Production Diary - Day Six - And on the seventh day he... DOH!

And on the seventh day... he grumbled and prepared to shoot more footage. *sigh*

I'm a little tired. I've been out every night this week working on the film. The footage has been spectacular. I went home last night, after filming, and immediately plugged the tape into my camera so that I could watch it (without sound), even though it meant not getting to sleep until One am.

Last night, we had a case of the crazies. Everyone was just a little bit mentally fatigued and it started bringing out the humor, which resulted in some really funny outtakes, but also slowed things down. Still, we managed to get all the shots we needed and ended at our normal time.

The scenes we shot were about half of the night time scenes that take place in the mental facility. So we set up the lights and shot the scenes in "moonlight" with flashlights and all sorts of cool effects. The end result, while maybe not "movie" spectacular, were pretty darn good for such a small budget. And in this case, I think budget has to refer not only to money spent but also time and crew. We didn't have a huge crew nor the time to do anything more elaborate. In fact, although we had three lights, we only used one.

In the first scene, yours truly had to actually do some angst filled acting. And I think I came pretty darn close to nailing the scene. Nobody, of course, is more surprised than myself. When I see what the other actors do, those who have been trained to act, I have no clue as to how they do it. So for me to come into a scene and hold my own... well, I was seriously mystified as to how it happened. Suffice it to say, when the suggestion to do another take came up, I just said, "No, let's move on. You're not going to get anything better out of me."

We shot two of the films multiple endings (you'll see... ;) last night as well as several outtake moments and a few tying up loose ends moments from other day's shoots. After all the shooting we've done this week, we're still only 44% finished with all of the shots we need.

Tomorrow we do our first location shooting away from the church. We're coming to my office here at Yasutomo to film a scene in a locker room (I'm not really sure why this office has a locker room, but I'm not complaining either ;) and then we're going to my sister's new office to shoot some interview scenes that start to fill out the mockumentary aspects of this film. Hopefully, a nice short day of filming followed by a quick retirement to a bar somewhere to celebrate the halfway point of the filming.

And then, on Sunday, I need to make all the preparations for the massive shoot on Monday (the second to last massive filming day!) where we're going to be getting all the master shots and all the scenes with extras in them filmed in one six hour period. Yeah, right! Thematically, we're covering like half the scenes in the movie in one day. But by the end of the night on Monday, the end will definitely be in sight.

So, here is my call out to all who live in the area and might be interested in doing something fun on Monday night... I need extras! You will do nothing more than stand in the background probably. But if you bring a robe, you will appear in at least one scene. And if you bring a white shirt and dark slacks, you might appear in another scene. And if you bring both, you might appear in the same scene twice, in different outfits, and with a fake moustache! So, get in touch, and I'll put you in my film.

Have a great weekend!