Check out this event: Fistful of Brains at the Colony Theater
Hosted By: Christine Parker When: Sunday Oct 26, 2008 at 9:30 PM Where The Colony Theater 5438 Six Forks Road Raleigh, North Carolina|34 27609 United States Description: Christine Parker
Fistful of Brains! That's right guys, it's about 90 percent done. We're laying in the last of the audio and tweaking a couple of things but by September 20th it will be complete. It's been a hell of a summer. We've really been busting our asses putting this thing together trying to get it ready for our premier at the Ava Gardner Film Festival the end of September. I have to give major kudos to our sound design guy/composer Greg Putnam for working 'till the wee hours nearly every night making this a much, much more polished piece than our last one. It sounds great!
October 26th 9:30pm - The Colony Theater in Raleigh, NC
Working on: Atlanta Horror Fest, Atlanta, GA - October 25th Zombie Con, Chapel Hill, NC - October 25th The Sunset Theater, Asheboro, NC - Sometime in November The Varsity, Chapel Hill, NC - ? Spring Lane Cinemas, Sanford, NC - ? The Rialto, Raleigh, NC - ? The Galaxy Theater, Cary, NC - ?
I'll let you know when we get more dates set.
But in the meantime Whoo Hoo! There is light at the end of the tunnel and I'm almost there!
How I Spent My Easter Weekend - Saturday
Current mood: happy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
Somehow I always underestimate people's love of horror movies. I don't know why. Past experience should have taught me better. When I decided that Easter weekend would be the perfect opportunity to shoot our zombie town and zombie battle footage for Fistful of Brains the initial reaction from my fellow producer and partner Ed was, "You aren't going to get that many people on Easter weekend, people have plans, they'll be spending time with their families." Oh was he ever wrong.
I put an ad on Craig's list asking for extras for Easter weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning. Headline: "Zombies Wanted" I got an immediate reaction to that and within an hour of posting it I started to get e-mails. One of those e-mails was from Laura at Kira Casting. Laura said she would love to help, she'd worked with other bigger budget, even Hollywood movies and only wanted an IMDB credit in return. I couldn't turn that down! She also did catering. But after a quick exchange of e-mails I realized that with everything else I had to pay for that weekend it just wasn't possible. Better to put out the call for food contributions and grill up a crap load of hotdogs. Zombies aren't too picky about their food as long as they're fed.
That's how it began. By that weekend we had over 80 people signed up to be zombies. Most of them came from Laura but a good number also came from our Forever Dead DVD signings at Sam Goody in Sanford and Sun Coast at Cary Towne Centre.
That's right folks you can now walk into your local FYE, Sam Goody and Sun Coast and buy a copy of Forever Dead right off the shelves. I have to say it's a real trip to see it in the stores. It's also a pretty popular torrent if you're a pirate. I certainly can't throw stones. I'm just glad people are watching it. Though not everyone likes itSome, like this person, really, really, hate it! What a lot of trouble they went through to illustrate this. And for the record, I did not pay anyone off for those Amazon.com reviews. I asked for reviews good or bad from people who had seen it. I didn't expect anyone to give us 5 stars, though a couple did.
Getting off track again, anyway, we got about 20 people who signed up to be extras from those encounters, including a very enthusiastic group who meet every week to watch and discuss horror movies,
and a guy who is part of a re-enactors group who just happens to have access to a real live full sized canon that he said we could use. We liked him a lot!
Most of the cast and crew as well as some of the extras had booked rooms at the Days Inn in Selma which was not too far from where we were shooting. Knowing that we would likely be shooting until at least 3am none of us wanted to make the long drive home just to turn around and drive back again the next day to be there by 2pm.
I don't recommend the Days Inn in Selma. Stay at the Masters Inn next to the Waffle House. It's much nicer and the front desk clerk is not such a dick. You'd think they'd be happy with all the business we gave them but no. They were just annoyed, and very rude, which annoyed us as well.
Now I haven't told anyone this but I had a dream Friday night that we were filming and I heard someone scream, then there were red flashing lights and an ambulance and I was like crap someone's hurt what are we going to do. It was pretty unnerving considering what happened. More on that later.
I was very organized and packed my SUV to the gills Friday night. I took everything we had. I thought I did anyway. When I got there on Saturday Bill informed me that I'd forgotten the microwave. He and Brandi just looked at me like WTF? "Have you seen my car?" I replied "I couldn't fit a piece of paper in there much less that huge old microwave!" "I would have found a way." Bill said giving me his best teacher-like tone that said "I'm just so disappointed in you." Fortunately Cowboy Bill who really has everything you could possibly need, had one he wasn't using. The other week I forgot Dead Eye's eye patch. Of course Cowboy Bill just happened to have one.
They began arriving…in droves! Whole families out to spend the weekend chewing people up. Lots of kids. I guess we're more fun that hunting for Easter eggs! Kid zombies are always the scariest I think. We were happy to have so many. Then there was Heather Clark, an actress who had heard about us and drove all the way from her home in Florida to be an extra in our movie. I was astounded. I gave her signed copies of our movie and thanked her for making the trip. She said there's not a whole lot of filming going on in Florida. That is one actor dedicated to her craft!
We also had Joy. Joy contacted us via e-mail and asked if she could be in our movie. She said she was an above the leg amputee and wondered if we could use that in our movie. This is where I start to feel like maybe I'm a little off in the head. Because I immediately got all sorts of lovely visions of ripping her leg off etc. and so on. "We would love to have you." I replied. I didn't feel quite so bad when I called Bill and told him. Silence on the other end of the phone and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was only it was probably a lot more twisted and more detailed. He was a happy man.
So we had all these people…and only 3 FX people. Bill, Brandi, and Jason. William Stine did come to help out but he could only stay for about an hour. We had over 50 people that Saturday and every one had to be zombified. Fortunately we had 3 lovely ladies who helped out, Heather (who was an extra in Forever Dead), and her two friends. They had done Ren Faires so they were experienced. Mina, Zach's sister, also pitched in like she had during our Forever Dead shoot. Mina is our cover girl on Forever Dead. She's got a great look and we'd love to use her more often if she didn't live all the way out in Asheville, NC.
The mood was extremely up. In spite of the cold and waiting in line for hours for make up, and me running around for an hour trying to find the barbeque sauce so we could cook the hot dogs, no one complained. A lot of these people had done this before and knew that there would be a lot of hurry up and wait involved. Many brought lawn chairs and books to read. We all settled in for the long night ahead.
One more word about food. Man when I ask for it people bring it! We had a ton! And every bit of it got eaten that night. We were down to peanut butter on bread by the end of the night. Our new friend Angela M. we met a few weeks earlier when she showed up as an extra for our church scene. She's a caterer and brings us all sorts of goodies for our shoots. She's a very enthusiastic participant. We really enjoy having her around, and not just because of the delicious food she brings. Her stuff went fast that day!
Costumes were a problem. I had some but not enough for everyone. I'd asked for everyone to dress accordingly if they could. This wasn't as much a problem for the men as it was for the women. We only had so many skirts and blouses to go around. We had a lot of problems with people getting into the back room where the cast costumes were and using those. I had to hunt down a few and take them back. This is where a costume person is needed. I'd never needed one before but man I will from now on. It really truly was a mess! Cowboy Bill's general store where they were housed looked like a tornado had torn through it. A very nice lady, Christina helped us out that weekend along with Mina when she wasn't doing makeup. By the end of the weekend I had appointed Christina and Angela M. as our costume supervisors for future shoots.
Hindsight tells me that even though we had 3 days my plans for what we would shoot that weekend were way too ambitious. I should have kept the weekend devoted to zombie extras only and shoot as many gags as we could for our zombie town and battle. But I also planned to shoot the regular cast that weekend and that created a problem. Saturday was not so bad. My co-worker and fellow film maker Philip Brubaker was there with his camera as well. He's got the camera I want for my next film, a Canon XH-A1. It seemed such a shame not to shoot in HD but he had to shoot it the same as my camera in SD.
While the makeup people were finishing up the zombies, Conrad, Jaqueline, Darrell and I headed upstairs to Lily's bedroom to shoot a scene. Wayne was there too taking great pictures as always and Zach was on boom.
I can't give away too many details about the scene but let's just say the bedsheets were jumping. This wasn't in the script but when you have two enthusiastic actors what can you do but go with it. Then Wayne got some more great romance novel poses out on the balcony that I'm sure will make a great poster when Bill gets done with them.
Then we had a sort of zombie parade, where all the zombies come back into town and man was it awesome! It just seemed to go on and on. Great stuff! And the extras were so happy to finally be doing something. While we were setting up for the shoot out with Jack and TW Bill and Phillip were in the saloon shooting some zombies having a really great time! I think these are just about the most enthusiastic zombies we've ever had.
The shoot out with TW and Jack turned out great as well thanks to Cowboy Bill for providing us with real guns with blanks. It looked and sounded real! After that it was Dead Eyes speech and we got as many miscellaneous zombie shots as we could before it got too late. Those kids were so great. I know it had to be way past their bedtime but their energy was never ending! We kept going 'til 3:30am and I swear I think they would have kept on until morning if we'd asked them too. Fortunately the call time Sunday was not until 2pm so we could all sleep in a bit.
I’d make a good hermit! And spectacular sunrise on the Blue Ridge Parkway!
I would be perfectly happy if I lived a solitary existence. Just me, my computer and an endless supply of tapes to edit. Is that wrong? Maybe. All I know is I'm happy. I don't think there is one facet of making movies that I don't enjoy. Okay I take that back. Raising money is a big pain in the ass. I was raised to not go begging people for money so it really goes against my grain to do that. Which is why I always end up paying for a lot of stuff, which is why I'm poor. Let's change the subject now before I start depressing myself! Back to editing.
I spent the past couple of weekends holed up in my office going through the 6+ tapes that we shot a couple of weekends ago with Heidi. I came out only briefly for bathroom breaks and food. I'm always so, so tempted to call in sick to work Monday so I can spend another day at it.
My poor daughter, barely sees me. Complains that there's no food in the house, the dishes, the laundry and house cleaning need to be done. What is she my mother?! We have this joke that when she leaves, everything will go to hell and one day they'll find my lifeless body half eaten by my cats. Ewww! Maybe that's not so funny. It could happen.
Back to editing again. It's just too much fun. Putting together all the pieces of the puzzle, creating one big picture. Last weekend I was working on Lily and Jack's stuff. The scene is coming together beautifully. One problem we're running into frequently though is the light switches and wall outlets through out the town. They just keep popping up in the back ground. It's nearly impossible not to get them in one shot or another. I mean what can we do. Tell the actor's to keep perfectly still because if they move one inch to the left one of those modern nuisances will appear. Hey if people want to complain let them. If they're paying more attention to the light sockets than to the people in the scene then I must not be a very good film maker. We can only do so much!
I'm getting a lot better at color correction too. That was one of the complaints from For-ever Dead. The color correction kinda sucked. In spite of white balancing both cameras in the same lighting I still find color differences. You'd think there wouldn't be so much difference between an XL-1 and a GL-2 but there is. Thank god for Color Corrector 3-way. Audio is still a problem too. Fortunately with using two cameras I'm able to get decent audio off of at least one of them. Syncing is a lot of fun too (feel the sarcasm). Yes I do enjoy editing. I enjoy a good challenge. Maybe it's because I know I can fix every-thing whereas the rest of my life is not quite so easy to fix. In my office I am in control. Which is why I don't like to venture out much. Last time I did that my daughter came home with a new tattoo. "Forever Tony". Can't fix that!
Speaking of Forever Dead. Brain Damage sent me the new cover art for our DVD release! It's pretty damn cool! I'd love to let you guys see it but I'm sure they don't want it out yet. I'm pretty sure though that it will get people's attention and hopefully fly off the shelves, that is if it ends up on any shelves, which I hope it does. March 4th is the big day. I've been told it will be in Suncoast Video and we're setting up some PR stuff with them (DVD signing etc.) after the holidays.
That aside though, the whole look and feel of this film so far is so beautiful. I love doing a historical piece like this. I love the costumes. I love the characters. I love the town. I just love it all! I think I may do another one when we're done with this one. I've got all these period costumes. I can't let them go to waste! When I was younger I always felt like I didn't belong in this time, like I would be more comfortable in the past. I still feel that way. Still, spending an entire weekend in the old west feels like going home. No wonder I didn't want to leave.
Speaking of going home. I headed to the mountains for Thanksgiving this week. Seemed like the perfect opportunity to get some extra footage. One thing we haven't done with this town is give it a location. I'm thinking the mountains of NC would be a great place. My parents are just a stone's throw from the Blue Ridge Parkway. I got up bright and early Friday morning so I could capture one of those spectacular sunrises.
Setting it at this time of year fits too. All the leaves turning and falling off the trees. It's a transitional time and well the people in the movie are going through a few changes too. We'll be shooting most of our zombie footage in the winter which is perfect. Dead people, dead of winter, get the tie in? So early Friday morning when you were all dreaming about all those Thanksgiving leftovers. I was freezing my ass off on the side of some mountain. I had to drive a while to get a good shot. It was snowing for christ's sake! And I had to find my way out of the clouds to a clear spot before I could get some decent footage!
I also got some great shots coming down off the parkway of a creek and Looking Glass Falls. Then on the way home a bonus, a moon set which was beautiful. The footage is a little shaky but I'm hoping we can use some of it.
I think I might have mentioned FFOB is on break 'til after the holidays. We're having a half way party on December 1st at my house to celebrate the half way point. Technically we're actually past that. Of the 58 pages we've shot 32! We seem to be getting a lot more accomplished in our shoots than we did in Forever Dead. I think it's because we're a lot more organized this time and a lot more sure of what we're doing. It calls for a celebration. Anyone interested in being part of the latter half of FFOB is welcome to attend. Just drop me a line.
Although I will miss shooting over the next month and a half (we start back January 19th). I will be so busy editing I doubt I'll have too much time to dwell on it. I can't think of any way I'd rather spend the holidays than wrapped in a blanket in my small cozy of-fice in front of my computer immersing myself in the old west. Unless of course I get a Nintendo Game Cube in which case I may be distracted now and then to play the latest Zelda epic. God am I a nerd or what!
I also just got this great little freelance job working for a T.V. show that features the biographies of people that have passed on. I just can't get away from dead people I guess. So that will be keeping me busy as well. That will also be helping me get out from under my mountain of debt so I can have more money to sink into FFOB. A new camera would still be nice. Sigh.
So, that's what I've been up to and what I will be up to. If you guys don't hear from me for a while you know what I'll be doing...;-)
Veteran's Day weekend Heidi Martinuzzi, scream queen and owner of Pretty-scary.net graced us with her amazing presence. We'd talked to her way back in June about being in our movie and playing the part of Daisy. The question was how would we get her out here and how would we pay for it all. She was one hundred percent up for it so we set out to find a way to make it happen.
The solution literally fell into our laps via the U.S. mail. One small envelope with one large check for $1000. Bill Cain whose son Sting had sponsored our last movie Forever Dead wanted to do help again. This time Sting became an Executive Producer. That's what you get for $1000. That and a weekend with hotel paid and a part in our movie as an extra.
So in addition to shooting Heidi's scenes we also had Bill and Sting with us for the weekend helping out.
I'm afraid we may be getting a reputation for putting our guest actors through hell. When Peri came down he sweated his ass of for two days while we shot his scenes. With Heidi it was just the opposite. Being from California she wasn't used to those 30 degree nights. Fortunately Cowboy Bill had his saloon well heated and we all found ourselves constantly seeking refuge there. It was very cold!
Still, I would much rather be freezing my ass off then sweating it off. It's easier to get warmed up then it is to get cooled down. Especially when Cowboy Bill has several bottles of his special "Apple Pie" readily available. But that's another story.
Saturday morning dawned clear and chilly. Of course at 4am when my alarm went off there really wasn't any dawn to be seen. But by the time I got to the airport to get Heidi I could tell it would be an excellent day. I'd bought Heidi's ticket on Priceline hoping to get the best deal, which I did. I'm sure William Shatner was right there looking over the Delta operator's shoulder telling them to give us a break, we were struggling film makers, we couldn't afford to pay full price! And I'm sure he was snickering when we got our price except for the fact that Heidi had to take the red-eye out of L.A. arriving at 6:15 am and departing Monday evening at 7:30pm way after any hotel checkout time of 12pm so she would have a full 7 and a half hours to kill. Oh yes we could change the time but not without a fee, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of getting the cheap tickets to begin with!
I was about twenty minutes late getting there. Heidi was waiting. I apologized, she said she'd just gotten there about 5 minutes before, so I didn't have to feel too guilty. I don't know what's happened to me lately. I was always very punctual. Early even. But lately I've been late to everything. It's getting me a reputation with my crew who loves to tease me about it every chance they get. Because they're never late of course.
It was about an hour's drive to the HoJo I'd booked for the weekend in Smithfield. It was a very nice drive and the hour seemed more like half an hour. Heidi was great to talk to and even though I know she was exhausted the conversation flowed. This was her very first trip to North Carolina. I wish we'd had more time to show her the sites. But I had packed every scene we could shoot with her into that weekend so there wasn't much room to do anything else.
The Smithfield HoJo was not the classiest establishment I probably could have booked but it wasn't the worst either. Whitey's in Wilmington would be the worst. We spent a night there during the One Take Film Festival. When you're that exhausted you just don't care.
The guy at the front desk of the HoJo was very nice. I got Heidi checked in and called Bill and Sting who I'd also booked there. They had arrived the night before and met me in the lobby. As Heidi pointed out, there was no mistaking they were father and son. They were excited to get going so I got Heidi into her room and we were on our way. We went to the Shadow Hawk first to unload my car. I was actually an hour early believe it or not! After we unloaded I gave them a brief tour of the empty town then, since we had plenty of time, we all went to breakfast at the local BK.
Heidi's call time was not 'til 5:30pm so she could get caught up on some sleep. Jaqueline Martini and Conrad Osborne who play Lily and Jack would be doing their scenes 'til then. Our crew for the shoot was me, Bill M, Boom gal Brandi, Production Manager Zach, and Sting acting as PA for the day. Wayne was there to shoot everything in sight. This in spite of his part as the preacher not being shot until Sunday. We can thank him for some really excellent photos that chronicled the weekends events. William Stine joined us Saturday and Sunday night to assist with FX. So get this, we had Bill Mulligan, Bill Drake, Bill Cain, and William Stine!
The day's shoot was pretty straight forward. Lily and Jack come back into town after a night time trek through the woods. They're exhausted, and since the town now seems to be deserted they decide to run up to Lily's bedroom and catch a quick nap. We had a lot of fun with this as you can imagine. We had two cameras for the shoot. My regular GL2 and an XL1. I mainly wanted to have the XL1 as backup in case my GL2 gave me more trouble. Turns out the GL2 did fine. The XL1 on the other hand was useless at night. The GL2 does a much better job shooting in low light.
Both Jaqueline and Conrad did an excellent job in their parts. This in spite of me surprising them with an alternate ending to one of their scenes.
Zach and Bill ran both cameras and from what I've seen so far got everything we needed. Zach is shaping up to be quite a good camera man. Sting got to do boom after Brandi showed him the ropes. He picked it up with no problem and we were happy to have his assistance throughout the day.
We broke for lunch around 2pm and got a call from Heidi at the hotel. She was hungry! We put together some food, probably more than she could eat, and sent Wayne to the hotel to deliver it. I had put out a call to everyone to bring something to share with everyone for the weekend. I didn't expect so much though! We had more than enough food for everyone that whole weekend. People brought breakfast food, sandwich fixin's, dinner food, snacks, drinks, cups, plastic ware, plates, napkins. I was extremely grateful! It was an expensive weekend and I was a little worried about how I was going to feed everyone. Thanks to cast, crew and extras that was one less thing I had to worry about.
It was nice to just sit for a while 'til our next 5:30 call time. Extras started trickling in around 5 or so. Paul Cardullo brought an amazing sandwich ring. I didn't get any but as fast as it went it must have been good. GG, Too Tall, Ed, Andy and the gang showed up for the night's shoot. Of all the photos taken that weekend the vast majority are of laughing smiling faces. That's the way it was that weekend. We had a great time, worked hard, and enjoyed making our movie.
Things really got going around 5:30. I'd sent Wayne to go pick up Heidi. This it turns out was a BIG mistake. About half an hour later I was getting concerned. The hotel was just about 5 minutes away. I called Wayne. "Heidi's pissed off" he said. "I can't get her to come out of her room." "What???!" I said, "What's wrong? Did she say anything?" "I banged on the door."he said "She opened it, gave me this strange look, said something about a cat, then slammed the door. I kept knocking but she wouldn't open it!" I think I just said "shit" at that point. All I could think was, she seemed so normal? What the hell happened? Did she take something to help her sleep? A million and one thoughts were going through my head. "Should I call her?" I asked Wayne. "No," he said. "Don't do that, I'll take care of it, don't worry, I'll get her there."
I confided all this to Bill and Brandi. They were equally alarmed. Not 5 minutes later I stepped outside to find Wayne and Heidi walking up as if nothing had happened. "You guys sure got here quick!" I said surprised. I was busy staring at Heidi who seemed neither wacked out or "pissed." That's when they both started laughing and knew I'd been had. If you ever want to pull a prank on me it's incredibly easy because I'm incredibly gullible and will believe just about anything you tell me if you're someone I trust. Wayne is no longer on my "trust" list.
We all settled in for one long cold night of shooting. Everyone got some dinner. GG brought some burgers for the grill which went FAST. Heidi looked perfect as Daisy in her saloon girl outfit.
Thanks to Jaquline's grandmother Patricia for getting that to us so quick, complete with feathers, boa, shoes, petticoat, everything she would need. Unfortunately it wasn't a very warm outfit. Our first scene was in front of the church where some of the towns people were demanding to be let in. Everyone really got into their parts. It was very convincing and we got some excellent footage!
Next was the scene at the saloon. This was a bit more difficult due to the size of the saloon and getting it lit just right. Trying to use two cameras is hard in such a small space especially when you don't want to get the other guy in your shot. Bill and I shot this since Zach was busy over acting in his part as Willy. I was extremely impressed with all the performances and was even more happy that I'd picked Heidi to play Daisy. There couldn't have been anyone more perfect to play that part. GG was over the top as the old prospector. Everyone had a hell of time keeping a straight face when he delivered his line.
After spending a couple of hours huddled in the saloon we finally got all the shots we needed. We went back to the other saloon where there was heat, got some food and waited while our FX guys finished making up zombies for the next series of shots.
About midnight we had everyone ready. I really felt sorry for the horses at this point. They'd been sitting there all day waiting for their big shot. We turned out all the lights in the town and used our big lights with various colored gels and attempted to fill the streets with our fog machine on loan from Ed. It looked suitably creepy!
William, Bill, and Brandi had done a great job making up all the zombies. Daisy/Heidi was also a zombie. We shot until about 1:30am. I think it's some of the best zombie footage we've gotten. Everyone was great, even at the 1:30am their enthusiasm didn't diminish.
I'd gotten a hotel room at the HoJo for the night along with some of our other cast and crew. It didn't make sense to drive all the way back to Sanford when we had to be there at 10am the next morning. And I was NOT going to spend the night in my car again. So we all headed to the HoJo. I don't remember one thing after my head hit the pillow. I was gone.
I'd suggested to Heidi that we get breakfast at the Waffle House the next morning. Just give me 10 minutes to get ready she said. I can't even get ready in 10 minutes. It kills me that she can do that and look as great as she does. I called around to the various rooms to see if anyone would join us that morning. Bill Cain said Sting was still fast asleep. They were heading out that morning so he wanted to let him sleep in. He thanked me again for letting them help out at the shoot, and I thanked him for making it happen. Wayne said he would join us. I couldn't get hold of Bill and Shonna. When we got to the Waffle House we figured out why. They were already there.
Heidi had never heard of the Waffle House before, so she was excited to have her first Waffle House experience. We'd heard the night before that just a few nights before that, someone had gotten their finger bitten off there. Exciting! Heidi on the other hand was more excited that she could buy Waffle House hunting gear, and took down the web address so she could order some.
I had a huge breakfast. This was good because it ended up being the only meal I got that day. Of course we were late getting to the town but we had a good excuse. We probably could have rushed through breakfast but it was nice to just sit and chat for a bit. I knew the rest of the day would not be as relaxed.
That days shoot was wonderful. I was still worn out from the night before, a lot of us were. We were shooting Daisy and the Sheriff's scenes and their first scene was a flash back. We shot at the church and the area we were shooting was very limited. Bill and Zach were on camera and Zach was having trouble getting the shot I needed. I think I said something like "give me the camera, I'll shoot it if you can't get it". Poor Zach, he'd unintentionally incurred the wrath of bitchy Christine. It was a difficult shot and Zach is a perfectionist when it comes to composing his shots. This is definitely a good thing be-cause I don't have to worry about his shots being sloppy. I did apologize to him after-ward. Hopefully he's forgiven me by now.
Both Heidi/Daisy and Darrell/Sheriff were excellent by the way. They played off of each other well. Their next scene in the saloon went equally well and we were done shooting at Shadow Hawk for the weekend.
The most difficult task was next. Packing up all our stuff and heading to Caroline's where we would be shooting our stable scene that night. We'd staged most of our stuff at the General Store. It looked like a small bomb had gone off there. There were costumes everywhere, make up, etc. Shonna's brother and sister-in-law (Mike and Debbie) were nice enough to get most of it in some kind of order while Brandi and I cleaned up the saloon where we had all our meals. We had quite a bit of food left over but I was sure that before the night was over most of it would be gone.
About an hour later we had crammed every bit of stuff we could into our vehicles. My new SUV was coming in very handy. Bill no longer had to carry the majority of the gear which I'm sure he was happy about as was his wife Shonna who drove the van that carried it. Apparently after our little trek to Erie she was attacked for about a week by fruit flies before she found a rotting banana skin in a bag that had been left behind.
Poor Heidi was fading fast and I promised her we would not be shooting until 1:30am that night. She'd only gotten about an hour's sleep on the flight over and was still trying to catch up. She never complained though and was always one hundred percent for every scene. She'd put up with a lot that weekend from freezing temperatures to randy old drunks making crude remarks. Lord you'd think they'd never seen a woman in a saloon girl outfit before! Makes you wonder what the real saloon girls had to go through.
We arrived at Caroline's and took a break to get some food. Caroline had made a pot of chili which went fast! I went out to my car to get the costumes for everyone so we could get started. That was a task in itself. Digging through all those bins, trying to find all the bits and pieces. We had a panic moment when we thought we'd left Ed's hat back at the town but we soon found it in one of the boxes. I pulled out everything I thought we would need for the night including my two cameras.
I told someone to go ahead and take the lights down to the stables. Somehow though, my camera ended up down there too. More on that later. We got everyone in costume. Wayne was more than ready for his big scene. He'd been waiting all weekend for his big moment.
The stables was perfectly lit, the horses were friendly and Wayne got along with them well. I was pretty pissed when I found my camera there. It had been sitting there in freezing temperatures for at least an hour or two. It turned on and worked, so initially I thought we were okay. We shot some beautiful stuff. Unfortunately about 90 percent of it is ruined. When I played back the tape later on, one side of the video was extremely pixelated. Frames were dropped, audio came in and out. It was a mess. I hope to god I can salvage enough of Heidi's stuff to use but the rest will have to be re-shot. I definitely have enough good audio of her that I can plug in to what shots I can salvage. The time code was also missing so it couldn't be dumped to the computer. I fixed this by making a dupe and have successfully dumped it thank god.
We had taken a break to go and do Heidi's make up and get her ready for her finale. During that time we also did our podcast which you can check out here. In that time the camera had time to warm up and recover so the last part of the tape and Daisy's death was perfect. Thank god for that! That also leads me to believe that my camera is not permanently damaged. I'd love to get hold of the person responsible and just....! I can't imagine what idiot would think you could leave an expensive camera like that out in freezing temperatures and not ruin it! If it had been ruined I'd be taking the cost out of their hide. That is if I knew who it was because no one will own up to it.
Anyway...we finished up about 10pm not too late. I got Heidi to her hotel, the Microtel this time since it was closer to the airport, and I headed home, exhausted, happy, and wishing I didn't have to go to work the next day!
Wow, my blog finally hit the 10,000+ mark the other day. You guys have been tuning in a lot. That's great! You've journeyed with me from the very beginning nearly 2 years ago to the present. A lot has changed since then eh? I started the blog to work through some issues I was having with our former director of Forever Dead "Patrick". It quickly became a lot more than just an outlet. It became a production diary. Something we can all look back on when we forget. Something to remind ourselves of all we've overcome, accomplished and those frustrating times when we just couldn't get it to work.
You guys have been there through all of that, offering suggestions and laughing with us along the way. We wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for all of you. Your support and your positive responses to our productions are what kept us going through it all. And there were times when finances were scarce and I wondered if I was just crazy trying to make it happen. What we do doesn't pay in cold hard cash. Doing something that gives other people pleasure and gives us an unending, no-holds-barred creative outlet makes us richer than any amount of $$$ in our bank account. Of course we wouldn't turn down a few $$$ if they came our way.
I was thinking about that Monday when the power company shut my lights off. Maybe I shouldn't have made that trip to Erie, maybe I shouldn't have brought that plane ticket for our actor out in LA. Maybe I shouldn't be buying more costumes and paying for hotel rooms, buying more equipment etc. Maybe I shouldn't have taken out those 3 loans to cover all our production expenses. But then I thought, candle light is under rated. It's nice to have a night or two without the noise of the T.V. Time to think about things, catch up on some reading and stuff. Right!
Now about the power thing. Funny story. Really. I always live paycheck to paycheck. This time that bit me in the ass. Did you know that when you purchase gas if you use a credit card they can hold up to $100 on your card to cover your gas purchase? This doesn't happen if you use it as a debit card and enter in a pin. Then they can only hold $1. And no one will claim responsibility for it. If you call the credit card company they will say it's the gas station holding it. If you call the gas station they say it's the credit card company. You could go all day like this and get nowhere!
So I purchased $30 in gas Friday on my way home from work. I knew I would have just enough money to pay my power bill which had to be paid no later than Sunday. No problem, I'd just go home hop on the computer and take care of it. Uh, uh. Thanks to the gas station, or credit card company or the gas pump troll, my account was short about $45. They held $75 on my card. And the $75 hold would not be released 'til Monday.
So there I was Monday with no power and a new appreciation for everything electrical. My water wouldn't even work without power! Even though I paid the bill Monday morning as soon as the money was back in my account, it was too late. "Too bad so sad" the Power company said. You have to pay a $700 deposit to get it turned back on. I think I made some distressed gagging sound over the phone that alarmed them appropriately. They lowered it to $171.95. Thanks to a generous co-worker I was able to get it turned back on Tuesday afternoon. Of course now I'll be $171.95 in the hole on Friday. So some other creditor that I can't pay will be pissed off. Thank god for Caller ID!
Lesson learned, don't put off 'til tomorrow what you should do right now! And use your "debit" card not your "credit" card at the pump!
One day when we reach 20,000 I'll be able to look back on this and laugh. Actually, I'm laughing right now. You really have to! ;-) In the end it's all worth it. I could have money in my bank account and nothing to do on the weekends, no friends, no one to share my ideas with and be absolutely miserable. I have been there. Or I can have no money in my account and look forward to every weekend, have lots of friends who share my ideas and help me realize my dreams. Crazy as it sounds I prefer the empty bank account. The money is well spent, the work week goes a lot faster, and I'm happy!
Lots of news on all our movies this week. I'll start with our first movie Second Death. Our director for Second Death, Joe Wilson entered the "Dare to Direct" short indie film competition on Chiller TV. I just got the word last Thursday the he is one of the winners and an abbreviated version of Second Death will be shown along with the other winners on the Chiller channel. According to their website at www.chillertv.com they will be showing it Halloween night. I think the Chiller channel is available to Direct TV subscribers.
Our second movie and first feature Forever Dead is finally getting accepted to some film festivals! As most of you know we screened at the Ava Gardner FIlm Festival. We had a GREAT response to our movie there. The whole weekend there in Smithfield, NC was just amazing. I met some very talented fellow film makers.
Two of which tied for best narrative short, Captain Undergarments and What the Frock. The Forever Dead won for best narrative feature! That totally blew me away! Bill, Zach and Darrell all showed up to support the movie. Bill and I did a panel on the FX in Forever Dead that although it was not well attended went very well.
When I got back I found out that The Forever Dead had just been shown a the Atlanta Horror Fest! I'd entered it a couple of weeks ago but hadn't heard back from them. Imagine my surprise when I found it listed on their website. According to the guys in charge there were about 50 people at the showing and they all enjoyed it. This was corroborated by Bret Harris a co-producer on our move whose brother just happened to be there.
In February we will be taking The Forever Dead and Second Death to Connooga in Chatanooga, Tennessee. They will be showing both movies there. We'll be doing a horror panel there as well as a vendor table. So that should be a blast! We're all really looking forward to it!
Just got back from Erie, PA where Bill, Wayne, and I attended the Eerie Horror Fest. Man, what an amazing weekend! We weren't showing there but we had a vendor table.
After an epic 12 hour journey we arrived in Erie about noon on Friday. First order of business was getting a primo spot in the EXPO. Fortunately we were only the second vendor to arrive so we got the spot right next to the door where people would be walking in. It was a smaller room than we had expected. That was good though. Tom Savini, Dee Wallace, Michael Berryman, Jason Mews, and Jim Krut (The helicopter zombie) and Leonard Lies (The machete zombie) from the original Dawn of the Dead would be there. So it would be pretty cozy. Second order of business was sleep. Since the vendor area didn't officially open 'til 4pm that would give Bill and Wayne time to catch a few Z's. I had been able to get quite a bit of sleep on the way up so I spent the next couple of hours putting together a photo album with pictures from our three movies.
After our really bad experience at the Nevermore Film Festival I was a little worried about doing well. But this was obviously set up a whole lot better. Fortunately for us the Expo was downstairs at the Avalon Hotel where we were staying and the Erie Playhouse where the films were showing was across the street. So we were within walking distance of everything we needed. Wayne bought us a black cloth for our table which stood out among the white table cloths that every one else was using. We had two full sized movie posters for Fistful of Brains and The Forever Dead thanks to our buddy Darrell Parker and Andy had done up 200 buttons which we added to the ones we still had left over from Nevermore. Add that to the 100 DVDs I'd put together and the stack of flyers with info on all our movies, our photo album and a looping video I'd put together with trailers, behind the scenes footage, etc. and we were well prepared.
photo courtesy of Erica Bickel
Wayne and I had brought tons of Halloween Candy which we used to lure in potential customers. The buttons were by far our best seller. For $1 we gave them a button and a credit in Fistful of Brains and for $20 they could get Second Death, The Forever Dead, a button and credit in FFOB.
Funny thing. We found out after we came back downstairs at 4 that day that Tom Savini had been eyeing our spot and had wanted to set his booth up there. Ooops!
The weekend went GREAT! We all had such a blast talking to the other film makers.
Michael Berryman is the nicest guy! Wayne and I got to chat with him for a while and got our photo with him. So is Dee Wallace Stone. I bought a copy of the 25th anniversary edition of Cujo and Dee signed it for my daughter Jessie whose dog is also named Cujo. We both have daughters about the same age. Hers has just decided to follow in her mother's footsteps. She is a genuinely nice person and it was really nice to meet her.
The nicest guy there by far was Jim Krut (The helicopter zombie) from Dawn of the Dead. He came over to our booth a few times and chatted with us. On our last day there he brought Tom Savini over with him and told him he just had to check out our zombie rabbit. Tom laughed at the photos we had and Bill and I frantically put in Forever Dead so we could let him see the actual footage. It was obvious we were all star struck and tongue tied. I mean damn, we'd barely gotten to speak two words to him all weekend and there he was at our table! I attempted to inconspicuously turn on my camera so I could at least try to get some audio of him there.
I'm sure that was probably the highlight of Bill's weekend!
We also got to meet the two brothers whose new movie Netherbeast Incorporated was shown at the festival. They had Jason Mewes who is in the movie promoting it. Wayne and I caught the screening and I really enjoyed it. It's really hard to describe. Loosely it's kinda like Office Space with vampires. Very funny! Excellent cast! Jason was a hoot at the Q&A. I got Jessie's copy of Clerks 2 signed for her. On the last day of the festival they also came over to our table and bought a copy of our movie. Really nice guys! I hope their movie does well.
We were networking like crazy that weekend. Saw some excellent movies!
Made some new friends. And had the best damn hotdog I've ever tasted at Ole Dogs! They keep weird hours (10pm - 3am on Saturday) but if you're ever in Erie you should definitely go there!
It was well worth the 12 hours it took to get there and arriving home at 2:30am knowing I had to get up for work the next day! You know Bill is just a machine, driving through the night with no sleep listening to recorded Howard Stern shows all night long and surviving from one gas station to the next on Starbucks coffee and all the junk food we could pack. I wonder how he's feeling today?
Just found this online. Brain Damage had told me The Forever Dead would be released in March but according to Fangoria the date is February 5th. This isn't the first time I've heard this. Note to self: contact Dustin and find out what's up!
Last Tuesday we were on Blog Talk Radio on the Independent Corner talking about our movies and promoting Fistful of Brains. You can catch it on iTunes or go to the website to tune in.
Have a great week everyone. Our podcast from Eerie horror fest will be up soon.
Instead of just having two FX guys this time we have FOUR FX guys and one FX gal! So it made sense that we should all get together and knock our heads together to see what kind of nasty stuff fell out that we could use for FFOB.
Still head of FX is Bill Mulligan now teamed up with William Stine, PA guy Zach, Boom gal Brandi, and Brandi's brother Jason. We all met at my house this past Sunday.
I had a special treat in store for all. After spending an entire day during my trip to England looking for Spotted Dick, searching through no less than 3 grocery stores I finally found it in Cary, NC at the World Market! Bill constantly teases me about British food and the fact that we have a desert called Spotted Dick. I couldn't wait to make him eat it.
It's a very delicate process cooking this desert. Very gourmet. It's made by Heinz which is "the brand" in England. It comes in a short round can and you are supposed to boil the can in enough water to float it at least 2 inches from the bottom of the pot. It should boil for 35 minutes. Then you open the end of the can that clearly says "open this end first". I don't know what happens if you open the other end first. It expands in the can so it would probably blow up in your face or something which would be really nasty. No one wants Spotted Dick all over their face! It is served with hot custard. Yum!
You may wonder about the name. The spotted comes from the raisins. Dick comes from...well I don't know really. The British are fond of giving things silly names so who knows where it came from. Maybe some guy named Dick came up with it? It's basically a spongy spice cake with raisins.
You should have seen the look on everyone's face when I told them what I was serving them. William passed saying he'd just eaten. Bill was pretty excited. Brandi and Jason I'm sure were beginning to wonder just what they'd gotten themselves into. And Zach, well his alarm clock didn't go off 'til 15 minutes before the meeting was to start so he bowed out (we know it's really because he was out partying the night before and just couldn't drag himself out of bed with that killer hangover.) ;-)
We spent a good bit of time getting to know each other and talking about the challenges ahead and how we were going to get things done. Bill will be delegating a lot of the load so it's not all on his shoulders this time. He brought along a couple of coyote head skins that he'd purchased on e-bay. They should look pretty good for our people-in-the-woods. He'd also been busy creating plaster skulls that we can gore up, smash up etc. William brought two large rolls of duct tape that he was going to tape Bill up in so he could show us how to create a fake body. You can see the vidcast here. The conversation flowed, the spotted dick was eaten, served with a lovely full bodied Welsh tea for those that would have it. Our team bonded.
The end result was a very good duplicate of Bill's body that he apparently has lots of plans for. So every time you see half a torso or a headless corpse, think of Bill. I guess since I didn't give him a part in this movie this is his way of putting himself in it, sort of.
I think I've convinced him that British food is really pretty good. He cleaned his plate so I don't expect to hear any more digs about Spotted Dick!
Have gone extremely well! In spite of a quirky camera problem and in spite of us having to re-cast the part of the sheriff at the last minute. Right now we're getting all the non-gore stuff shot. We're actually doing things pretty much in sequence. At the rate we're going we should have half the movie shot by November.
Starting late October though it will be "balls to the walls" gore. Our PA guy Zach has offered himself up as an apprentice to Bill and we have another crew member Brandi who has become our new boom gal when Zach has other PA or actorly tasks to attend to. She is also going to be helping out with the FX. Since our other FX guy has disappeared we are very happy to have William Stine on board to help us out with our major gore scenes. He's got tons of experience and did a great job helping us on one of our major shoots for Forever Dead.
I've been pleasantly surprised by the amazing performances everyone has been turning out. With very few exceptions everyone has been spot on, well rehearsed, and knows their lines. We had quite a few new actors this time so I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd hoped that I made the right choices and I have yet to be disappointed.
It also seems I'm incapable of making a straight up scary movie. Since Evil Dead, and Dead Alive are two of my favorite horror movies I guess it was bound to happen. This movie will definitely be scary but there seems to be a great deal of comedy seeping into it as well. We're all having a lot of fun with it and I hope the audience will appreciate it as well.
So many challenges to creating a western. We are trying darned hard to remain true to the genre and keep things pretty authentic. It does get hard at times when you don't have a lot of money for costuming. Boots for instance are a bit of a problem. You'll notice you don't see peoples feet a whole lot. That's because most of the cast or extras are wearing tennis shoes or sandals.
So the shooting is going well!
Now on to another subject. Brain Damage Films has decided not to release our movie Forever Dead until March! We're pretty disappointed, I mean a Christmas time release would have been killer! Our contract states that they have to release it within one year and March is pretty much the last possible month it can get released so I believe that's pretty much set in stone unless they decide to release it earlier, which i doubt!
The Adrenalin Group will be at the Eerie Horror Fest. We'll have a table set up there selling our DVDs and promoting Fistful of Brains. We'll be showing clips from Fistful so if you're there be sure to stop by and check it out. I'll be there along with our FX guy Bill Mulligan, Wayne Bates who plays Pastor John in FFOB and Jaqueline Martini who plays Lily in FFOB and played Alice the lab assistant in Forever Dead. We're all really looking forward too it. They've got some great guests lined up and we hope we'll have time to catch a movie or two as well.
After a pretty restless night spent in my car I finally gave up and decided to get up and go for a drive at about 9am. The crew call was 11am and the cast was to be there by noon. I needed to go sort out Peri's hotel because for some reason they didn't have a record of my credit card even though I made the reservation with it. It didn't take long to get that cleared up. I drove around, found some coffee, a danish, and hit up the local pharmacy for some deodorant and makeup so I wouldn't be too scary or odorous.
By the time I got back it was about 10:30am. Everyone who had stayed the night was already gathered in the saloon having a breakfast of sorts with leftovers from the day before.
Our shoot that day involved hanging Ed's pal Too Tall while Ed (Dead Eye) tried to convince the local people to buy his Lazarus water. Too Tall and Gigi had it all set up. They had a harness that Too Tall would wear under his clothes and a break away noose that would give way in case for some reason the wire attached to the harness didn't hold. After all we didn't want a real hanging on our hands!
So we all sat around, shooting the "breeze" while we waited for the rest of the cast and the extras to arrive. Between Bill D., and myself we planned to have at least a dozen townspeople there to witness the event. We also had a couple of horses on the way. We still had to shoot Peri's ride up to his house on horseback. I had given Bill my camera to take home the night before thinking it would not be a good idea to keep it in the heat overnight. It needed a break too. In hindsight I should have just given it to Peri to take back to the hotel room. Bill had enough on his mind and forgot it. He was nearly an hour late because he had to go back and get it. But he did remember several copies of the Sanford Herald. Front page news again, without the blood this time. Headline: "Zombie Cowboys!"
By the time he got there most of the extras had arrived. I didn't have them get into costume just yet. I wanted to wait until the last possible minute. I knew once they were in them they would be spending some long sweaty hours out in the heat while we shot their scenes.
We did Peri's horseback riding first. After a few problems getting on the horse (I have no room to talk here because I can never reach the stirrup) we got Peri on the horse and shot his scene. He handled the horse like a real pro. Much better than some of our other cast members. ;-P
With that out of the way we took the opportunity to do our podcast for August. Peri had some great things to say about his stay with us which made me feel really good. This in spite of the fact that I'd butchered his last name AGAIN. You can check out the podcast here.
Then it was time for the good stuff. Hanging Too Tall. All the extras were ready to go. A very enthusiastic bunch. It never ceases to surprise me the lengths and suffering people will go through to be in a zombie movie. At the end of the shoot, after hours and hours in the hot sun they'll come to me with big sweaty smiles on their faces and tell me what a great time they had. Then they'll ask me to be sure and let them know when we need them again! You can be sure I'll be calling them. What a cool bunch of people! Could possibly be heat stroke though.
If my camera gave me problems the day before though, things were twice as bad that day. The shutting on and off became more irritating. I was very much afraid that at some point Bill would let loose a bellow of rage and hurl my camera across the field. In spite of a decent nights sleep we were all quickly wilting again.
We got Peri's stuff out of the way first so we could send him on his way. He had a long drive ahead of him. And I know he was looking forward to getting in his car and cranking the A/C full blast. We were all glad we got to spend the weekend with him. We'd made a new friend and we all promised to return the favor anytime he needed us. Working with him again would be a pleasure!
Bill really stood up well to the task of DP that day. I'd done shot lists and storyboards for the shoot the day before but hadn't had time to do anything for this scene. It really was a pretty short scene so I figured we could wing it. I gave Bill a general idea of what I needed and he just went to it. In spite of camera problems and in spite of having to take constant breaks to let everyone cool off he got some excellent shots and I doubt there will be much that needs to be re-shot.
Ed did say he wasn't happy with his own performance and would like to re-shoot his stuff. I think he was a bit too hard on himself. I think he really did a very good job. He may not have gotten the lines dead on but he did get the general idea. I'm not really a stickler about making people stick to exactly what is in the script. Ad-libbing is fine with me.
At the end of the day we had everything we needed. We packed up our stuff and headed out. I would also like to say a great big thank you to our perverted preacher Wayne who wasn't in any of the scenes that weekend but who has volunteered himself to be our photographer for all our shoots and suffered through it all with us. Yeah, except for the fact that he was too delicate to camp out, and spent the night in a nice cool hotel room. ;-P You can see some of his excellent work on our podcast sight where we have links to pages and pages full of great behind-the-scenes photos.
Our next shoot will probably be August 24th when we will be shooting our first scenes with our new Sheriff, Darrell Parker and attempting to recreate our trailer sans Michael Jones.
Damn what a great weekend we had! Our fist shoot at Shadow Hawk and I couldn't be more happy with how things turned out.
Of course I stressed about it all week long and stayed up 'til the wee hours trying to dis-tract myself by tackling our green screen sequence. By Friday I was completely exhausted so that really wasn't a very good idea. I was running around like a madwoman Friday night trying to get everything ready and raving about how tired I was. My daughter finally told me to get to bed and she would handle it. She made the banana bread so we'd have something to snack on in the morning.
Bill had made it back from New York in time for the shoot as promised and was there bright and early at 8am. We were supposed to be at the shoot by 9am. That's when the crew call was. I was supposed to pick Peri up at his hotel by 9:30am. But...I didn't get up 'til 7am and my daughter didn't get up 'til quarter 'til so we were both running late. Bill sat quietly at my kitchen table while we pulled ourselves together. We finally made it out of there and hit the road at 10 min. 'til 9. Clearly we were going to be late. It was at least an hour's drive to the western town of Shadow Hawk.
We made it there by 10am. Of course Zach, Wayne and our actress Angela had been there since 9 just like they were supposed to. And of course they gave us a hard time for being late. I didn't even try to come up with an excuse. I called Peri at the hotel and he said we didn't need to come get him. He'd googled the town and knew exactly how to get there. It was pretty hot already so it was probably better that he'd had an extra hour to enjoy the cool A/C. Most of us were planning to camp out for the weekend to save us the trip back and forth since we were shooting Saturday and Sunday. With the exception of Wayne who got himself a hotel. He doesn't do camping! I forgot my tent and my clothes. So I decided I would sleep in my car and hope I wouldn't be too rank by Sunday.
While we waited for Peri to arrive we set up headquarters in the Saloon since it wouldn't be needed for the shoot that day. I had two huge bins of costumes, hats, everything I hoped we would need for the weekend and a ton of food as well. I brought a crock pot of chili that I would let simmer all day so we'd have something to go with the hot dogs we'd be grilling that night. There was also a case of water, sandwich fixin's and the banana bread which turned out perfect! My daughter is really a very good cook. Good to know the money spent on culinary school will not be wasted.
Wayne cut his hair! I was shocked. First of all how dare he cut it without asking my permission first! He is the perverted preacher in the movie and I had all these storyboard images in my head of him with long hair. Now they would have to be adjusted. How darned inconvenient! Trimming his locks did nothing to dull his wit and we were subjected to it the entire weekend. Peri seemed to enjoy it though. Of course he only had to deal with it for two days. ;-)
Zach had cut his hair as well. I guess it's a summer time thing. Really with the heat it was the smart thing to do. Zach had a new job too. He'd gone from being a projectionist to becoming a video game tester. Yeah, we were pretty envious!
Bill Drake, the owner of Shadow Hawk was an excellent host to us all and made us feel right at home. Went out of his way to make sure we had everything we needed.
Peri arrived and he was every bit as nice as I thought he'd be. For a guy who's career had spanned more than 20 years he had absolutely no ego and fit right in with our guerilla style of film making. After all his movie Redneck Zombies was the first shot-on-video horror movie to receive worldwide distribution. It had really forged the way for many of us filmmakers who could never afford to shoot on film.
I introduced him to the crew and his new wife Angela who would play Teresa and my daughter Jessie now his daughter Katie. Some of you may remember Jessie played Mary in Second Death and Forever Dead. This may be my last chance to snag her for a part in one of my movies. Once she starts college in the Spring she will likely move on to do "her own thing".
The scene we did Saturday was this: Katie is a very sick little girl. Her pa Frank has always been a screw up in his wife's eyes. Now he finally has a chance to redeem him-self. He has bought a bottle of magical water that he believes will cure her from her sickness and finally show his wife that he can actually do something right for once. Un-fortunately the water has the opposite effect. It kills his daughter or so they think until they hear strange noises coming from her bedroom that night. Turns out the snake oil salesman is right. The water does keep her alive, it actually brings her back from the dead. Of course she's pretty hungry when she wakes up. Fortunately her ma and pa are there to help her satisfy her hunger.
Since half the scene was to be shot during the day and half at night we had a pretty decent break between shoots to sit around, talk, eat and just have a really great time. This was really important since we'd just shed about half our body weight in sweat. Even the fans Bill D. provided didn't help too much. We had to shut them off while we were shooting. Our cast were real troopers. Bill and I complained profusely, but they were great. My daughter had to wear a flannel nightgown that she opted to wear over her clothes with a blanket on top of that. I know she had to be miserable.
Poor Peri, I bought him a pair of suspenders for the shoot that I'd bought at a second hand store. Apparently they weren't made very well because they snapped the first time he knelt down at his daughter's bedside. Angela had to hold them in place for him most of the shoot until we could try to fix them with some duct tape. By the end of the shoot we we gave up and just got rid of them. Hopefully the continuity police won't catch us.
Some really excellent performances though. For all Peri claiming that he wasn't a good actor he gave such a great interpretation of his character. Take after take he was brilliant. Angela was excellent as well. Perfect casting if I do say so myself. Jessie as al-ways came through as the creepy young girl. I'm sure she's tired of playing these kid roles now that she's 19, but she never complained.
It was a lot easier this time letting Bill shoot. He did an excellent job and thanks to a thorough shot list and storyboards we pretty pretty much had our stuff together. I'd also brought along a small monitor that I could use so I could see what was being shot. It was extremely handy in spite of the numerous times we got tangled up in all the cords!
Something about the heat fried all out brains. We all had trouble with it. We found ourselves taking quite a few breaks just so we could get some water in us and get cooled down. We were all pretty much drenched from head to toe. Bill Drake made us all look like a bunch of pussies. The guy never broke a sweat even in full cowboy gear. "I'm used to it." he said with a slow smile. I know he had to be laughing at us behind that smile because we were pretty pitiful.
Right about the time we all got it together my camera started freaking out. I guess it wasn't too fond of the heat either. I'm really hoping that was all that was wrong with it because I'd hate to think it was anything more serious. Although I'd cleaned the heads beforehand I got a message saying the heads needed cleaning. Apparently that was just a lame excuse to take a break as Bill found out every time he tried to start shooting. It would randomly just cut off then cut back on again. The quality of the footage so far seems to be fine though so I really don't think it was a head issue as much as it was a heat and humidity issue.
It was during one of our breaks that the crew from the Sanford Herald showed up. They have followed our movie making since 2003 when we started this whole crazy thing with Second Death. We had graced the front page of the Herald 3 times since then. Each time with some crazy photo of people covered in blood. And every time I was surprised. Sanford is generally pretty conservative. I had called Gordon on Friday hoping at the last minute he might be able to give us some press. Fortunately for us he was working for the Herald that Saturday and looking for a good story for the Sunday paper. They spent quite a bit of time with us and took some great pictures. Fascinated by the old town and Bill D. and all his memorabilia.
We did get everything we needed that day and were happy to sit back for a few hours and eat, converse and wait for nightfall when we hoped it would be cooler and we could begin shooting our night time scenes. We never wanted for an interesting topic to dis-cuss while we waited. No uncomfortable silences in this crowd. More like a constant cacophony of intellect challenging intellect.
The food went pretty quick. The chili especially. Then the hot dogs. I'd brought along some fresh corn a co-worker had given me to put on the grill. Peri had never had it this way. As luck would have it his didn't look too appetizing with some brown bits in it and he decided to pass on this particular southern delicacy.
Ed had showed up at this point as well. Gigi and Too Tall had been there the whole day working on setting up the gallows the three of them had built while I was in England. It was beautiful in a macabre sort of way. Coincidentally Bill D. had just created his own Boot Hill cemetery out back and they set up the gallows nearby. The perfect setting for Sunday's scene.
So nightfall came. One thing Bill and I had not counted on was that by this time in spite of the break and the great food and all that, we were pretty exhausted. That heat had sucked a lot of energy out of us. There was no getting around it though we had to shoot this scene. Peri was leaving Sunday so this was our only chance. We weren't about to wimp out now.
Remember the problems we had with Liesle's lips in Forever Dead? Well it didn't cool down as much as we'd hoped. Turns out no matter how much sprit gum, or latex, or whatever the heck Bill was using...if you put it on someone who is drenched in sweat it will not stick. And like I said gelatin doesn't do well in the heat.
It took a lot more takes this time to get the shots we wanted. For some reason it seemed even hotter than before! Bill was getting irritated because the camera kept shutting off every 5 minutes and he couldn't keep it white balanced and I was getting irritated be-cause he was getting irritated. Angela had to leave by 11:30 so she could make the hour and a half drive back home. It was now 11pm and Katie had yet to eat her ma. She still hadn't even taken a decent chunk out of her pa! We decided that the best thing to do would be to get Peri's death out of the way. We could easily do Angela's a
excited
happy
photo courtesy of Erica Bickel
photo courtesy of Erica Bickel
