkie lingo, set procedure etc. We met at a parking lot off the 405 and ran drills until about 4AM, in an attempt to get the crew used to working nights and sleeping days. To an outsider, the whole set-up was pret-ty sketchy.

But "the beginning" started way before all that. It started with a conversation with Dan, where he suggested we buy a school bus, which could be used as the picture car and double as a means to haul our gear. "What!!!???," I demanded. We NEED a truck. With a lift gate! There were discussions that started by Daniel asking why we needed walkie talkies and ended with me pretending to scream "Pan the 10K" at the top of my lungs [at 3 in the morning]. "Got it, got it" Dan reconciled.

Like any good indie, this one has always been a delicate balance of what is necessity versus what is expendable. Many of my wishes, Brad answered with, "but I can build that". And build he did. See pictures of the 22-foot crane that was ingeniously designed in Brad's backyard. Other tools would have made our lives a billion times easier, but just couldn't be purchased on such a small budget.

CUT TO:

We are over half way done with the shoot. The crew has been extraordinary - rising to every challenge and impressing me time and time again with their quick insight and knowledge learned.

At only 19, the gaffer, Eon, is one of the oldest on the crew and is not only an incredible team leader, but is extremely wise in his ability to judge light. George, had barely set a C-Stand before this shoot, but is now Key Gripping up a storm He is 16.

Going in to the shoot, the position I was most concerned about was the Best Boy Electric because this crewmember deals with all the power. Running and distributing from a 500amp generator is not only essential to any production, but safety-wise, it is truly a matter of life and death. Kenny has stepped up to the challenge and exceeded even my best expectations. He is only 15 years old! When I was 15, I think my biggest responsibility was not screwing up the orders at the local Au Bon Pain.

Rachel, Matt, Dillon, Kujo, Juneau, Vince, Luis, Jon, Jay... everyone has busted their asses in both the camera and grip/electric departments and for this I am truly grateful. This production more than any other I've worked on is really a TEAM effort.

OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES:

From a cinematography standpoint, the hardest thing about this shoot (besides the hours of course) is that night out here in Palo Alto is DARK. Very dark. Of course, you say, what did you expect? But the difference shooting here than shooting, say in a city, is that there is no light in the background, and there are very rarely sources from which to motivate light.

Normally, one might be able to light the foreground elements in relation to the background, but here you need to light EVERYTHING. This can be extremely time consuming. Every set-up, you are dealing with a blank slate. When you turn around for a reverse shot, your subject may still be lit, but you have to light the background all over again. And for those who don't realize this, it takes a lot of light to make things visible on film. And trees, especially, which seem to be everywhere, eat light like you wouldn't believe. And a lot of light takes a lot of time. Oh, and in case I didn't mention it, lights are heavy.

Another huge challenge is that because we don't have many sources to motivate light i.e. city buildings, streetlights, storefronts, we often have to make MOONLIGHT the motivating source. This wouldn't be a big deal if we had the proper tools for moonlight, but we cannot afford condors or cherry pickers or helium balloons. We have high-high-roller stands and mombo combos which can maybe get to 20 feet in the air, depending on which light fixture we use, but really can't get high enough to provide a 'toppy' source = moonlight. Aaaagghhh.

This has been our biggest battle time and time again - How to cheat moonlight for night exteriors without ugly shadows or rapid light fall-off or gigantic specular reflections from shiny metallic surfaces such as the cars that are practically featured characters in the film. It is all much more difficult than one would expect.

The only other consistent challenges are 'found' locations (read white walls) and scheduling- we spend over 1/3 of our day, nearly every day, setting up and breaking down. In over 3 weeks, we have had exactly 1 'walkaway,' where we could leave the gear in the location overnight... But enough tech talk and enough about the challenges because the point is, overall, we are definitely prevailing.

Daniel starts and ends each day [and by 'day' I mean 'night'] by saying "another day" and slapping me high-five... This is almost like a metaphor. "Another day???" at the start, with the uncertainty of what indie problem will arise... met by, "Another day!!!" when we wrap, with a sigh of exhaustion, and the pride and enthusiasm of accomplishment in the tone of his voice.

FIN.

Cinematographer Stills

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

Our DP Rachel Morrison sent me some stills she has taken from set. These stills were captured with a digital camera that comes pretty close to reporudcing the settings on our movie camera. What this means is that these pictures are essentially what a freeze frame of the movie will look like. Rachel uses these pictures to check lighting in a scene because otherwise you cannot see what the camera is capturing until after the film is developed. Rachel said she has written be a blog so that will be very interesting I am sure.

15 Hour Film Delivery: Anchange Style

By Dan Engelhardt producer

At the beginning of our August 4 th shoot Matt, our 2 nd AC, mentioned that we were running low on film, and that we were probably due for our second batch from Kodak. Under normal circumstances this would be a simple request – my first call the following morning would be to our sales rep. and the problem would be solved. Unfortunately for us we are shooting 400 miles from LA, and this announcement was made on a Friday night.

There are a good number of 24 hour film dealers in LA, but San Francsico is a different story. As we wrapped on Saturday morning (7AM) I began my phone calls – at this point I had been up for 19 hours. The plan was to have Kevin our editor, who is currently in Los Angeles, pickup a few roles of film, drive them to LAX, and ship the package through United Airlines’ cargo service. A perfect plan, I thought. At 9am, after coordinating our after hours pickup and payment with Film Emporium, I called Kevin. He quickly drove to Hollywood (from Culver City), and then headed back to LAX.

At the United front desk he ran into a problem. They recently changed their policies, and only a “credited shipper” can send packages over 1 lbs. Suddenly we were stuck with no way to get our film to Palo Alto in time for the shoot set to take place in less then 12 hours. It was now 12pm, and I had been up for a solid 24 hours. I began pooling friends, and family hoping someone might be willing to fly to Los Angeles, and drive the film to Palo Alto for us (as luck would have it my sisters car was in LA even though my sister was here in Palo Alto). After my parents and I made a few calls, a close friend was willing to do us a huge favor, and after being up for 27 hours I was able to sleep for 3, and head over to set. At 10pm on August 5 our savior arrived with a fresh box of film – we were saved.

Message from the Assistant Director

By Ian Dickinson assistant director

Hey everybody! It’s your friendly local Assistant Director Ian Dickinson! Some of you may be wondering just what the heck an Assistant Director does round these parts, and I hope I might shed a little light on the subject!

Let me just state right now that I do a lot of work. And because I span that awkward divide between Production management and Crew, that work provides me a unique view behind the scenes on all aspects of filmmaking. For instance, on the typical day, my first activity is waking up and sending out the call sheets. I eat my daily bowl of grape nuts while tying up the next day’s call sheets, and then I make call after call to make sure everyone has directions and rides to the location. Once that is settled, I shower, take care of other personal tasks, and drive myself and the boom operator (assuming I don’t have any extra tasks like picking up a prop) to Brad’s house to pick up crew members. And this is all in the hour before I start work!

Once on location I constantly check that everyone is working as hard as they can. I organize the shoot so we can go faster. I help the grips set up, I make sure the actors are in position and I pass out the walkies. On top of that I have to make sure everyone constantly knows the time. From the moment I arrive on set I can’t afford to relax except for a few minutes during lunch and then at the end of my shift. Stress is a daily part of my life, because the clock is always ticking. I sometimes have visions of myself as a giant walking stopwatch that goes around and pokes people just to annoy them and tell them the time.

So on and on it goes until the end of the day when I help the grips break down the set and find a dumpster to take care of all of our trash. During this part of the morning, because it is usually 7 am, I wonder if I could apply to be on the Worlds Dirtiest Jobs.

So yes, I work almost every hour of the day (and then have anxiety dreams at night), but I still find myself invigorated by the cornucopia of new activities in which I am fully engaged. Here is a list of things I have tried or experienced for the first time on this shoot:

Bought a bisexual porno film
Bought a banana hammock
Welded a piece of metal
Driven an El Camino
Driven a 67 Mustang
Have a big-time actor constantly deride me for my politeness
Get more than 15 phone calls in a 6 hour period
Talked in Italian
Hooked up a trailer to a hitch and then drive backwards with it
Used a longboard as a really useful transportation device
Driven a fifteen foot high truck
Watched a black widow fight a white spider
So overall it has been a pretty great experience. Again, the work is hard, but honestly, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. The people are great, the actors are funny (notice how I don’t lump them in with “people”), and the finished product is something I will be proud of for the rest of my life. So while some days I might grit my teeth and pull my hair (see: everyday), I know that in the end all of this is worth it.

Generator Shuffle

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

I was up for 30 hours yesterday. Up at noon to go to the Apple store to fix my new Black Macbook (which is now completely dead - expect slow updates of the site as a result) and then making calls trying to secure extras and locations. Then we were on set from 6pm to 12pm setting up, filming, and breaking down. At 12pm it was time for a small team of idiots to drive from Palo Alto to Oakland on no sleep to swap generators. On the way the generator needed to be topped off which required a 30 minute visit to the gas station. Cheveron was very happy to provide me with $350 worth of gass to fill up the tank. In the process my credit card was flagged for suspicious use. I don't blame them, typically I buy $50 of gas once a month for my little car. $350 is the most I've ever spent at a gas station.

Once we swapped generators it was a slow drive back to the Palo Alto where I was greeted with a nice box to ship off my computer to be "fixed". This is not the proper place for it but I definitely want people to know that Apple built me a defective computer and their customer service department is doing a horrible job of keeping me happy.

Extra Shuffle

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer

The last two nights we shot interior party scenes and required a bunch of extras to fill the first floor of our party house. We figured about 50 or so would do it but apparently you need a lot more than that. 50 filled out about half of the house and we needed our character to walk through the entire house.

The solution we came up with was an extra shuffle where we'd walk through one half of the house and then move all our extras into the other half and film there. It got pretty ridiculous because some of the extras were more distinctinve than others so we had to make sure the same 8 foot tall chinese guy with the top hat wasn't in every shot. Our AD (Ian Dickinson) had the difficult job of directing all the extras who were mainly teenagers.

On the second night the same kind of thing happened. Except with a twist. All of our extras were girls! We had maybe two guys total. So to mask the fact that it was an incredibly unrealistic party turn out we filled the scene with crew members that had some down time. In one particular shot, Ben Savage (patrick) changed outfits and played an extra in his own scene. We'll see if you guys can find it when you see the film.

Production Update

By Tony Vallone story, screenplay, associate producer



In an effort to keep our producer Dan happy, I am posting a photo that includes him on the website. Also photographed is executive producer Gersh, director Brad, associate producer/casting Jason, and myself. Happy Dan?

This is the first entry of our fourth week of production and I am proud to say we are over the hill. Lately we've experiencing some hiccups that have forced us to move our schedule around last minute. This is a big deal because we have to fly our actors in and we try to minimize the number of flights and number of days actors are in town without a scene. We also need to tip toe around our break days because everyone is really exhausted.

If you haven't noticed, I have received some blog support by some other people working on the project. I am going to push for more crew to give me write ups so you guys don't have to read the same voice all the time. Expect in the near future a blog from the assistant director, cinematographer, and sound mixer. Dan and the stunt coordinator submitted earlier this week.