Day Five.

During our shoot we watched an episode of The Simpsons which featured a line that we more or less feels sums up our feelings about the shoot.

Director: Milhouse, we have to do the “Jiminy-Jillikers” scene again!
Milhouse: We did it. It took seven hours but we did it, it’s done.
Director: Yes, but we’ve got to do it from different angles, again and again, and again and again and again.

Little did we realize how much it was going to apply.

Monday we got back to school and we had all watched the rough-cut. We all discussed our thoughts and Mitch and Nate thought it was necessary to return to the park and re-shoot the park scene however to do it at night. After our insanely long shoot, and our subsequent re-shoot on the Thursday I was less than pleased at the idea of returning to do everything over again, not only that but to return to it at night (remember the white car?).

However when your producer tells you to do something, you can’t exactly say no. So it was decided that Wednesday after school (and after a long day of performing with Troupe) we would go and shoot the final dark-room scene, and then following that we would meet up at the park after Robin was done her vocal lesson.

The Dark Room.
The first hour in the dark room was spent developing photos. This was a fairly successful process, and the photos that Mitch took look absolutely fantastic!

At about 5.00 Mitch had to take off to go to work, and Nathan, Bill, and myself were left to ourselves to shoot.

The shoot went pretty well. Highlights included me wailing my head off the shelf, me looking like I had been hit by a bus, and Bill tucking while developing photos.

After about 4 hours in the dark room Reid came up to check on us. It was 7.00 and we were just wrapping up in there. We managed to get just about everything (excluding some stuff involving Robin and the lipstick on the neck – which turned out looking more like a welt). We packed up, and headed out for Pitas.

Return to The Park.
The park. We were back. The third time. If we didn’t pull this off this time, I was going to scream so I told everyone that we were not leaving until we got everything.

We arrived and things looked like they were going to be okay. Robin was nervous about the crying scene and I told her to stay in the car and prepare while we all went and dressed the set and got our lighting all ready.

Once the set was prepared, we had to get into costume. It was at this point I had a mini heart attack when we couldn’t find half the stuff (we did eventually track it down), and then when we discovered how few matches we had.

Then I realized I left the charged battery at school. I had another mini-break down. Everyone assured me we could fix it and that it wasn’t going to be an issue (they were right) and so after hitting my head a few times on the concrete box, I was ready.

Everything went off without a hitch. Robin’s break down was heart wrenching… Bill’s death scene was gorgeous… the cigarette in the ring box looked like an art project. Things went so smoothly – probably one of the smoothest shoots yet… although also a very long one. Robin did also almost set Bill on fire… but thankfully he was fine. And best of all, it didn’t pour rain like it was supposed to, so we managed to get every single shot we needed without having to worry.

The highlight however had to be when Bill ran the scene whilst doing the tuck. This caused Robin and I (who were holding the light behind the concrete box) to burst into laughter… and the best part is, we caught it all on film.

We’re almost done shooting. Hopefully by the end of the week we will be wrapped. I have my edit day on Wednesday and hopefully that will go really well and allow me to get a lot done. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh and for all you tuck fans, let me present to you the genius of Bill Watterson doing The Tuck.

Day Four.

Thursday. Day four. And we thought it was going to be a while before we all got together to shoot again. Today was quite possibly the coldest of our shoots yet. Despite the fact that the weather widget says its only -1, with the wind it was butt-ass cold!

I originally started writing this post just after we had finished up the shoot over at Williams (where I got free WiFi) however I had to top because my joints were locking up they were so cold.

The shoot sort of materialized out of no where. We were originally going to just meet up on Thursday to shoot some car stuff but when we couldn’t get our car we decided we’d cancel the shoot. Then we were all going to go to Robin’s place on Friday evening and watch what I had cut, but that got moved to Thursday. Then wednesday night at about 11.57 I get a message from Mitch…

Mitch: Look, everyone is avalible tomorrow(as far as know nate is), we decided we HAVE to shoot the park scene durring the day, and once school is in we are gunna have a hard time doing that.

I was reluctant. I was looking forward to having the day to cut. However, after my producer wearing me down, I agreed that we could go ahead a shoot. And so Thursday morning we all met back at the park to shoot the proposal and our big finale.

The Proposal.

The first scene we decided we’d shoot was the proposal. Poor Robin had to freeze her butt off again and we tried our best to keep her as warm as possible.

Funny stories that relate to the scene…

We had previously bought grape juice to sub in for our wine… when I got up Thursday morning and went to get it I noticed that my father had managed to drink it all. I shouted at the top of my lungs

For christ’s sake dad! You drank my effing prop!

I then proceeded to kick things.

Second funny moment during the scene… me pretending to be Indiana Jones. I almost slipped and fell.

Third funny moment – me pulling Robins scarf out of her coat, but it looked much more like me pulling her scarf out of her butt.

Fourth funny moment – Robin cracking up when Mitch offered the ring box.

The proposal scene was over and done with pretty quickly. We then had to set up for the next sequence…

The Finale.

This was going to be the most difficult part of the whole shoot. How the hell are we going to suffocate Bill with a plastic bag safely and out in the open in broad daylight without causing any problems…

It weren’t going to be easy.

We also were hoping that we’d be able to make it look like night – however after my editing session the night previous, that wasn’t not looking extremely feasible. After a 10 minute argument between Nate and I (no hard feelings buddy) we came to a compromise and figured out how we were going to pull it off.

Probably the best moment of the day was Robin yelling at us to let her push Reid’s car during the part of the scene where Malcolm has to pull up in his car. We wouldn’t let her as we were trying to keep her warm inside the car. She eventually got out and then decided that she was going to provoke Mitch into chasing her. She should have known how it was going to end. Mitch did catch her, and when he did, he tossed her over his shoulder’s like a fireman and carried her back to the car and tossed her into the front seat.

After we got the shots of Bill arriving (which also had funny moments, like Nate and Bill trying to light dog poo on fire… without success. None of them could get the match to land on it. I managed to – but sadly, no flaming dog poo.)

By now it was about 3.00 which means we had a couple more hours before we had to get Robin off to dance. Nate was freezing his ass off and asked if I could go ahead and shoot the actual death scenes. Now I’m no cinematographer, that’s Nate’s forte, but I figured he deserved a break, and since I knew exactly how I wanted the scene shot I could give it a try.

After a couple rehearsals, and some discussions on how we could keep Bill nice and safe we were ready to go.

It took a few times for Robin to get the bag over his head, but after a while it was all good.

3 shot the actual death shot 3 times. We had to wait for a few cars to past the first few times around since we didn’t want to raise any suspicion… but we managed to get by without any calls made to the police, and Bill came out unharmed.

And the best part? It looks amazing, and is exactly how I pictured it in my mind. Of course this scene is going to be kept very secretive from everyone as it is the big finale… now previews for anyone but the cast and crew.

We then went and got a few close-ups and inserts (we still need to go back and get more) but we were all ready and done around four.

So since we were all still freezing our asses off we headed back to Williams for some beverages.

Robin made me share a slice of Apple Pie. I don’t like pie, but I ate the ice cream.

She eventually left for dance and the boys headed over to the mall to go movie shopping. I didn’t buy anything cause I’m broke.

Bulk Barn.

We realized we needed candy for Robin’s house that night so we headed off to Bulk Barn. I bought a goodly amount of Fuzzy Peaches, Sour Patch Kids, and my favourite… Caramel Apple Pops.

However, the funniest was Bill who bought $17 worth of candy… $13 of that was on Swedish Berries. Let me tell you, there was an ass-load of berries.

So after our candy shop we headed off to Robins where we ate, ate, ate, watched the rough cut (which I think we ended up watching 6 times… everyone seemed to really like it), and then ate some more.

Sadly my mother had to ruin the evening by picking me up at 10.15, and Nate’s mother following at 10.30 so we never got around to watching our movies… but needless to say it was another fun day of bonding between cast and crew.

Can’t wait to do it again.

Oh, and by the way… I’ve only begun to tap into my candy… it’s going to last the whole edit I’m sure.

[current music: la viguela from the album "Lunatico" by Gotan Project]

Day Three.

We were all feeling pretty good after Saturday’s shoot and we were looking forward to Sunday’s shoot so we could hopefully get all finished up and get as much edited as possible over the break.

So we all woke up nice and early so that we could go and re-shoot the park stuff we couldn’t get on Friday because of the white car. We all got showered and started to eat breakfast. We then looked at the clock and noticed that it was about 10 minutes past call and there was no sign of Robin or Reid. We figured they were just running a little behind. However after 20 minutes past call we got a phone call from Robin.

She was calling to say Reid had yet to arrive… so we called Reid. I won’t go into too much detail as it isn’t my place but to make the long story short, he was down for the day.

So now we were boned. We had no driver… and thus no park scene. We managed to convince Nate’s parents to drive us all out to my place so we could shoot all the stuff in Paris’ bedroom.

The Take Down.

The most stressful part of the day for me was tearing apart my room. We had to put in a blowup mattress in my room which meant that in order for us to set it up, we had to get my bed out of my room. This was not a simple task, especially if you know my upstairs – it’s really narrow.

Somehow we managed to get it out into the hall without breaking anything and not only that my parents didn’t seem to care at all (which was a miracle to say the least!).

We then had to re-dress my room so it looked a little more like a woman’s bedroom.

After about two hours of work (and a nice little lunch prepared by my mumzy) we were all set to shoot. And what scene was it that we had to do?

The Sex Scene.

Yes, the sex scene. Firstly, to call it a sex scene is unfair. There is no sex on screen, and the scene takes place after the characters have engaged in their sexual escapades…

The scene required myself and Robin to be in our undergarments and to kiss…passionately which we knew was going to be some somewhat awkward, especially considering that we would be filming the whole thing. So we thought we should at least try to relieve some tension to help clear the air and get everyone laughing. And so Bill and I pulled a little gag to try and get Robin laughing and ready for the scene.

I think it went well. We at least thought it was funny.

Needless to say the scene went off lovely. It wasn’t as weird or awkward as we thought it would be, and it turned out looking amazing on film.

The Murder.

The next scene that we had to shoot was “the murder” or at least the discovery of the murdered body. In order to do this we had to make it look as though Robin had been shot and was left for dead bleeding on the bed. This meant that I got to have some fun. I love doing special makeup effects and for this scene I was going to have to create the bloodied body.

After about 20 minutes we had the scene all set, and I must say it was eerie to look at on film because of how real it looked.

Unfortunately for us it took us nearly 2 hours to complete the shoot. I had to stand out on my roof freezing my ass off for a good half hour which was less than fun, and poor Robin had to lie in that extremely awkward position for 2 hours straight. But like a good actress she didn’t complain once and worked through the pain.

Now that we had filmed everything we needed to in Paris’ bedroom it was time to clean my room up again. This was an arduous task to say the least, and I still have a box of stuff that needs to be put in place (of course if Robin had her way she would have put it all back before we had dinner, but I refused to let her do any more work for the day).

Once my room was back to it’s old self (which I must commend my crew for being so good at taking apart my room and putting it back together so well… I will admit I was very worried that we weren’t going to be able to pull it off…) we all headed downstairs to grab some Chili and watch dailies.

All in all, despite our setbacks our third day of shooting went off like clockwork. And I only got yelled at by my parents once. I guess I really should have told them we were going to be out on the roof before we shot the scene. Oh well.

We were getting very close to having our whole film shot and we were feeling really good.

It was sad to see our weekend be over. We all had so much fun, despite the craziness, and knowing that we wouldn’t all be getting together for more insanity the next day was very sad.

Little did we realize we would be back together very soon…

Day Two.

After what could only be called an unsuccessful day of shooting on Friday we were all praying that Saturday would be a much better day – and quite frankly how could it not be after the nightmare we had Friday?

We all woke up at 10.00 and had some breakfast. We all wished Bill a happy 18th Birthday (that’s right he gave up his birthday to chill with us… what a guy!) I was teased for not liking fruit, and mitch knocked the syrup off the table and got it all over his pants. If this was the only issue of the day however we were all going to be very happy.

The first part that we had to do was to dress the set. This actually didn’t take too long all things considered. We managed to clear out the two rooms we were using and have the looking good in about an hour.

Then it was time to shoot our scenes.

Scene Seven.

The first scene of the day to be shot was scene 7. The scene was the only one in the film to have actual scripted dialogue which of course meant that Robin and I had to learn lines. It was a fairly easy shoot, despite having quite a few setups. The best comment of the shoot however had to be when Nathan’s Dad walked into one of the shots while I was “melting” and ruined it. Nathan yelled, I acted-a-foo’, Robin laughed. Good times were had by all. Following that we had to shoot some little stuff, inserts and the like.

It was now about 2.00 and we had to make sure that we had enough time to get to our next big scene which we all knew was going to take quite a bit of time too shoot.

Scene Eleven – The Split Screen.

The very first time I read scene eleven I knew exactly how it had to be shot. In order to give the audience a true look into the real lives of these two characters I thought that we should use a split screen to show exactly how each character is acting at those specific moments. The only concern was actually shooting the scene. It was important for me to show not only how both characters are behaving, but also show it in real-time (much like 24) and to make sure the audience is fully aware of this to have the two characters interact at moments during the scene to show that yes this really is real time, yes it really is happening all at once, yes it really is that effing cool!

It wasn’t going to be easy. In order to pull this off we needed to have two cameras, two extremely steady camera men (since we don’t have steady cams), care to ensure that you would not see one camera man in the other camera, precise timing, precise choreography, and most importantly it had to be done in one take since we would be burning a hole in Paris’s shirt and then adding fake blood to it. We also spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do about the cigarette. Robin couldn’t smoke it herself, and it wouldn’t make sense to just have a lit cigarette lying around. I decided to take one for the team (after all, Bill did so and he has asthma) and smoke the sucker… our reasoning being that Jaxxon is strung out.

So how the hell were we going to pull this off? Especially considering the disaster the night before? I was confident it could be done and I didn’t care what anyone said, I wasn’t budging on this one – we were doing this scene. Thankfully no-one questioned it. I knew that if we were going to pull this off we were going to have to rehearse, over and over again.

So we did. We dry-ran the scene a few times just to get a feel for what would happen and to figure out the timing. Next we got the cameras out and walked through the scene – not rolling – to ensure that we wouldn’t have our two camera men bump into each other and that we wouldn’t see the other cameras on screen. We had to make a few adjustments, however after about 20 minutes we were ready to go.

We got through the first take and it was kinda freaky because I had no idea how it was going on the other side of the room where Robin was doing her thing cause I was busy on the other side acting. The first take went really well… however you’ll notice I’m calling it the first take meaning there was more than one.

The problem was Robin didn’t quite put enough blood over the wound and you couldn’t really tell that there was any blood there at all. We decided that since it wasn’t really noticeable we could do one more take, and now that Robin had a feeling for how the cigarette would burn the hole and how the blood would work she could adjust. Unfortunately she forgot to re-cap the vial with the blood in it and it happened to pour all over the bathroom counter. Thankfully there was enough left for a take but it left us laughing pretty hard.

So we went ahead with take two. It went flawlessly, and my favourite moment is when Jaxxon looks down at Paris and notices the wound – my reaction was very real because I actually hadn’t seen how it looked. Of course it also looks like I’m staring at her chest but I can assure you I was not.

Following that we had to shoot a the rest of the scene which involved the lip marks, the giving of the ring, and most of that went flawlessly – Nate yelled at us a few times for being silly, and also gave us a great notable-quotable:

Okay… you do that, and you… you enjoy yourself.
Adam then reaches for Robin’s butt, jokingly.

Our driver then arrived, we loaded up the car and were set to shoot the rest of the day’s scenes. Well sort of…

The Car Scenes.

We were all supposed to head out onto Blair Road where there was a car park for us to shoot the scene “Reflections”. Bill’s sister’s boyfriend, Trevor, was going to be our second driver and let us use his car. So Nate, Reid, and Mitch dropped Robin off at home and then were going to head out to Blair road while Bill and I waited for Trevor.

And waited we did. They were… a little late to say the least… thankfully our schedule wasn’t too crazy so we were going to be able to pull everything off in time. So we all headed out to Blair Road until we got a phone call…

Bill: Wait what? Umm okay… We can’t shoot because apparently the trail’s closed for the wintering bald eagle?
Adam: What the fuck? You’re kidding me. Here let me talk to Mitch…
Bill puts Adam on the Phone
Adam: The wintering bald eagle?
Mitch: Yeah, apparently…
Adam: But I thought it was a car pool lot, not a nature trail. You sure you guys are in the right spot.
Mitch: Pretty sure…
Adam: Okay, well we’re almost there so we’ll see…

Sure enough, there was no car pool parking lot, just a trail, which was indeed closed for the wintering bald eagle… who the hell knew we had bald eagles in Cambridge. Deer, yes, but bald-effing-eagles?

Now I’m starting to stress again, we’re a little bit behind and we have no place to shoot because of the damn eagles. We were able to get a shot of the car chasing the other car so that was good. Trevor then said he knew a place we could go shoot… so we first headed to his garage to get the interior shots.

Next we headed out to this weird little barren landscape that had this sick bridge. So we got some shots, froze our asses off, and I once again took a couple for the team and did a few drags on those nasty herbal cigarettes (of course, once again Bill was the ultimate trouper and took quite a few long ones despite his asthma).

Unfortunately we were losing light quickly, and accidentally everything was shot far too dark and everything has to be re-shot. However now that we have a feel for what we need to shoot we can hopefully do so a lot quicker.

Dinner.

So we all headed back to Kitchener to have some dinner. Robin met up with us and we all had a lovely meal at Eastside’s in celebration of not only our film, but of Bill’s 18th Birthday. We all ordered Funnel Cake for dessert which was so yummy, and Robin forced me to actually finish off the one we split… in all my life I’ve never finished a funnel cake (even when sharing)… but this time I did. Naturally I didn’t feel so hot afterwards.

After dinner half the gang headed back to Reid’s so we could get some interior car shots of Robin. We had to make two trips so Bill and I headed off to Chapters. We were going to try and buy some nudie magazines since he was now 18, but no dice. Then we tried to find a copy of the Kama Sutra for Sunday’s shoot… but Reid got back before we got the chance.

The Evening.

So we headed back to Reid’s. We got our stuff with Robin and then Bill, Reid, and Nate went back to Nate’s so we could get some final shots for the night of Malcolm in the hallway of Paris’s appartment. Meanwhile Mitch, Robin, and I all chilled at Reid’s house and waited. Robin and I played piano while Mitch… well I’m not sure what he did. At one point it sounded like he was playing with some compressed air canisters… no clue why. Reid eventually came and got us and we all headed back to the Storring residence to watch our dailies.

The stuff looked great. It was a really, really successful day. I was extremely happy and proud at what we managed to get. We were all pretty tired, and seeing as the time change was going to happen that night we thought it would be best to all hit the hay earlier than the previous night.

Two down and only one left to go. Who knows… maybe we actually were going to make it!

Day One.

The first day of shooting has been completed, and let me tell you it was an interesting experience. If you’re wondering if it went well, let’s just say… it went.

CiGi.

The first stuff we shot was over at the “CiGi” building. The building is absolutely gorgeous and the shots that we got were simply fantastic. Unfortuneatly things were about to go down hill.

The Park.

We drove out to the park where we were going to shoot the proposal scene and the final murder scene. When we got there things became pretty apparent that things were going to be pretty interesting. And not the good kind of interesting that you find in Documentaries but the kind you find in European Art Films.

The first problem that we encounter was the fact that the snow was really, really deep. We all started sinking into the snow which wasn’t a problem for most of us – but since Robin was wearing nothing but fancy dress shoes (with no socks) she started to get really cold… unable to feel her feet cold.

The second problem was the fact that we couldn’t get enough light into the park to properly light the scene. We tried and tried but didn’t seem to get anywhere. After about a half hour of shooting we decided we needed to warm Robin up, get some dinner and try and figure out what to do next.

We headed off to Kelsey’s for dinner where we managed to formulate a plan to shoot. We were going to get Mitch’s generator and head back to the park where we now move the lights wherever we wanted to, get Robin some boots which we would try to hide and then head back to shoot “The Relationship” and watch our dailies.

LIttle did we realize that this was just going to be the beginning of an all new adventure.

The Phone.

As the boys headed off to pick up the generator, Robin, Bill, and myself kicked it over at Kelsey’s for a little bit and then headed over to Williams to get some coffee. We also headed over to Shoppers to pick up a toothbrush for Robin. When we were about to leave Shoppers and I asked Robin if I could borrow her phone to call the boys. She told me it was in her pocket… I looked… no dice. That’s when we realized the phone was not there. So we thought perhaps it ended up in Shoppers. We went back, called the phone, no luck. So we walked all the way back to Kelsey’s, asked if they had seen a phone and they said no. Now we were getting a little more worried. They took Robin’s name and said they’d call if anything came up. We left and I thought I’d just call the cell one more time, if it fell maybe we’d hear it. Suddenly someone picks up

“Hello?”
“Uh… hi, I think you have our phone…”
“Oh sorry wrong number.”

I turn to Robin and was like “Someone has your phone” so she calls back and gets the same answer. Now she is freaking out. She calls her parents who say that they’re going to cancel the phone.

The boys arrive and we tell them the news… and they’re pissed. Mitch calls the guys up…

“Hello, you have our phone. We want it back. Oh you think this is funny do you? You have a stolen phone. How’s that for funny?”

As Mitch is trying to scare these pricks Nate informs us of the news…

The White Car.

After picking up the generator they headed out to the park only to see a white car parked out in the middle of the field with it’s lights on. They chilled for a little bit and after noticing the car wasn’t doing much decided to come back and find us to tell us the news. They informed us that they were going to go back and see if it was gone, if so they’d set up and Reid would pick Bill, Robin and I up. But before that they wanted to go to Cineplex and phone Robin’s phone and see if anything suspicious went down (I had mentioned that I bet it was some douche bag 13 year old at the theatre due to the high-pitched voice, the giggling, and the background noise). So the three of us headed back to Williams for some warm drinks. We were very cautious about anyone looking suspicious like they stole a phone. We all sat around and chatted for a good half hour… that’s when I noticed a text message…

Hey where u at?

It was from Robin’s cell. I had previously texted them saying “please, you have our phone and we would really like it back”. Clearly Mitch scared them a little bit. I replied with

Look, we just want the phone. You take the phone back to Kelsey’s on Fairway, they’re expecting a phone. Just drop it off and we wont bug you again.

I then noticed that I had missed the text by about 15 minutes. They phone had long since been turned off… at this point it didn’t look like we were going to be getting Robin’s phone back.

That’s when the boys returned. They informed us that they got there and that there was now another car there that rolled up to the white car, a dude got out, and then some other stuff went down. They figured they had just witnessed either a drug deal or a body dump. We all agreed we weren’t going to be shooting there that night, if ever again. So Reid and Mitch were going to head back to drop off the generator at Mitch’s, and then we’d return to Nate’s to shoot what other stuff we could.

However the fun didn’t stop there. When the boys got back they told us they went back one last time to check on the situation. The white car was still there, still idling, only this time as they got closer and flashed their headlights someone got out of the car and approached them. It was then that they peeled out and booked it back to Williams. We all more or less agreed that perhaps this park was not the best decision.

The Street.

Finally it was time to shoot some shit. We rolled up to the street Nate wanted to shoot at and it become pretty clear to me that it wasn’t going to work. Not enough light, and too much ugly snow banks – not exactly romantic. By this point it was getting late and really cold so we just wanted to hurry up and find something. He ran off and managed to find some train tracks which we could shoot near. So we went and shot and got some pretty good footage. Funniest moment was me running with Robin’s sweater to try and keep her warm as soon as we cut.

Following that we headed back to Nate’s place to shoot the last of that scene. After a few takes, a couple near slips, numerous kisses, and one case of Robin looking into the camera, we finally had gotten some worthwhile footage… and it was only 2.00 am.

So one day down and three to go. Would Saturday be as “successful”. We all pretty much figured that nothing could get much worse… and also thought that if we made it through that, we could make it through anything.

Little did we know what the rest of the weekend had in store for us.