Comedy of Errors

[Tiffany Ariany as Angela, goofing around on the set]

Sorry about the break, just been busy, AND tired of sitting on my hindquarters (my ass actually HURTS from sitting so much). I drove up to Mikey's cabin last Friday, it is a 200-mile hike. The next day Mikey and I ran around scouting locations for a future project, and in the process logged another 200 miles. That Sunday, Mikey returned to NYC and I only put 140 miles on the car running around without him, then Monday drove 200 back to Baltimore - after an editing session of 9 hours straight from 9:00pm Sunday night to 6:00am Monday morning. That is a LOT of sitting.

But all worth it. I have been so holed up in my cave, editing or doing other movie-related stuff, it was nice to see the light of day, trees, people, etc. And equally importantly I did get a lot done in that nine-hour session - the GAG REEL!

I think it must be everyone's favorite part of a movie. Don't you always hope that you get to see the clips of actors messing up while the credits roll? I don't care if it is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Actually, that makes it even more funny to see the behind-the-scenes.

I was afraid I wouldn't have much to work with. Because we were shooting with the P2 (digital) cards, we did have a limited amount of recording time per day, and there were a couple days where we used up almost every second. So, as soon as I yelled, "cut!" Michelle would turn off the camera to preserve space on the cards. Therefore, when we did have a screw-up, even a funny one, we didn't have the luxury of letting the camera roll to capture it.

Another lesson learned. On the pick-up day that Eric served as DP, we shot on MiniDV tapes, so we could fool around and keep the camera rolling no matter what. Tape is pretty cheap. However, downloading is a bigger pain with tape, as you download in real time (one hour of tape = one hour of downloading), whereas offloading the P2 digital cards is much faster, something like 1/6 of the time. Also the great thing about the cards is that every time you shut the camera off, it stores that bit as a separate clip. With tape, it is one continuous stream and you have to chop it up yourself in post-production. Some people still prefer doing it this way, but I well prefer working with the cards. SO much easier in my opinion.

Except that you can't just let the camera roll. I know (yet another) something I would do differently next time to alleviate that problem, though. There was one day where we were literally down to the last take because the cards were full. If we didn't get it right on that take, we would have had to have gone back and erased some earlier footage to get another take in. An easy solution would have been to have the hard drive on the set and had one of the Assistant Camera people offload what we had recorded so far onto the drive during lunch. That is definitely the way I will work it the next time.

But, turns out I had PLENTY to work with. Everybody screws up sometime, thank goodness! If it hadn't been so funny, I never would have stayed up until 6:00am working on it. I think it turned out really well. I am soooo ready to be done with editing, but I am glad I made myself do this. Sometimes in retrospect it is hard for me to remember how much fun production was, because I was so focused and wearing so many hats at the same time. I didn't have that much time to enjoy it while it was happening because I had to keep myself and everyone on track. But in the gag reel you can hear me laughing at every single screw-up, and it brought it all back to me that I did have fun, every single day, even the days that I wanted to kill someone (or myself).

The gag reel will run at the end of the movie, with the credits. NO ONE has seen it except me, and no one will before the premiere. So you better be there!

Sunday, May 3rd
SMALLTIMORE PREMIERE!!!
at the Wind-Up Space
Doors 6:00pm
Screening 7:00pm
Cover $7
Cash bar