The First Screening

Families flying in from out of state.  Fellow film students and professors.  This is the audience that the first clips of the movie screened to tonight.

Let me back up.

When last I wrote, we had just survived the craziest weekend of our lives, where we drove to my home town of Pleasant Hill where we filmed about 40% of the movie in three days.  I'll break that down even more.  Friday night we arrived, got settled into Jourdan's house (our shooting location), and rewrote a key scene from the end of the movie with the three main actors.  I had written the scene knowing that it wasn't perfect, and figured that writing it with the actors on location would be better anyway.  It was.  We finished that around midnight, and then we all went to our various sleeping quarters in Jourdan's house to prepare for the next day.

The next morning, we awoke at 7:00AM and gathered, and then hit the ground running.  We had a number of scenes to shoot during the day, and we had to get some of them done before Scott had to go to work on the show he's currently helping put on in Walnut Creek.  We got it all done, and then everyone took a break while Alex and I (loyal DP and Assistant Director that he is) planned out the rest of the day and kept setting up along with Ryan McDuffie, the tireless do-everything man (hopefully he'll add to the blog soon too).   I don't remember everything that we filmed that day, as it was a blur, but I remember we finished around 2 or 3:00 am--you see, we decided to stop early because we knew the following night was going to be the long one.

Got some sleep, and then began once again the next morning.  Alex and I woke up at 7:00 AM.  We filmed like a marathon until the following night, when we wrapped and were able to go to sleep around 5:00 AM.  Everyone was so ridiculously tired, but we kept going.  My cast and crew is amazing.

Finally, Monday morning we awoke, and filmed one of the last scenes of the weekend.  Then Shashona and Ryan headed back to Santa Cruz, and Alex, Jourdan and myself filmed the final scene.  Alex and I got back into Santa Cruz at around 11:30PM Monday night.

Some statistics for the weekend:

17 - Scenes Shot

80 - # of Shots Accomplished

20 - # of hours of continuous shooting on Sunday

5 - # of pizzas eatten

7 - # of hours of footage we shot...this means the camera was rolling for a total of 7 hours, which means...

13% - percentage of the weekend that the camera was rolling.  Including sleep time.

So, that weekend was ridiculous.  Then, we did it again.

This past weekend, we filmed the biggest scene of the movie which I will refer to as the "party scene."  Without giving too much of the plot away, a significant portion of the film takes place at a party.  We shot the party scene at Alex's house, which meant that Jourdan and Scott had to come back Santa Cruz once again.  This time we also had the pleasure of working with Nika Pappas and Dan Beckner, two excellent actors who agreed to be in the film.  (Dan is also the lead in Alex's movie).  Besides having a cast of characters larger than ever, we also had to do scenes with a bunch of extras...which is always a headache.

You must feed extras.  You must make them feel like they're important (because they are).  And, most of all, you must not waste their time.  Thus, we filmed the party scene CRAZILY out of order; end, beginning, middle, it didn't matter, we just had to get all of the shots with the extras done first.  So, the weekend went like this:

Friday night, meet with Jourdan and meet Nika for the first time--she's awesome.  Saturday morning, do the last shot of Alex's movie.

2:00pm - gather all of my actors, get costumes.

5:00 pm - Set up Alex's house for the party (I still owe coleman some money for the food).

7:30 pm - Extras arrive

8:45 pm - do first shot.

12:00am - wrap extras

3:00 am - wrap cast, get some sleep.

The Next Morning!

-- Film with Jourdan and Nika on campus

-- 7:00 pm - continue filming the party scene

-- 2:00 am - wrap the last extras

-- 5:00 am - wrap the last shot of the party scene...just as the sun has finished coming up, which made it physically impossible to film any longer :)

The NEXT Morning (aka two hours later)

Meet at my house to film the last shots of the movie.

-- wrap Shashona.

-- wrap Scott.

-- wrap Jourdan (got a little teary-eyed).

-- wrap The Reunion of Amilia Marbleberry and Marcy Stills.

The movie was done being shot.  That was it.  Finished.

Well, ya know, sort of.

The film was done being shot on Monday the 9th, and I had to turn in a 12-minute version by Wednesday the 11th in order to graduate.  Now, I know you've not read the script (right? otherwise--awkward...), but this is not a 12 minute script.  The probably running time of the film will be about 45 minutes to an hour.  It is hard to make this into 12 minutes.

So, since Alex and I both had to get our movies down to 12 minutes, we lived in my room, editing our movies on my HD Plasma, giving each other feedback and working together, alllll nighttttt longgggg.  There was some freaking out, but we got it all done.  And our reward?

This evening, at 7:30 pm, we had the final screening for our Film 196 class.  Everyone in class got to show their work to a huge audience of family, friends, peers and professors.  My family is in town for my graduation, so it was very nice to sit between my mom and my dad and watch the 12 minute clip/version of the movie in front of an audience.  And, the audience really liked it.  There was laughter throughout (which was good, this was the funny part of the movie), and people responded really well to everything.  Also, soon after my movie showed, Alex's movie showed, which people also loved.  It was a very good night, and rewarding to finally get so show people the work that we've been doing.

So here I sit, at 2:45am, updating the blog with the longest entry so far.  I would love to post the 12 minute version...but it's not the version of the movie I want people to see.  So, I'm going to mean and withhold it, because I want you guys to see the full-length, true version.  But don't worry, a teaser will be coming soon I'm sure.  In the mean time, here are some fun goodies to keep you entertained.

Over the Pleasant Hill weekend, I asked my housemate and good friend Stephen Mejia to walk around and capture some behind-the-scenes footage.  This is on the second morning, Sunday, when Jourdan was somehow feeling extremely energetic.  Hang on...

Thanks everyone, keep reading...we're getting so close. From Script to in the can..getting there.

~Michael

P.S. -- If any of you know any bands that are Garden State-like that want their music in a movie...please send me an email cause I'd love to hear them!

We Survived

It was insane, but we survived.  I will have more details later, but I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that we're all alive.  That I needed to say that gives you a hint of how insane the weekend was.

:)