Short AND Sweet

Geez. The bottoms of my feet feel like they are bruised. I was on them for 15-18 hours on both Saturday and Sunday for the shoot of my new short, "The Red-Headed Menace". Saturday was all prep work, changing two rooms in a Victorian mansion into a set that looks like an upscale restaurant, and then prepping food: for breakfast cooked off 3 dozen eggs, 4 pounds of bacon and sliced a ham, for dinner cooked up a triple-batch of my famed white wine & mushroom risotto, 3 different kinds of chicken, and sauteed asparagus. Roughly breakfast for 12 and dinner for 3 times that. It was ahuge pain, but made the food service the next day run very smoothly, so all my craft services (headed by Regina, of course, though I scrounged up several assistants for her) people had to do was warm everything and boil a mountain of corn on the cob that my Mom had given me.

The whole shoot went incredibly smoothly, actually. Granted, we finished at 11pm when I had told people I had hoped to be wrapped by 8pm, but we did manage to let everyone but a few essential people go by 9:30pm. And I should have said 11pm to begin with. To shoot 8 pages consisting of 6 vignettes (pieces each shot in a different room or part of a room, so requiring a lighting change), a steadicam shot, a fire stunt (actually 4 fire stunts, if you count each vignette that a fire stunt appears in, and 6 if you count how many times we had to do it because some scenes required two takes), another stunt, two scenes with three children, and three scenes each where Michelle and I each had to "act" (I can't really use the word without quotes around it, as that would be an insult to the real actors on the set)... to shoot that all in 9 hours including 30 minutes for dinner (plus the coordination it took to feed the almost FIFTY people who were on the set throughout the course of the day)... you better believe I am pretty damn happy with how well it went.

I was very glad to get back on the set with Michelle, and a year after shooting our first film together when we did "Smalltimore", now we know each other so well that we practically have it down to a science. Nearly all of our arguments were staged, and none of them were serious. Most were about her trying to weasel out of the scenes I had written for her, but eventually I got what I wanted out of her, and it is some pretty funny stuff.

I think the only day on "Smalltimore" that I had nearly as many people on set was the day we shot scenes with the band at the Wind-Up Space. That was a 15 hour day and one of the most stressful of the entire production. I've learned a lot since then.

It took a lot of people to make the day glide along so well. My Mom was down for a visit from Pennsyltucky, and I put her to work steaming and cutting vegetables, arranging prop plates of food (oh, yea - unless this is a magical restaurant where everyone is having after-dinner coffee at the same time, you better have plates of food in various stages of being eaten if you are going to make it look good), making flower arrangements, etc. I get my eye for artistic balance from my Mom and she is one of the few and possibly the only person I would entrust such tasks to.

Doing this short confirmed to me that I truly do not enjoy producing. I can do it, I've done it, and I seem to be pretty good at it. But I really don't enjoy it, and the next time I shoot something, I have to find someone I can trust to do it for me. The good thing about doing it myself is that I know that when it is time for the camera to roll, everything will be done the way I wanted it in the first place and I won't have to make adjustments. There are some parts that I like, like dressing the set, which in this case took a lot of time, and I really like when other people trust me to dress the set on their productions. But all the other stuff, breaking down the script, assigning tasks, trying to supervise oodles of people, grocery shopping and cooking... I know Regina would have helped me more with that stuff had I asked, but she had a sizable role in the short and I wanted her to be able to concentrate on that. She did help a lot, picking up some essentials (such as diet root beer for me and diet Mountain Dew for Michelle) beforehand, and she coordinated the crafty once I handed her the reins on that. Great to be working with her again also, and it was fun to direct her in a real speaking role this time. She rocked it out.

Lois Tuttle and Stephanie Refo rounded up the majority of the production assistants and extras, which was crucial to make the opening scene, and all of the scenes, look as good as they do. Lois was my Extra Extraordinaire, arriving early to help out and staying until the bitter end, and to Stephanie I assigned the role of Assistant Director. Whenever people ask me what I would do differently after shooting "Smalltimore," one of the first things I tell them is "HAVE AN ASSISTANT DIRECTOR". That person takes care of some of the production stuff, like having everyone sign release forms, that I hate doing, supervises extras and crew who are not on the film team, and in a nutshell is the person that when the director says, "I need this..." they make it happen, as quickly as possible. It was Steph's first time doing anything like this, and she did a tremendous job, also sticking around until the very end of the night.

We had several newbies in as Production Assistants. Everyone did a great job though a couple mysteriously disappeared during the course of the day, never to be seen again. It happens. I am not sure what people really expect a movie set to be like. Maybe I am too practical. I love being on the set and I do think it is pretty cool, but even before I was ever on one I didn't have a glamorous pre-conceived notion about what it would be like. How could it NOT be incredibly hard work and long hours? Many are just not mentally prepared or cut out for it.

Li was a FANTASTIC Assistant Camera (AC), and by the end of the day, Michelle was letting her take the camera and do the B-roll footage of a group scene that I needed, plus Li was the cameraperson on the scenes that Michelle was acting, er, "acting" in. Li was a PA for me on "Juju." She is a very smart person and knows that the best way to learn things is by doing them on a set and paying your dues. The whole time she was working with me on "Juju" I was afraid she was going to get bored (we spent most of our day reshuffling the entire call sheet for the next day, as the production was often behind schedule - work that is both boring and frustrating) and defect or be drafted to the film crew. But she did seem to enjoy the hands-on learning of the production side of things and she stuck with me. It was great to work with her yesterday in her full capacity behind the camera.

I had some GREAT actors, who of course are only going to make me look that much worse. Still not sure how I am going to edit around myself, but I'll figure something out. Maybe I can have Craig Herron rotoscope me out in post! Craig had a few lines himself, and he did really well.

In addition to Regina Guy making a big splash in a role I wrote just for her, three of my actors from "Smalltimore" returned to me, Cheryl Scungio, Johnny Benson, and Kelly Coston. Poor Kelly had just flown in from Jamaica, flying into Philly, and hauled ass to get here but was just a few minutes late from when I had no choice but to film the opening scene, so she didn't get as much face time as I wanted to give her, but she's still in there as an extra. Cheryl had one bitter little scene which she pulled off really well. I love making her play roles that totally cut against the grain of her sweet self, it makes it that much more funny, if only to me. Johnny got held up and almost couldn't make it, which about gave me a heart attack because I knew no one could pull off the scenes like he could, but he made it in time. And true to form, he carried the lion's share of comic relief. His first take is unusable because everyone on the set, including me, burst out laughing when he read his lines. Also at the last minute he volunteered for a stunt that I had previously envisioned but didn't want to ask him to risk hurting himself. Then he came up with the same thing himself, and as luck would have it, since Jeff Wilhelm and Mark Mosier (the stunt guys for the fire stunt, I worked with them on "Juju" also) were there, they had the right pad in their car, and we did it! It was so hysterical that I have caught myself laughing out loud a couple times today just thinking about it.

I also borrowed several actors from the set of, "The Rosens," Steve yeager's latest project, which I have been working on as AD. Bobby DeAngelo has a broken ankle, so I wrote that into the script for him. His foot was really throbbing by the end of the day, but he was a trooper and stayed as late as I needed him in order to get all the essential parts. Megan Rippey and David Thornhill were great, and both stayed late to do one little three-line scene. I also had three child actors on the set, and I needed to shoot them as it was getting late and the younger ones were fading. I could have lived without that last scene between David and Megan, though I rather would have not, and they were good sports about it. By now we had been working so long that while we were doing the scene, at one point we had to hold for sound because an ambulance was going by. Megan and David started running the line over and over anyway, and it morphed into this funny improv bit. I nudged Michelle to roll the camera, and I let them run on for several minutes, while they cracked up the remaining cast and crew. We were all pretty punchy by then and it was a fun moment that gave us that little extra bit of juice to finish the little pieces I needed to complete the short.

Oh, and Steve Yeager and his wife Patty even stopped by the set to say hello! I'll soon be back on the set with Steve for more filming of, "The Rosens," can't wait.

I also got to work with Alex Hewett for the first time, though I see her in so many local productions that I almost feel as if I had worked with her before. Alex is the Resident Actor at The Strand Theater, and she has her hands in everything. She was another that stayed after almost everyone else had left, so I could get this little piece of her saying just two lines that I had added to the script while we were on the set. It was the answer shot to a little piece we filmed earlier in the day, where I threw my friend Lisa Knoch, who was our make-up artist for the day, onto the live set and made her say a line. Lisa was super-nervous and none too happy with me, but she was a good sport and she did it. I think it will be funny and if Alex hadn't been willing to stick around to film her part of it, I would not have been able to use Lisa's bit. Alex is a real pro and I look forward to working with her again, as well as all of the actors I have mentioned.

Another group of buddies that helped me out were my waiter friends from the Prime Rib restaurant. And for the record, I often say that the Prime Rib is pretty close to my idea of Heaven - hot men in tuxedos serving me amazing food and champagne. Seriously. Anyway, I went over there just last Wednesday night to see if I could talk any of them into coming over in their tuxedos to be extras and maybe have a line or two. I thought I was going to have to sweet-talk them into it, but they all jumped at it, and I ended up getting SIX real waiters in real tuxedos, and it added SO much to the production values in helping the set to look like a very posh restaurant. Three of them were also in one of the scenes with the fire gag, and that is another part that makes me laugh just thinking about it. My heartfelt thanks goes out to Danny, Brad, Mark, Pedro, Aaron, and Christopher! And extra thanks for letting me borrow the menus for props.

And the kids! Kids in a movie make Michelle nervous, because you never know if they are going to lose their nerve at the last minute. I've had kids in both "Smalltimore" and now in "The Red-Headed Menace" and it has worked out quite well both times. I like making Michelle nervous. I started off just needing one little red-headed kid, and ended up with THREE! Nicole (12), Colleen (8), and Charlie (6). They did such a good job! They played Regina's (who is also a red-head) kids, and some people on the set thought they actually were her kids. I know it was especially tough on the little ones when we ran late, but they were troopers. Charlie was negotiating with me. "How much longer do you think it will be?" I had to admit to him that it was going to be awhile before we could shoot his next scene. "But how long?" he politely demanded. "One hour? Two?" I was a little taken aback by this. "Um, probably an hour and a half." I told him if he was tired he didn't have to stay (though I REALLY wanted/needed him to). He thought about it a minute. "That's not too bad," he said. "We'll wait." It did indeed take at least that long and he was fading fast, as was Colleen, by the time we filmed his next scene with the three kids, but they hung in there. Charlie's line was, "Mom, I'm bored." He said his line, and when we cut the scene he told me, "I really AM bored." He was so cute I almost had to keep him.

Also want to thank specifically Joey Kasula (gaffer), Fred Besche (sound), and Megan Reed (Key Everything + Keeping Michelle In Line) for being such an awesome crew!

Oops, Michelle is at the back door, come to pick up the rest of her gear, so I gotta run. So many more people than I have mentioned to thank, but I have to get back to work cleaning up the set. Thanks again to EVERYONE for helping to make yesterday such a success, I can't wait to edit it! I'll post pictures soon on the "Smalltimore, the Movie" facebook page.