of heart and limbs
july 28 2010the post production phase has been ongoing for the past 23 days. first let me explain that we shot this movie at the beginning of the month, and within a month, we have a near final product. that is pretty amazing. it isn't often that things get done this quickly. last night i headed to paperny films to meet with julia niendorf to go over the second rough cut. the first rough cut, when i received it i didn't feel 100% confident with it.. neither did julia. there was potential, but something was missing. then i received the second rough cut some days ago, and it flowed so much better. to do that julia had to remove an entire scene. yowzers. don't worry, it'll be on the dvd as a bonus material item. but yes. yesterday i went to paperny. we set up in an edit suite and got things going. i finally got to see the visual fx shots. and holy shit. they look so good. vern giammartino did a stellar job and i think everyone will be pleased when they see what he was able to do, over a weekend none the less. we were there for about three hours. managed to cut 14 seconds. and changed some title cards. but one other thing i'm pretty happy about is the music selection. julia had put in temp music, and it totally worked. but i still wanted something different for the end credits son. over a week, my friend dave benitez who is in one of my favorite bands the black heartthrobs, produced a song in a couple of days for this movie, and i have got to say. it is perfect. i am a zillion percent happy with this movie and how it turned out and i cannot wait to screen it and submit it to festivals.
july 5 2010
forest lawn film has been five years in the making. this script was one year in the making. today, i can say that both of these are no a success. today was the last day of filming and we were at the new bohemian restaurant in kits. there seemed to be a bit of tension in the air because we were on a strict time limit. but we got through everything a-okay with no time wasting fuck ups on my behalf. (i think). today we had my girlfriend jesse holloway come on set and stand in and play the role of 'hostess'. it was a treat for me to have her on set to watch me in action. also on set today was one of our actress' aubrey arnason who played the role of date. she was a pretty good sport and took a verbal assault by me. essentially i made fun of her brother who i am aware of. all in good fun though. slowly as the day went on we were banging out shots left and right. there was a moment where it was brought up that we might have to cut some shots but i put my foot down and said no way. we are not cutting anything. and we got through it with an hour to spare! we popped a bottle of crystal(ino) i gave a warm speech from the bottom of my cold cold heart and drank a cup each to celebrate. i wanted to keep the empty bottle as a memento but when we were putting equipment away it got misplaced. this saddens me. we packed away the equipment and slowly the crew disperced. this also saddened me. for the past four days we have been working hard on this movie and i really think that we got something beautiful here.
big thanks to everyone involved in the production process who has helped us out. tomorrow we have the wrap party and post production officially begins. stay tuned for a trailer and so on in the near future.
july 4 2010day two - today we shot at julia niendorf and franz lyonnais' apartment. a birds eye view got set up and yowzers did it ever look good. i had intended for a shaving scene where 'richard' would stare into the mirror and judge himself in a way, but we ended up having to cut that shot. we only had a half day scheduled but one of our lights broke and it took a little longer to set that up to get it right. also today i made an error and forgot a visual fx shot, so we had to play through the scene again. i had a chat with alexis adams and was told that i couldn't get my exterior shot that i wanted. i was pretty bummed about that. there is one thing forsure though about today, everything we shot looks great. once we finished shooting a few of us went to do some last minute art stuff while another bunch of the crew went to tomorrows location to pre-dress the set so that we'd have an easier time tomorrow. this proved to be a genius move and i'm glad we did it.
day three - today started off a bit on the wrong foot. i had woken up an hour before our call time and texted julia to ask if she had melissa w.'s phone number because she was looking for a phone for me. but then julia had alerted me that 'it's just me and james loading equipment. no time to chat'. so when i got to set james was there shortly before me and found out we had two gaffs. one of the errors was that a call time was labeled wrong and the other was that a team member didn't check the call sheet at night noting the time change. we later blew a fuse. awesome. it's all good in the hood though. we all make mistakes you know. so we get things going right away and jump right into it. so remember a second ago where i said we all make mistakes. well i made a couple mistakes today which cost us some time. i'm really trying to minimize mistakes but i seem to keep making them. it could have saved us maybe two hours. sorry crew. it really sucks not working in the industry over the past few years as i think it really shows. and that is not something that i want to have happen. i dont want our actors thinking 'ah this dude doesnt know what the fuck he wants' and i dont want my crew hoping to never work with me again. its a learning process thats forsure. anyways, without getting into too many details about the problems on set, id rather focus and emphasize my writing for the amazing job that the crew did. man we got some sexy looking shots today. i am really pleased with how the office scene went. when we wrapped at the office, james schlittenhart, melisa beaupre, alexis adams, and dave lewis went to alexis' place to shoot an exterior shot. originally the shot called for something different, and i had it a certain way in my head but we didn't get the exact shot we wanted, and i was a little bummed. it turned out okay i guess and i just hope that its usable. tomorrow is the last day of shooting. wish us luck.
july 3 2010two days ago we held a photoshoot at the ymca. i have a membership there and got three guest passes for alexis adams, james schlittenhart, and our actor dave lewis. we got a basketball and james took some pretty good action stills. a zillion pictures were taken and i picked a couple for the film. now they're on their way to have tattoo's removed to eventually be put in the film.
yesterday was our first day of filming. i got up at my alarm time in a cold sweat. the day before was canada day and i went to go check out the fireworks, but i was wearing shorts and worked up a sweat walking home. then i went to bed right away with the windows open so it messed with me real good. i took some medicine and got my shot list all ready as well as the green screen material and headed to julia niendorf and franz lyonnais' apartment for equipment pick up. when i arrived at julia niendorf and franz lyonnais' i got an 'oh? why are you here?'. i didn't mind helping load equipment but instead i guarded it outside. once the crew got the equipment loaded up jay macmillian, melissa beaupre and myself caught the bus to byron fudge's where we were filming. funny side note, julia niendorf's mom, martina peppler who flew from los angeles to cater our film, had given me the van keys while i watched guard.. now i had completely forgotten about it and went to go catch the bus. two blocks later i see poor julia niendorf running behind us yelling out 'cooooddddyyyy' trying to track down the keys.
when we arrived on set our crew did a great job unloading equipment and setting up pretty quickly. shortly our actors arrived and got into hair and make up pretty quickly and we were ready to shoot! all in all the day went pretty well. the worst part of the day was that julia niendorf got called into work. we had both taken this time off in march when we were kicking around this idea of filming, and yet they called her in anyways. it was a pretty lame move on their part. i mean what if she had a flight on the go or was camping like everyone seems to be doing these days.. we missed her on set. but anyways we were ahead of schedule and i was able to even add a couple shots. i think we finished two hours early. since we are doing a location a day we should have pretty short days.
i want to give a couple huge shout outs for yesterday. byron fudge and his roomate darryl stawychny who graciously lent us their apartment for filming. tom suski who volunteered his time this weekend to jump on board for sound when our original sound guy couldn't make it. jay macmillian who joined the crew literally two hours before our huge crew meeting, was our resident 'do it all' guy yesterday. and last but not least, the entire crew i would like to thank. alexis adams, brad(ley) damsgaard, james schlittenhart, melisa beaupre, melissa ward, jay macmillan, natalie zaracko, aaron cumming, martina peppler, franz lyonnais, tom suski and our actors dave lewis, and gisella maria.. without you guys we wouldn't be here. we wouldn't have a forest lawn film under way. and we certainly wouldn't have it looking good and being run professionally (mildly of course) and on time!
today is day two of filming and i am up three hours early prior to my wake up call. we are filming a small scene at julia niendorf and franz lyonnais' apartment. in the mean time, here is me and brad(ley) damsgaard.
well. what a day yesterday. actually lets start two days ago. james schlittenhart and i sat down and hammered some things out, shot list wise especially. we talked about d.o.p./director stuff and settled any lingering questions.
yesterday i met up with our actor dave lewis to discuss the role, what i expect out of him, and what to expect on set etc. it was a pretty good meeting and i feel that we are on the same page essentially. so that was pretty good. dave gave me a ride to paperny films where we held our very first crew meeting. attendees included james schlittenhart, alexis adams, brad(ley) damsgaard, natalie zaracko, melissa beaupre, melissa the make up girl (sorry i never got her last name), aaron cumming and a new addition to the team jay. this was the first time that i got to meet melissa the make up girl, aaron cumming (who will be our on set editor) and jay who will be an additional grip. jay literally was contacted by julia niendorf hours before our meeting in desperate hopes to get some extra hands on deck. also at this meeting we were informed that we have a sound guy now. i didn't catch his name but he is a welcome addition to the film.
the meeting itself went pretty smoothly. we were there for some time and all brought up issues and concerns, as well as some funny set experiences and all around good times. we start filming TOMORROW which is insane but awesome all at the same time. i am not one for big rah rah motivational speeches but i have to say that all of my crew come highly regarded and i am very excited to work with all of them to make this movie.
p.s. julia niendorf wrote a little piece about our history on her blog. you can read it here. i highly recommend it as it is quite the tear jerker.
june 28 2010the last time i posted, i wasn't in a very good mood. but there have been some good things to happen. first the bad news i guess. we lost our sound guy which is devastating. to lose a key part of your movie so close to filming isn't easy especially now since we have to add equipment to our ever expanding equipment list. but i'm sure we'll find somebody soon. i realized i had forgotten to mention who we have cast to fill our roles as richard and linda. for richard we have dave lewis. dave has a pretty extensive resume and has worked a lot on the independent vancouver film scene. gisella maria has been cast for the role of linda. gisella is a relative new comer but she has loads of potential and i hope that this is a breakout film for the both of them.
we have all of our locations locked and we managed to go and do a tech scout. james schlittenhart has arrived and it was good to see him since it has been years. julia niendorf, alexis adams, graham kew, james schlittenhart, melissa beaupre, and myself all met up at julia's place yesterday to get our tech scout underway. from there we headed downtown to our office location where we met up with our ad brad(ley) damsgaard and we figured out some logistics. thank god james and melissa were there because they came up with a solution for a problem i had been trying to rack my brain over the last week or so. after the office the five of us (minus julia) headed to byron fudge's place because we are using it as one of our locations and it couldn't be more perfect. this is the first time i saw it and it felt so good that now i've seen all of our locations and am happy with them. after our meeting i was on my way to catch the bus home and came across a show poster for the band harlem who plays on saturday night. i might make it mandatory for the crew to attend. we will see.
saturday afternoon i went and picked up some tights/knee socks in hopes to use them for our green screen material and by the sounds of it, the material and color is exactly what we need. i'll have to wait to see the picture of it in action, but i'm pretty confident it'll work out. speaking of green screen and visual effects. vern giammartino had requested a test shoot from us so we can do some figuring out. here is what we got.
yesterday wasn't a very good day. we lost our sound guy which is devastating. but on the plus natalie managed to get a wheelchair for pretty cheap so that's good. we're still having location troubles to an extent and money is certainly no good right now either. oh boy who knew making a movie would be so stressful.
june 23 2010the 22nd was a busy day. i had a cross continent meeting with james schlittenhart, our dop, in new york at 3 and a meeting right here in vancouver at 630. luckily i was able to make both thanks to a lovely technology called ichat. byron fudge who is an executive producer on this film.. or some sort of producer, there are so many credits, but whatever, we'll figure it out. anyways, byron and i had some questions for james and wanted to get him on a chat around 3pm pacific time but, what ended up happening was byron being late and us not starting until 4pm pacific. james had informed me that he had to leave at 7pm eastern time which is 4pm pacific, so i felt a little bad myself keeping james longer than he wanted. we got our questions out of the way, got some stuff solved, and more questions raised. it was a good meeting in terms of production.
the second of the two meetings took place in a fine establishment called cactus club which has hosted one previous meeting before. i along with brad(ley) damsgaard, alexis adams, and julia niendorf met up to talk about a few area's of interest such as money, art, how the call backs went, equipment and so on. natalie zaracko showed up in the tail end of the meeting so we could discuss a few art points. we also set up a photoshoot for this week so we can do some tests for our visual fx guy, vern giammartino. this week and next week are going to be a busy busy week in terms of production as we look to lock down a couple more locations, secure our actors (which will be announced today or tomorrow), and secure our equipment aswell.
on a side note, i must have had 8 or 9 glasses of water at this meeting which led to another night of constant urination. and i say 'another' because i did the same thing during casting and was urinating all day and night.
june 20 2010this is the moment where my job becomes loads harder. today we had callbacks with our five talented actors and wow did i get blown away. we could honestly go any combination and wind up with an amazing product. but i have to cut one gentleman for the role of richard, and cut two for the role of linda. we shot roughly 75 minutes of footage that i am going to have to review from tonight until wednesday morning before i have to go to work. big thanks to franz lyonnais for lending us a camera, and a big thanks to alexis adams who gave us a place to do callbacks.
now on a more serious note, our amazing producer has suffered a bit of an injury having fractured her arm. you can send virtual 'get wells' and 'get well money' to alexis at ofheart@forestlawnfilm.com
june 17 2010
i met with a visual fx artist this week. he is a swell dude by the name of vern giammartino. all of this said and done, we're moving closer and closer to production! we have also found a 1st ad. his name is brad(ley) damsgaard. i got to meet him when we were doing auditions and he sat in on a few. i look forward to him being my right hand man on set.
i've reviewed the footage. these are the 5 talented actors who will come in for call backs some time this week. i am very pleased with these 5 actors and my job now gets harder as i have to narrow down to two. i like the contrast that has been chosen and i cannot wait to see how well they play together in a scene.
yesterday we held auditions which lasted an entire day. my body wasn't 100% as i had a near death experience the day before playing baseball, and it feels like my hip is displaced or my leg is out of its socket. but i made it through the day a-okay. i got to paperny films at 845am and met julia shortly afterwards and we set up an office for us to work out of. it was pretty fun actually. i downed what must have been 40 or 50 glasses of water which messed with my bladder a little bit but hey, all part of the experience right? overall we saw 27 actors come in to fill 2 parts. for the most part i was pretty impressed with about half of the actors. some people who came in just need a little more experience under their belt. we had an actor come in who has auditioned for us before but not as 'forest lawn film'. he came in during our VFS days and it was a little funny because alexis, julia and myself were all apart of the movie he was cast on. i have until wednesday to narrow the field down and select a couple guys and a couple girls to bring back for call backs. we had a very nice variety of people to choose from. we had different body shapes, different ages, different skin colors and different personalities come in to make my job harder. a huge thank you to the following: paperny films, julia niendorf, alexis adams, franz lyonnais, and last but not least the 27 actors who took time out of their day to come in and take a stab at this unique script.
june 10 2010today was a good day despite a slightly hectic week. we've wanted to figure equipment out and as it stands we might be running a bit into the red in terms of going over budget. but then we got some good news and a truck was lent to us.
i met up with alexis at one of our locations in hopes to lock it. the new bohemian looks amazing and i'm happy to say that we have locked the location and will be shooting there. the owner was a great guy and i look forward to being at his location to shoot and to party afterwards for our after party.
i also got to check out the lineup of actors who will be coming to audition. we have a great bunch of people coming out to audition for this movie and i'm super pleased with the response it has gotten. we are going to have a busy busy day on sunday and i look forward to every second of it. i've always been the right hand man when it comes time to be in the room for casting but i'm pretty stoked to run the show sunday.
on a side note. a guy who wants to come in and audition, listed 'labryinth master' under his skills section. this is going to be awesome.
in other news our director of photography james schlittenhart has a flight booked from new york city and will be here in sixteen days. james is a pretty swell guy who pretty much got deported (perhaps by choice) shortly after school. he was in the class after ours and he, byron and myself had some pretty good times in the summer with hitting a ball around and playing fifa 07 in my basement suite, so it'll be nice to see him again.
also my dear friend neal breton is drawing us our dvd cover / poster. i got to see a sneak peak of it today and i'm pretty impressed. it'll be nice to see the final product.
june 6 2010today we had our production meeting a few days after when we really wanted to but schedules conflicted. today i crossed the dreaded granville bridge to meet up with julia and natalie who will be our art director. i havn't seen natalie in over a year, so it was pretty nostalgic to be around some people i've worked with before. we tried to figure out as much art as we could but some of it is dependant on our locations which aren't locked yet. this time next month we should be wrapped so it's getting a little hectic now. but i'm staying calm. natalie hung around for an hour and a bit and we got the art started, it was pretty good.
while julia and myself were waiting for alexis, we put our heads together and came up with a log line and synopsis for our casting stuff which should be posted tonight. next sunday we're going to be doing auditions!
alexis arrived to the meeting and we discussed a few locations things, and other topics like money. it was a short meeting as we've been talking all week but after we left i got to go to julia's apartment where i got to see one of our locations. it is the first one i have seen in the flesh and i'd have to say it was right along the lines of what i had in mind so spirits are up!
may 26 2010yesterday was the second meeting i've been apart of for my upcoming film 'of heart and limbs'. julia (writer) and myself have met before to just kick around some ideas and dates and so on and so forth. yesterday, our producer alexis joined us for our meeting. alexis was a classmate of mine and julia's during our time at vancouver film school.
we talked about locations, cast, crew, and everything in between. unfortunately we're not having an easy go of finding a 1st-ad. but i am confident that we will by the time that we need it. locations seem to be heading in the right direction but we don't have anything in paper yet so i shouldn't say too much.
this week we're going to try and figure out a few more things in terms of the nitty gritty and hopefully the next time we meet we'll have everything we need locked or heading that way.
