WEEKEND RECAP

Saturday
WOW! What a weekend! We began filming Saturday morning at 6am. It was extremely difficult to get up that early but we had a looooong day ahead of us and so we had to get moving. We arrived at the UW science lab and set up right in front of this salmon pink wall covered in weird switches and dials. Elyse lent us some beakers and test tubes as well.
We shot our stuff there and then transferred to the ATO fraternity for the next scene. For the day, we changed the name to Psi Omega Omega. (It's a visual joke). Our makeup crew got to zombifying our actors. Apparently, the frat boys had been partying all night and only went to bed when we got there, so we didn't really see any of them, apart from this one guy who kept coming downstairs for a healthy three course breakfast of chicken fingers, cheetos and something unidentifiable. This was our first experience with the fake snow and we were shocked as to how real it looked. We shouldn't have been though, because the box boasts that it is actually “preferred over real snow”. We followed the instructions of “fluffing before use” and set to snowing the frat house lawn. We also positioned some people in a second story window for falling snow which looked fantastic. We finished our outdoor shots shortly after the freezing rain began to fall. The freezing rain actually worked to our advantage because we had one more shot facing out the door and it covered the median in the street that we could not. Thank you, Jesus.
After we finished up at the frat, we moved to the incredible Bellevue High School A/V building which has a better TV studio than the Art Institute did when I went there. We used that for our news cast. At that point, we were about an hour and a half behind schedule and we had passed the 12 hour mark so people were a little ornery, but we stil got all the shots, and the actors were spot on with their performance.
We later retired to the Canterbury for a wrap dinner and regrouping. I must say that was one of the best pints I have ever tasted.

Sunday
We got to sleep in for a full hour and arrived at the abandoned Safeway in Ballard for the outdoor mayhem scene. We had a minor delay when we discovered Roxy had been given the wrong keys for the space, but we managed to get in anyway. ;)
The space itself was full of wonders to behold. Apparently, they had held the Middle Earth Ball there, so there were remnants of Middle Earth left behind including part of Fangorn Forest, a hobbit hole, and a scary mural of a ring wraith. The bathrooms were located in a dark section of the back that we dubbed “Moria”, thus inventing new bathroom code. “I had to go to Moria”. Dom also found a mysterious tape recorder with a tape in it. He pressed the play button expecting to hear music from the LOTR movies, but instead found the sounds of lesbian porn. Was it recorded live? Taped from a video? Faked live? We don't know. All we know is that it was hilarious. And it now belongs to us thanks to our A.D who snuck it into Dom's car when he wasn't looking.
We got to shooting and everything went really well, apart from one shot which faced a parking lot. We had to contend with all manner of pedestrians staring straight into the camera in the middle of a shot. After 11 takes, we got a perfect one which was bogey free causing most of the crew to cheer loudly once we called cut.
At lunch time, we had some surprise guests in the form of a bunch of bird fanatics. Apparently, the space, which will be demolished in two weeks time, is also a bird park. Several people brought in their parrots and cockatiels to fly around the space willy nilly and make the loudest, most horrific bird shrieks I have ever head. A few times, a bird landed on the heads of one of our crew. It was a damned good thing we weren't shooting interiors that day.
We finished up ahead of schedule and very optimistic. We watched the dailies later and discovered an audio problem that has since been corrected. We will have to do some ADR but luckily we discovered this before we shot our dialog heavy scenes.

Monday
Despite torrential rain that worsened throughout the day, we managed to get all our shots off (most exterior), whilst STILL having falling “snow” and paper props. The zombies looked FANTASTIC and we had our first blood effect which also looked really cool! All in all, it was a very successful weekend and I can't wait till next weekend. Our crew is incredible and everyone seems to be having a good time.

Pictures from this weekend can be seen here. I will put up some others later! Hope this entry is at least half exciting for the uninitiated reader as it is for me!

January 18, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: weekend recap . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Long time, no write. Why? Because I was too busy doing nothing. Well, that's not entirely true. My week off was pretty packed for an invalid.
Saturday (Christmas) I ventured out to Dom's sister's house for festivities. I was still pretty whipped at that point and spent most of the day in her guest bed with a migraine. After sleeping for approximately 20 hours, I woke up Sunday feeling fairly refreshed and Vicodin free. That night, I was visited by the lovely Keely girls and their spouses.
Monday and Tuesday night we had meetings for the movie.
Wednesday was my party day. I went out to the Comet that evening with Jacob, Andrew, Sherwood and my old friends from Tacoma, DJ and Robert. We sang karaoke and I drank what is probably more cider than a person recovering from surgery should. I sang “Say It Ain't So” by Weezer for the first time and it got a pretty good response. I also did my old standard “November Rain”. Andrew sang an AWESOME version of “Double Vision” by Foreigner. We took LOADS of fun pictures which can be seen here. It was really good to see DJ (who goes by Danny now, but I can't bring myself to call him that) and Robert!
After things started to get weird at the Comet, (annoying girls and boys singing dumb songs…5 people singing a solo song at a time) Jacob, DJ and I took a drive in Robert's Grandpamobile. After a brief stint at Dick's, we drove through Volunteer Park and were amazed by the incredible view of the space needle which was almost COMPLETELY obscured by a thick fog. It very much resembled a spaceship taking off (or at least what I imagine one would look like). Very cool. So Robert parked and DJ and I got out to get a closer look. We walked down toward the fenced-in reservoir and were only there a matter of minutes before we heard this young, funny voice shout “Hey you kids, what are you doing down there!” We turned to see a bright flashlight shining at us. I laughed because I thought it was a joke. But DJ said “I think he's serious”. That's when I realised that a young rookie cop on park patrol had found us. “Come up here and take your hands out of your pockets” he demanded. “What were you doing down there?” I said we were just looking at the view, which is true. Did he NOT see the view? It was amazing. “Do you see the flashing lights?” I didn't. “Do you have any ID?” he asked. I told him it was in the car. Then a bull-dyke cop, also very young, shouted at us “Do you realise that you are trespassing? You could go to jail for this”. I apologized and said that we didn't know. I asked if they needed to see my ID. The woman responded “No, we just need you to leave”. So we did.
When we got in the car, Jacob told me their side of the story. They had just seen a group of kids bolt, when the cops pulled up and surrounded Robert's car. Jacob began to look for his seatbelt. One of the cops shouted “Guy in the back, stop reaching”. (HA!) Then they looked at Jacob's ID and asked if anyone else in the car was from California. (?) All we wanted to do was look at the view! It totally slipped our minds that the park is off limits and that a delinquent location like Volunteer would be teeming with rookie cops. This was my first brush with the police (besides running away from busted parties in college) and I declare it to be…HILARIOUS.
Friday we had our makeup test and snow test. The makeup test went well. The snow test didn't. Our “snow” looked like Styrofoam. (Which I suppose isn't surprising since it IS styrofoam). We are getting “smaller” snow so hopefully that will look better.
We also partied like it was 2005 at the Brunswick’s New Years Eve party. It was so much fun, it almost made me forget that I spent Friday afternoon in the emergency room with a UTI. I would have gone to the clinic but they were all closed on account of it being New Years Eve. And, of course, my insurance is making me pay my ass' weight in gold for it. I won't go into how much my insurance (Healthnet) sucks. Let's just say that they make me pay for everything and cover very little. Meanwhile, if I were a man on this plan and I wanted Rogaine, I would only have to pay my $15 copay.
Saturday and Sunday were mellow, as I rested up to come back to the big pile of work waiting for me here at the office.
And that brings us up to date. This week will be very busy both with work and the movie. We are shooting in less than two weeks!!! And now, back to the grindstone!

January 4, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: weekend recap . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment