Filming Recap: Day Seven, 02.22.09

In this feature, we follow the production of "Reminisce," our latest HD project, completed MUCH earlier this year. Behind the Scenes of Reminisce: The Prom Sequence, Day Three - Later That Night.

Picking up right after the prom, and leading right into some of the scenes shot the day before, this shoot day featured Terry taking Ashley home to let her sober up, and then he has to face a couple of interesting dilemmas...

We also shot the second half of the phone call, paying very close attention to the energy levels, making sure they matched what we shot the night before (an issue which didn't work out quite as well for the phone call in "Writer's Block").

The other element of the day was that, in the scene we shot on the 14th, Terry showed up without his bow tie or his buteneer, which he wore at the prom. Which meant, we had to explain away where they went. Wasn't actually that difficult, since he stays up all night, and would untie the tie, fidget with the buteneer, and probably lose the cumber bun as well (which I can't remember now if we did or not), but it was still something we had to keep very careful track of, to make sure we didn't betray the continuity. We did pretty well.

It was a lot of fun, though. The actress who plays Ashley was such a hoot. Unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot of pictures from this day. The reason for this was that we had a lot more crew members on set than we needed, or even could really fit, so we sent half of them home after about an hour, including Jeffrey, the one taking most of the pictures. It was a shame, though, because apart from all the fun we had shooting the scenes, we ended up doing a gag take at the end of the day, and I wished the rest of the crew could have been there for that. But, it'll be on the DVD, so they'll get to see it there.

These were the last scenes we shot of The Prom Sequence. 12 scenes later, we made it through. And then we had to get ready for the other big set-up of the shoot: The Reunion (What can we say? We love those crowd sequences...)

Filming Recap: Day Six, 02.21.09

In this feature, we follow the production of "Reminisce," our latest HD project, completed MUCH earlier this year. Behind the Scenes of Reminisce: The Prom Sequence, Day Two - The Prom.

Once the set was built, we just waited for our actors to show, and then we could film as soon as the sun went down. Here's where the first hiccup comes in - We had arranged for many, many extras to be there, so as to best fill the space. 10 showed up. The crew had planned to show up in tuxes and dresses of their own just in case, but even with that we still had a disappointing amount of extras. We called everyone we knew, and got a couple more people down, and when we added those to the crew, we had about 20.

During all of this it had started to sprinkle, and at this point we had moved on to light, irratic drizzling. The courtyard we had built the set in came with tarps that can hang in between the buildings, and we already had those up. So, no major damage was being wraught upon the set, but we were not without concern. Fortunately, the rain never got much worse than that, so the worst of it came later.

We shot the band first, as they play for the crowd. The song is "Guitars," an original by my former drum teacher, Terry Carleton. It was a song I always planned on using for this scene, and when I played it for Andrew he absolutely agreed. It has exactly the feel we were looking for, a sort of '9os power ballad. The band was great, and the crowd did an awesome job as well.

After we finished with the band, we did a shot at the photo booth. Astute observers will notice that this is where I slipped in my cameo. I pointed out that, with my beard in full swing, I looked the least like a high school student of anyone on the set, aside from the band. Andrew agreed, and tossed me behind the camera in front of the camera.

After that we moved on to a few shots near the punch bowl, with our actors and some dialogue. We don't have any more pictures from filming for this day, but it was excellent. We ended up letting the extras go after the scene near the punch, right around 10 pm (which is what we were aiming for). After that, we went on to shoot an intense scene between Terry, Hannah and Patrick. From there, we shot 2 more Patrick/Hannah scenes, and one scene between Terry and Ashley (this was the actress' first scene on the shoot, and she was a hoot). 

We ended up staying out there until 2 am. The last scene, a Hannah/Patrick, had us shooting half of a phone call, with Terry and Ashley on the other end, so all 4 actors were still here at the end of all things, and, dispite the lateness of the hour, were incredibly gracious. At this point, we asked the actors who were gonna be on set the next day (when we were going to make up last weeks shoot) if they wanted to cut the day so they could sleep (they had an early call). Troopers that they were, they decided instead to stick to the schedule. Actually, it's not that they were troopers, they just seemed to have boundless stores of energy.

We all adjurned to try to fit in about 4 hours of sleep.

Filming Recap: Day Six Prep 1 (02.21.09)

In this feature, we follow the production of "Reminisce," our latest HD project, completed MUCH earlier this year. Behind the Scenes of Reminisce: The Prom Sequence, Day Two - The Prom Prep.

So, this is gonna be more than one post (and yes, I appreciate that I've been slacking to a preposterous degree on finishing these up). Today we're talking about the set-up for the Prom Proper. I'm just gonna leave you to the pictures - you'll get the idea: Karli, our production designer, RULES.

Next up - SHOOTING.

Filming Recap: Day Six, 02.15.09

In this feature, we follow the production of "Reminisce," our latest HD project, completed earlier this year. Behind the Scenes of Reminisce: The Prom Sequence, Day Two - Terry's House.

So, this is another not-filming day. Had to push it back, I believe because of weather again. We had to push it to next Sunday, since Saturday would be full of Prom set-up and shoot. Fortunately, for your indulgence, I give you guys a little treat - the photo storyboards for the Prom Sequence.

Filming Recap: Day Five, 02.14.09

Behind the Scenes of Reminisce: The Prom Sequence, Day One - The Morning After...

We began the prom sequence with the last scenes of it. The first scene featured Hannah leaving Patrick's house, and was our first major outdoor shoot to happen in the early morning. The reason this makes such a difference is that the morning is when all the birds are the most chatty. Right before "action," we had to kick the tree nearest to the house to try to get the birds perched on the branches to quiet down some.

Then we moved on to the next scene, with Terry confronting Hannah. Big scene. The Prom Sequence is essentially the linchpin of the movie, essentially a movie in it's own right, and this scene would be the climax of it all. The actors really brought it, faced with the daunting task of handling massive emotionally charged lines, referencing stuff we hadn't yet filmed (which was sort of the case through the whole shoot, but no where more than here).

The day was essentially pretty smooth. Next: The Prep for Prom.

Filming Recap: Day Four, 02.08.09

In this feature, we follow the production of "Reminisce," our latest HD project, completed earlier this year.

Pushing yesterday's work back to today meant that this day would go long, and we all knew it going in. That said, it was still a pretty fun day. Filmed the first 4 flashbacks, which is kind of cool, all things being equal.

The Time Capsule Scene

The first scene, Scene 9, was the first flashback, of young Terry, Hannah, and Patrick filling the time capsule. Also the scene where we first meet Patrick, and get to see Terry's first thoughts on asking out Hannah. This was probably the single non-Prom scene we spent the most time on in the writing process, trying to make sure it was right. (We did spend a lot of time on a bunch of the scenes in the Prom Sequence. But since the Prom Sequence was 12 scenes in the script, it's really an animal of it's own...)

The time capsule scene was shot in my on-campus house, in our kitchen. Once again, Karli delivered a stunning set-dressing performance, as she managed to turn the kitchen of a bunch of college slobs into one you could really see a suburban family living in. This was a fun day, since I think the Christian Bale rant had broken during the week, so we ended up talking and joking about it for pretty much the whole rest of the movie.

I don't think my roommates had any idea, when I told them I was shooting a movie there that morning, that I was referring to a crew of over a dozen and a whole bunch of lights. A couple of times they would come out of their rooms, look around in confusion, and then go back into their rooms. A couple of them also didn't understand how good our mic was, because sometimes they were still talking loud enough that we could hear them without the headphones.

After the kitchen scene, we headed down the road to shoot the next flashbacks: Terry asking Hannah out, and them returning from a date.

Outside Hannah's House

In a continuing confluence of awesome, we made a crane out of a cherry-picker. This made Josh, our DP, look suspiciously like a foreign dictator. Then, his leather jacket and gloves, coupled with a pair of my sunglasses, he looked like the Terminator.

In the pictures, you'll also notice super-grips Alex and Tadashi (who we had taken to calling "Tuck and Roll" at this point, since they somehow reminded us of the pillbugs from "A Bug's Life") serving as stand-ins for Terry and Hannah coming back from the date, and then getting carried away with their role...

Once we finished the scenes that took place outside the Hannah's House set, we headed to the cafe on campus, the Centrum, to film another date between Terry and Hannah. A date like any other, until Patrick makes things a little more interesting...

Dinner For Three

Since the Centrum closed on weekends, we had it to ourselves, so we patiently prepped the location as we waited for the sun to set. We picked out plates, slathered them with food, and dressed the tables. This was also our first scene with extras, though all of them were either crew members or family of the crew.

As the Script Supervisor, I'm always struggling to find a place from which to watch the action, but also stay out of the way of the cast and other crew members. Not the easiest task on some of our sets. Fortunately, I was able to set up shop behind the salad station, and lay all my script pages out on the counter.

Once the sun was down, we tried to figure out how to light through and against massive, incredibly reflective glass windows. Once again, Josh and his team of talent succeeded in an impressive feat of badass.

While this day did have 4 set-ups, it wasn't nearly as bad as our shoot on the 1st, because we had a lot more time to work on each location, and didn't need to worry about running as far to each set.

Satisfied with a job well done, we turned our attention to the next task before us: The Prom Sequence.

Filming Recap: Day Four, 02.07.09

In this feature, we follow the production of "Reminisce," our latest project, completed earlier this year.

So, this day isn't actually a filming day. It was supposed to be, we were supposed to film at my on-campus house/dorm thing (the school has a handful of houses, and me and my roommates were in one this year). But we all got up, looked out the window at the gathering clouds, and realized the weather would not permit filming. We could tell it was going to rain, which would have rendered the audio unusable, not to mention make it difficult to move equipment. And that's just for the scene we were supposed to film indoors.

We called the actors and let them know not to come over, then did the same for the rest of the crew. Really glad we did it, since it ended up hailing later that day. That really would have been an audio issue...

Tomorrow comes the real day four...