Day Three of Bloodmask

We're underway to actually shoot Bloodmask. We shot day three. Blair lit and I think it's our best work yet. Here's Jef Betz as Klaaghu. I really love Jef's work. We're gonna kill him in all our movies! And Blair and Eva van Dok as Glaak and Kaarn, respectively. They are dealing with Murnau, played by Daryl Boling. Today we were helped by Tony and Marta, from The Attic.

gotta figure things out

I'm thinking that I might want to try to do a footmic-only show for SIDD. And I'm concerned about shooting these exterior night scenes of Altair IV. They might be a major pain in the butt. We'll see.

The shop sure is dirty. Next week have to go to New Orleans to help Matt Burns on his movie. Then we have to shoot Eva in Monmouth. Where can I find a still image of Daryl walking down the Altair IV street?

This is one of my favorite pictures from Pandora Machine. Sure, it's a nude scene, but everyone still just looks at the monitor.

The Old and the New

My new service provider seems to be working fine. Ted might be back in Bloodmask. Laura made some nice rebreathers for our shoot next Saturday (the Saturday after Thanksgiving). I'm still happy with the script re-write for Bloodmask. Principal photography of The Attic is done (and I left my slate on set, so I have to go retrieve it.)
A long time ago I made a Hamlet. Here's Gary Paul Wright. We did all the solliloquies in a couple hours. J.J. said that our shooting style was like that of terrorists who make a video for local news stations.

Nearing the end

I heard a rumor we're going to try to press through and wrap early. Joe is our fabulous Key PA, Teamster Captain, and craft services wrangler. He's not actually grumpy today. He's just having fun. Boy, did he work hard on this shoot!

Noisy Cat

Harry is noisy. But if we're about to do a take, and he wants to be petted, all he has to do is yowl and the AD will yell "Somebody pet the cat!" and a PA will be assigned to the job of petting Harry. The little extortionist... Here is is with Nat, our gaffer. Nat has a nice selection of Dedo lights but we only used them one day. If it were up to me we'd just use Dedos and some Source 4's. But it isn't up to me.

Palm Flower Blinking

Last Day. No Tony Today. Here's Amber and Ann, in the "Art Room". Amber -- she wanted to take the first picture here that way, to better reflect the way she feels. She likes vampire movies, but writes comedies. That's Claus' Steadicam rig.

Tony's birthday

This was supposed to be our last day. Actually, yesterday was supposed to be our last day, but we had two days off last weekend. And we got added to "insert day", which is tomorrow, although all we're doing is inserts today.
This is my attempt to get a picture in which I don't look like the living dead. It's taken by Laura W., the 2nd Ad. She's an excellent 2nd AD.
Today is Tony's birthday. Happy Birthday Tony!
Rena wrote in! (look below in "comments".) Ahh... Canada...

Second-to-last day

The beautiful and talented Elissa is putting away costumes. We're down to one or two characters. Everyone else was killed off. I'm still trying to get a picture of me which doesn't look like it came from the set of Night of the Living Dead.

Finished the re-write of Bloodmask yesterday. There will likely be some tweaks in a couple speeches.

The Living Dead

Tony's holding up better than me, by the looks of this picture. I certainly don't look too happy. Maybe we'll try this again later.

Standing in doorways.

Tony is tired today. He needs to be paid much, much more. He drives the truck in the morning and at night. But he's getting us killer tracks.

And here's our 2nd AD Laura W. She's standing in a doorway. That's how AD's are never killed in earthquakes, you know.

You'll notice that there aren't any pictures of actors or anything. This is mostly because I don't have video tap and therefore I'm not watching the movie and therefore I have no clue what we're actually shooting. I tell people I'm working on the radio play of the movie.

HD

Here's Bob, our 1st AC, with our Sony HD camera. Personally, I don't like those cameras. But I like Bob plenty. I guess it's all better than having a camera I like but an AC I didn't.

Can't wait 'till Panasonic comes out with their HDV camera. That's what I'd prefer to shoot Bloodmask with.

I need some flags to protect me from the light. I don't have any. I should enclose myself in a tent. . .

Four

This is the view from the sound cart.
That's Vishnu keeping lockup in the foyer.
The operative word for today is "Four". That is -- including today we only have four days of shooting. We had a stunt with our lead actress and a cell phone went off. I seldomly get annoyed but it was so beautiful, we had her breathing and fear from her fall -- an unrepeatable performance. The cell phone was one of the producer's. . .

Day 16

We had two days off. But we're shooting through Saturday -- it's gonna be 21 days instead of 20. Yet somehow I still desperately need a nap. Outside in "the shed" (where "the attic" of The Attic is physically located) it gets pretty cold at night. Here's Marta without a wooden nose.
She's spending Thanksgiving at her sister's in Woodbridge.

Day off tomorrow!

Marta plays Pinnochio.

For some reason, production decided we needed to take tomorrow off. It's like they do exactly what I want (for once!)

It was cold tonight. In a little barn. Space heaters. Got some work done on the script of Bloodmask.

Did some stunts tonight. The gaffer thought Tony was such a good boom operator that he must be one of those fancy-pants union boom ops. Tony's doing a great job. Makes my life vastly easier. Now, if it were only warmer and I had Internet when we're shooting in the barn. . .

Late into the Night

This was the view of the fireworks on the 4th of July this year which Laura and I had. The Brooklyn Bridge was exactly between us and the fireworks. But all the people in the park moved away from us so we had a nice park bench by the river all to ourselves.

It's tomorrow already. We're way over time. I'm worried about Tony driving home and back again in the morning. It's almost 2am and there's a number of setups to go. Call time today was 10:45am.

Very sleepy right now. Can't wait 'till we're done. Must. Sleep.

Day Fourteen part one

I'm still sitting in the house. Haven't worked on Bloodmask, though Laura came up with some more better specific ideas for Aurora's character. We're shooting a scene on the front porch. Tony's grabbing the whole scene on boom. We have most of our PA's back. Still, I hate mixing "blind". I have no video tap as we're shooting HD without a downconverter on set.

Here's my cart. Metacorder on a Mac Mini with an Apogee Mini-Me A/D converter, DC modified Mackie mixer, Fostex FR2 backup recorder, three Lectrosonics wireless and two channels of Lectro IFB (for Director/Script and Boom operator.) Notice the black monitor. That's where I would normally be able to see the movie!

Car 45

Egads! Just now, shortly before midnight on Wednesday the 9th, on my way home on Rt 27 an Edison police car blew through a red light and almost rammed me. I believe the name of the road he was on was Wood Avenue. No lights on or anything. He was just not paying attention or drunk or something. It was Car 45. I know that because he followed me, pacing me, all the way to Parsonage Road when he finally turned away. Eef! The picture of Pushkin the cat makes me feel better.

Exposed Brains

This is the first time I've seen any member of the grip department relax. Jason, the Best Boy is checking out a little fantasy football on my computer. I absolutely insisted that we have wireless Internet access here at the location. And here's Judi. She's with the Lady Cavaliers. Brains everywhere. Egads. That reminds me, I have to finish their movie on my day off.

Today is cold. And they keep leaving the door open.

Bloodmask is getting better. Or rather, it's sucking less.

I just realized that I didn't wish by friend Todd a Happy Halloween. Or rather, as of the 29th, a Happy Birthday.
I wish I could select a letter of a word instead of the whole word. I'm sure there's a setting somewhere.

Twelvish

So. . . got out very late last night. To make up for that call was pushed back a little bit -- right into rush hour so getting to set just took that much longer. . .

In the yellow shirt is Laura. She's our script supervisor. We've given her the very expensive Lectrosonics IFB but a very cheap pair of airline headphones.

The one with the Annie Lennox thing going on is Rina. She's from Canada. She's the 2nd AC.

There in the middle is Tony getting his boom ready. We're using a trick, in this very echo-y and empty house, of using a zeppelin with the front removed, to isolate the Sanken shotgun even more. It works pretty well.

Crew is tired. I haven't worked on Bloodmask enough. I loaded Firefox into my computer, but I don't know I like it any better than Internet Explorer. The top of my mixer is very dirty, the HMI that's blasting at me right now has revealed this. No time for a courtesy flag.

Day 11

Not so much tired as sleepy.

I can assure you. Anthony Kenner ain't this smiley right now. He's working HARD!
But it's really come to this. On top of my sound cart. Paperwork. Tired.

Half Way

This isn't me yesterday. Yesterday was hard. Very little smiling. Except when the Key Grip referred to the grouping of producers on the lawn as a "scrum" of people.

We're on day 10 of the 20-day shoot. Very noisy set.

I always try to mix from another room in the house. That makes it easier to tell if a sound I've heard is really there, or it just crept in around my headphones. . . or maybe I just wanna be away from the set. . .

Laura and I figured out some answers to problems with Bloodmask. We'll make the good and evil characters more clearly delineated. And we'll make Lucretia evil from the beginning without any doubt. And we'll make Aurora's introduction more clear. We'll maybe make a scene where Murnau gets his orders to hunt Fiona. . .

Out the window

Well, we're shooting night for day. Lots of power. A generator. Echo-y room. Wide lens. What more could I possibly want?
The opening scenes in Bloodmask are awfully exposition-ish. Gotta turn down the suck.

Tony Kenner is working boom. Doing a great job. We moved him up from cable/utility when our boom op had to bag out at the last minute after being threatened by the union.

I sit here during the day. It's important to be surrounded by computers.

Seventh Day

On The Attic: So, it's day seven. Lots of HMI's with noisy ballasts. Not as noisy as the lawnmowers. That's the suburbs on a low-budget movie I guess.

I should be working on a rewrite of Bloodmask. We're discussing shooting a scene on Thanksgiving day, just to get out of it. The movie is filled with non-Americans and un-Americans anyway, we may as well.

We'll only have 14 days of shooting other than the shooting in the desert and everything else we do before the beginning of principal photography on Bloodmask. That makes it seem that much more doable.