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.