Quick Shop

Well…I knew Saturday’s shoot was going to be interesting.  It turned out to be one of the most exhausting and rewarding experiences I’ve ever had since I’ve started making movies.  For those of you who where there, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your hard work, patience and dedication.  I know we ran a little later than expected, but we got some pretty damn good footage in that time.

For those of you who weren’t there, I’ll try to recap as best as I can remember…it’s still all a little fuzzy at this point.

4:45 PM – Chris, Rob and I arrive at Andre Farms.  It’s starting to get dark, so we go inside, start scoping things out and bring in all the gear from the Celica.  The store is pretty busy so we try not to get in the way.  It’s starting to get dark out now, thank God for daylight savings time!

5:45 PM – The store closes at 6:00 so I start setting up the initial shot, which is of Rob and Chris pulling into the Quick Shop and parking.  Erik, Angela and Tom eventually arrive.  Everyone’s here…except for Anne :-/

6:00 PM – Closing time, so I start shooting the first scene.  Anne’s still not there yet and I’m starting to worry.  I had totally forgotten about the bridge that was under construction not 100 yards down the road.  So that meant we had cars constantly turning around in the Andre Farms parking lot, asking for directions, trying to get in the store…ARGH!

6:30PM – Anne arrives and we’re well underway in shooting the first scenes.  We get interrupted every once in a while, but we get the outside dialog scenes done fairly quickly.  I wanted to get both outside done at the same time, so we head out back to shoot the scene where Hunter runs out the back of the Quick Shop screaming.  The back of Andre Farms is dark as all hell, so we spent some time throwing some light on it so my camera could actually see something.  For the scene where Hunter runs into the woods, we had to use the 650 watt “brighter than the sun” light, which worked really well.  We finally finish the outside scenes.

7:45 PM – So after almost two hours outside (my fingers are numb), we finally headed inside to do the interior shots.  I figured things would go a lot quicker now that we don’t have all those cars interrupting us, right?  Yeah, right.

8:00 PM – After an initial attempt at using my Poor Man’s Steadycam to shoot Chris walking into the store, I make the executive decision to cut all moving shots and just use the tripod.  In the end it was a wise decision…the camera was just too heavy and coordinating me and Erik with the boom pole was just too much.  Oh well…we still have some moving shots.

9:00 PM – Finally making progress, but slowly.  We’ve made it into the back now, and Ted has laid out some blood, livers and pig intestines on the table for us.  Yuck and awesome all at the same time. 🙂  We start shooting the scenes in the bathroom, and decide to just go ahead with the audio inside the bathroom even with the fan going.  We had me, Chris, Anne and Erik in that bathroom with a boom mic, camera and clamp light…talk about a tight fit!

10:00 PM – Now it’s getting late, and we’re shooting the scenes where the lights go out.  Of course the light switches are all the way in the back of the store, so we had to use hand signals to Tom in the back to tell Patty to turn off the lights.  That goes pretty well, and I run across the street to shoot the same scene of Chris and Rob banging on the door.

11:00 PM – Time to shoot the most technical scene of all…Chris crawling on the ground, then getting up to see Tom and Rob in the window.  I tracked Chris on the ground with the skateboard dolly, then had to lift the camera up to reveal Tom and Rob.  We probably did about at least 10 takes of this, and I don’t envy Chris crawling on that floor 🙂

12:30 AM – We just finished shooting the final scene of Tom and Rob talking about how they tricked Chris.  We did three takes before we realized the bottle of fake blood was clearly in the shot.  My wife pointed out that maybe that’s OK…because it was all fake after all.  We’ll see come editing time if I keep that in.

All night I had wanted to shoot some scenes of the Celica driving by to intersperse in the opening dialog scene between Rob and Chris, but we were all just too damn tired to do it.  I’m going to shoot those scenes up at Ron’s house next week, and hopefully in such a way that you won’t be able to tell it’s not Rob and Chris in the car 🙂

1:30 AM – Arrived at home with Rob, Chris and Anne.

So there you have it…three shoots down, one more to go.  As I was telling everyone that night, the last bedroom shoot is going to be a cakewalk compared to this night’s shoot.

I will be meeting up with Tom next week to do a little ADR or looping.  I wasn’t really happy with the audio we recorded for his one scene, so I’m basically going to record him saying his lines again.  Next Thursday is our last shoot, other than getting the drive-by scenes at Ron’s house.  I will post some more after next week’s shoot.  Until then, have a great Thanksgiving and…run for your life!

This coming week is going to be a busy one for Quick Shop.  So much so that I created a new page outlining the shooting schedule.  Just click on the schedule link at the top of the page to check it out.

First things first…Thank you all!
Sometimes I have to stop myself and thank my lucky stars that I’ve got so many talented and generous people, taking time out of their lives and busy schedules, that are willing to help me create my vision…and unpaid no less! I truly am a lucky person to be working with all of you fine people, and I just wanted to take a minute to thank you all. I really appreciate all the time and work you’re putting into helping make my vision of Quick Shop a reality.

Good-bye Big Red…Hello Celica!
We will no longer be using the truck known as Big Red for the shoots on the 16th and 20th. Instead we’ll be using Ron Lawrence’s Toyota Celica pictured below.

It will be much more convenient to use this car, and I thank Ron for letting us use it.

New Movie Poster in Development
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Angela Izzo is working on our movie poster.  She just sent me over a couple of sample images this weekend, and I’ve got to say…they look pretty damn awesome.  She’s going to hold off a bit until she’s able to take some good pictures of Andre Farms and the actors on the 20th, but I think she’s on the right track.  Below is a rough draft of the one I’m leaning toward, which includes an actual shot of the “Quick Shop” (Andre Farms)…pretty cool, eh?

Home Stretch
So by the end of this coming week, we will have shot 3/4 of the movie.  My ultimate goal is to have a rough cut of the entire movie before Christmas, so that I can give a copy of it to Mark Gradwell so he can start the scoring process.  If all goes well, we could start submitting to film festivals as early as February or March of 2011, depending on how the scoring and editing goes.

That’s about it for now…I will try to post again after Saturday’s shoot which is sure to be a doozy.  Until then…wish me luck! 🙂

So I’ve decided that I want principal photography for Quick Shop to end in early December.  Couple that with Chris and Rob’s crazy schedules and what do you get?  Me using every spare minute to work on every small aspect of this movie 🙂  I’ve been staying up until nearly 1 AM every morning for the past couple of weeks working on the hundreds of miscellaneous things that need to get done prior to the four (yes four) separate shoots that need to take place.  Here’s the gory details, and updates on all the other stuff that has happened since my last post:

The Four (Horsemen) Shoots
Thursday, November 11th (tentative) – In true Hollywood style, the the final scene will be shot first at my Dad’s house in Palmerton.  This will be me, John Cronk and Chris.

Tuesday, November 16th – Shooting the interior vehicle scenes with Rob and Chris at my house.

Saturday, November 20th – Main shoot at Andre Farms in Oley, PA.  This will be me, Rob, Chris, Tom, Anne, Erik.

Thursday, December 2nd – Bedroom shoot at my house.  This will be me, Aimee and Anne.

Lunch with the Counter Man (Tom Dwyer)
I met with Tom out at Andre Farms last Friday.  I must say that our meeting went very well; Tom is a nice guy and very professional actor, and will make the perfect Counter Man!  We had a quick lunch and hopped on over to Andre Farms to go through a couple of scenes.  This gave Tom a better idea of what to expect come the 20th.  A good time was had by all 🙂

Graphic Artist/Production Still Photograper…FOUND!
Angela Izzo has joined the team as our graphic artist!  She is hard at work on revamping the movie poster, as well as material for the (eventual) DVD and related marketing material.  We met last week to go over some ideas I had, and I’m very excited to she what she can do for the project.

Angela will also be at Andre Farms for the shoot on the 20th taking production stills.  Welcome to the team Angela!

Boom Pole Operator…FOUND!
Manning the boom pole for the shoot at Andres Farms on the 2oth will be none other than Mr. Erik Kapilow of One-Day Seminar fame.  🙂  Welcome to the team Erik!

Jerry-rigged External Monitor Mount
So I’ve got this guy (Jerry) I work with who can pretty much do anything you ask him to do.  We liken him to the Dos Equis guy (The Most Interesting Man In The World) since he’s done so much.  I knew he could build stuff, so I asked him to create a mount for my camera to hold this 7″ LCD TV that I bought as an external monitor.  He just gave me his second version of the mount, and let me tell you…it’s pretty damn sweet.  He actually bent, welded and spray painted this thing, and it looks and works like a charm.  Check out these pictures of it:

This mount looks and works great…thank you so much Jerry!

PVC Light Stand
As my friend Ron tweeted the other day “pvc, tape and wd40… all the tools a man needs”, so it goes that I built myself a new light stand from PVC pipes.  Check out the picture with my Chinese lantern hanging off it…not bad for under $10!

So I guess that’s about it…that’s certainly enough, right?  I’ll be very busy in the next couple of days  preparing for our shoot on the 11th.  Until then…