Warner Brothers Shoot: Day 1

I haven't been this tired in a long time. Yesterday I was running around all over LA and Burbank getting equipment for today's shoot, and I didn't get to go to sleep until 1:30 or so. That would be normal for me, if I wouldn't have had to get up at 5 am. That's bloody early, my friends. That's so early I'm not even hungry. I don't like waking up before the sun does, it's just not right. We left USC at around 7:30 and drove a huge coach bus with our whole class and all the actors and unpacked all of our equipment and took it to our sets at about 8:30. We started shooting at 9 or so. We started with our flashback scene, which is the only exterior (outside) scene in the whole movie. We got that out of the way, and started setting up and lighting our interior scene, in our amazing location, which is this great wide open set that looks like an abandoned building on the inside. It had wooden beams and rafters everywhere, and is really tall. It's a great mobster hangout area, which is why we chose to shoot there.

Our actor's looked amazing, and it was really great to get to see Tony's script come to life. I really enjoyed working with these particular actors, they were a lot of fun and seemed to have a great time. It was fun to goof around on the set with them, especially with the prop guns and money. Our actor, Cal, who is this Australian guy playing the "bodyguard" also is really good at makeup (which we found out on set today, which was a totally bonus) which really helped us out. He touched up all the guys and made them look great for camera, and as for our only actress, Sam, she did all of her own makeup, because, well you know, girls already know all that crap. Cal also was really into taking pictures all over the set, and when we were setting up shots or working on lighting or something, he would take pictures of the other actors "in character". Here are a few of his pictures that he sent us, we'll get the rest up later.



(Cal is the one in the upper right, Nevada Vargas in the middle playing "Marco Sarlone")

This is Michael Vitiello playing "Tommy Sarlone":



Here is our Femme Fatale "Gloria" played by Samantha Colburn.



Here's a shot from the exterior flashback scene with "Tommy" and "Gloria."



Here's a shot of our crew in a golf cart at WB at the end of today. We were exhausted, but still not ready to leave the lot!

Director: Anne (middle)
Writer/Gaffer: Tony (left)
Producer/1st Ad: Me (back right)
Sound: Armando (right)
Director of Photography: Oscar (back left)



Tomorrow is the exciting day, we are shooting the fight scene, and then some more action. I'll get a lot more sleep tonight, but first I have to go get some more supplies for tomorrow's shoot.

Random sidenote about today: The cast and crew loved juice boxes on set. It was amazing, they were all gone in about an hour. I thought it was hilarious, all these tough mobsters, drinking their little juice boxes in this huge abandoned warehouse. Stuff like that cracks me up....

I'll post later about tomorrow, and will get more pictures up... I'm having a blast, doing what I love... that's really all you need to know. ;)

Post Production and Fake Money

Today we went back to WB and got to scout our locations for where we will be shooting this weekend. We are shooting in this place called the "firehouse" with beautiful rafters and wooden beams going everywhere. It's going to be a great little hangout spot for our mobster characters. It's going to be a blast to shoot there. We got escorted around by the Director and Vice-President of Operations and WB (who have been helping us get around and do things the past 4 weeks). They are great guys and have a wealth of experience to share with us.

After that, we got our final tour at WB, the post production tour. We toured the Foley sound room (where they create and record sounds with all different kinds of things and toys and materials to recreate certain sounds), the orchestra room (where they record live orchestra's for movies' scores and such), the ADR room (where they record actors talking if they need to rerecord their voices in post, the same rooms that actors record their voices for animated movies), and multiple mixing rooms. The best part of the tour was when we walked into this huge room with a screen the size of a movie-theater screen, with sound proof walls, and a top of the line state of the art sound system. There was a HUGE mixing board, and we were told that the guys in there were putting he finishing touches on the new Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman movie, The Invasion. We got to watch the first 7-8 minutes of the movie, and it looks amazing. I have never heard sound that was that good in a movie before. It's not that the movie had the best sound, it was just the room we were in. I was hoping the producer, Joel Silver, would be there, because he might be my favorite Producer in the biz, after producing the Matrix trilogy and countless other awesome films. (IMDB him if you want to know....)

Once I got back home, Tony and I went to the prop house 15 miles away and got some nice fakes money (two fad wads of hundreds) for our shoot. Now we have two very realistic prop guns and fad wads of cash...trouble could definitely follow if we aren't careful.... hehe. Tomorrow we have tons to do, rent folding chairs, coolers, organize our craft services (food) for the two days of shooting, get actor release forms, do a rehearsal/read through with the actors, go get a dolly and 30 feet of track, go to Burbank to get our mat box, make fake blood, go over our shot lists and call sheets....and I'm probably forgetting a few things. Tomorrow is the last hard day of pre-production, and then the fun stuff begins. Saturday I have to wake up at like 5:15 am! If you know me at all, you know this is not good news for me. We are leaving USC at 7:30 for WB, and starting to shoot at 8:30 or 9 all the way until 3:30. It's going to rock! We will be so exhausted by Monday, but will hopefully have great films to show for it! It sure is a good feeling to be exhausted at the end of the day doing something that you love. I hope all of you figure out whatever it is that will do that for you...I can't believe I'm 19 and already know what I want to do. I mean not have a lot of the means of money that a lot of people to do accomplish things, but at least I've got a bit of a head start!

Alright time to get some sleep before I start losing it again!

We have our actors!

I'll write more on it later, but we have been casting the last two days and have finally decided on our 4 main characters for our short film, A New Don. We are filming this weekend at Warner Brothers, which is definitely going to be the highlight of my time down here. The rest of the week is preparation for this weekend and our shoot. We have to get props, costumes, all kinds of forms and permits signed, catering, lighting and sound equipment, set design stuff and more just in a matter of days. This is "hell week" but is the most fun week. We are working from like 9-9 every day, but we all are loving it. I mean hey, this is what I signed up for, and I'm loving every second of it. I'm getting so much good experience. I've even met some amazing people. Yesterday we met some guy who claimed to be in the new Will Ferrell movie, "Semi Pro" and was working on a script with Ice Cube. Who knows if this guy was legit, but it was cool to talk with him with some other people for like 30 mins. Anyways, I need to get some sleep, I am exhausted already and it's only Tuesday! I'll keep you all posted on the progress...just be very excited for our film, it's going to be awesome.

SF+RK-Love

This made my day.

McG,Disneyland, Casting

The last few days have been pretty awesome. We went to Warner Bros. again and met McG (this is what he goes by and is known by, pronounced" Mc GEE), the Director of Charlie's Angels 1 and 2 and We Are Marshall. He is director and executive producer for a show called "Chuck" coming out this fall on NBC. It's about a guy who works for a store like Best Buy and is in the "Geek Squad" by day and turns into James Bond by night. Should be interesting, since it is technically a one hour drama. He was even nice enough to take us onto the set that is being built for it! It looks just like a best buy, except all green instead of all blue. McG is such a great guy, he was really excited to meet us all and get to talk with him. He is also Directing a movie due out next summer which sounds pretty cool. He said that he was just going over the movie with the screen writer for Little Miss Sunshine, who was 2 floors above us! He also showed us Zack Snyder's parking spot. (Director of 300). McG is such a charismatic, witty and clever guy. I learned a lot from him, and it was inspiring to know that someone made it into the biz that didn't go to film school! He went to UC Irvine. He then did a few music videos and somehow met Quentin Tarantino who was his "in" into Hollywood, and helped him get on his feet by getting signed to Direct Charlie's Angels. Anyways, McG is awesome, keep your eye out for him, I'm sure he will be making some great stuff in the next few years.

We went to Warner Bros. and toured the Wardrobe department which was fantastic. Look at the pictures here:

http://csuchico.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035817&l=c207b&id=29904207


There were TONS of costumes and clothes of all kinds. This was a small warehouse full of costumes that have been accumulated for 100 years. There were costumes from The Last Samurai, Alexander, and obviously tons of other movies. We got a great behind the scenes tour, it's hard to describe it all, so just check out the pictures!

The next day, we went to Disneyland! 11 of us left at about 7:45 in the morning and drove 25 miles to Anaheim. It was an amazing day, probably the least amount of waiting I've ever done at the park, which was amazing since it was a Friday in the summer. We went on every single main ride at the park except for the Matterhorn which I wasn't too bummed about missing. The new Finding Nemo subs are pretty cool, not amazing, but worth seeing once. I saw the fireworks and Fantasmic for the first time in a lonnnng time, which were both amazing. I have to say, the fireworks I saw yesterday were probably the best I've ever seen in my life. Hands down. Just amazing. I can't even believe they do that every night. I got chills multiple times they were so good. Especially with the synchronization to the music, it just made the whole event spectacular.

Here are some of the pictures I took during the day. I didn't take that many considering most of it I've seen already...

http://csuchico.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035818&l=a963b&id=29904207

It was overall a great day, we stayed until abotu 12:30 AM and we were EXTREMELY tired at the end of the day, but hey, we got our money's worth! We all got a well-deserved break.

Back in the film world, we only have one week until we shoot at Warner Brothers! We now have our crews for our Warner Bros. shorts, now we have to cast actors and get everything planned. I have to get a permit for our fight scene and another permit for the prop guns that we need. I actually like being a producer a lot more than I thought I would. I like being in charge of so much! I have to go hire a makeup artist for blood and stuff, and to touch people up in between scenes so they don't have too much shine on their faces. I also have to get a stunt choreographer, and some props for the fight scene, so we can make it look realistic when people get punched and shot.

Today I e-mailed 38 different actors for 4 different roles, and so far about 6 have responded. We are having auditions on Monday and Tuesday, and I'm really excited to get to be a part of the audition process. I can't believe the amount of power we have! Some of these actors have a lot of experience. One of them has been on 24, Cold Case, Reno 911, just to name a few. Obviously not with a huge role or anything, but the experience is great! I can't wait to show you all pictures of the actors when we cast them.

I have an incredible amount of work to do in one week. Our final draft of the script will be done on Monday, and then it's off to get everything ready for shooting this Saturday and Sunday. We will have a read through with our actors for a rehearsal the day before, on Friday. We go back to WB again on thursday to get a tour of the post production labs too, which should be a lot of fun.

Okay I need my one day of sleeping in for this week...hasta luego!

The lowlight, Our WB story progresses

I guess I haven't actually written about it here, and I feel like I should. On Sunday we were shooting Tony's commercial before I was going to head to church, (so we were in a little bit of a hurry) and we started with the interior scene. We were shooting this hilarious snickers commercial, where I got to be the main character (again!) and after we lit the living room, we shot all of the interior scenes. Once that was done, all we needed to do was get a shot across the street at the infamous dollar store. I was going to go straight to church from there, so I said, "Hey lets drive so we don't have to carry all the equipment." I jumped in to drive, and right before Tony and Armando (the other actor in the commercial) got in the car, Tony (who had the camera) set the camera down on the roof of my car, helped Armando put the tripod in the tripod bag, and then jumped in the car. We got over to the dollar store (honestly like 20 seconds later) and Tony immediately said, "Hey where is the camera?" right when he got out of the car. I said, "What do you mean where is the CAMERA?" He said that he set it on the roof of my car, and we all realized immediately what had happened. I told him to run back over across the street to go and assess the obvious damage that the camera had taken. I drove back over, and the camera was GONE. No pieces, no nothing. We checked everywhere. Under the cars, in the gutters, across the street, in the apartment, back over in the dollar store parking lot, down the street, I mean EVERYWHERE. So, in a matter of about 90 seconds, the camera was set on the roof of my car, we drove off, it fell, and BAM someone came by and stole it. We have no idea how badly it was damaged. What peeves us is that by some miracle, it may not have been completely smashed and broken. It also annoys me that we couldn't find any pieces or anything to confirm our suspicions that somebody stole it. I actually saw a cop across the street and went and talked to him about it and he told us that it would be considered lost property and would not count as a theft. Now, Tony had to file a little report with USC telling what happened and he is still waiting for the response on whether he only has to pay 500 bucks (cause the insurance on it has a 500 dollar deductible). I'm a little worried the insurance company will file this under negligence, and consider is lost property and not pay for it. If that's the case, Tony has to pay the full price for the camera, which is somewhere around 3-4 grand. What made things worse is that the BIG battery was on the camera, and his tape with his commercial in it. So he lost his project, but luckily our professor was gracious enough to let him re shoot it this weekend. So needless to say, that was the low point of our experience here...but we're trying not to let it bother us too much.


As for better news, all of our crews have directors! Today all the wannabe Director's pitched for whatever story they wanted, then the producers and writers collaborated (Tony and I talked over a nice Taco bell lunch) and chose a Director. Then the producers (me!) had to get up and tell the class who they chose. Now I know how those judges on reality shows feel. It was hard telling people that they didn't get the job, but it was also really fun to tell someone that you loved their pitch and they got the job. Very interesting to be on the other side for once. Our director is this girl Anne, who goes to film school in Chicago and is a really talented cinematographer and editor with a solid amount of experience and a great vision. She is our director, I'm the producer, and tony is the writer. We still need to re-write the script, assign the rest of our crew, hold auditions to cast our actors, and so on. Everyone is really excited about the story and getting to shoot on the Warner Bros. lot. The story is a gritty Film-noir action story. Right now the working title is "A New Don." I'm pretty sure it would get an R rating for the violence and language it has, which is interesting, but hey, I didn't write it. I'm really looking forward to casting our actors, it will be a lot of fun to bring the story to life, step by step. This weekend is really our last weekend before we are SUPER busy, thus why we are trying to go to Disneyland on Friday. Tonight I'm having dinner with our writer and Director to talk specifically about the story and things we need to get done.

Anyone seen Harry Potter yet? I'm looking forward to seeing it soon if I can...it looks amazing...

Commercial screenings

New photos added to this album:

http://csuchico.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035419&l=f0f8e&id=29904207

We screened the commercials today and mine was received a lot better than I thought it would be. The sound wasn't as much of an issue as I thought it would be, the only problem was that my rhythm and pacing was a little off. The overall quality of all of the commercials from the class was way higher than our last project, which was pretty cool. A lot of the skills from people really came out during the editing stage this time around. It was really clear which people had edited a lot before and used a lot of effects in post production before. It was a pretty cool feeling to edit something entirely myself using Avid (which is what most of Hollywood uses today). I don't have my commercial and a way to get it on my computer or else I would post it here, so I'll do that as soon as I can.

Tomorrow we have people pitching to direct, which should be fun, since Tony (writer) and I (producer) get to help make the choice for who we want to direct our story.

This Friday we are all thinking about going to Disneyland because our friend Tom might be able to get us (or at least some of us) in for free via his Dad's friend who works there... which would be AWESOME! I haven't been in a few years, and I want to see what's new, including the new Finding Nemo Subs!