so yesterday i drove over to river falls, wi, to see if i could help out at all with a movie that my friends sarah (better known as spoon to the general populace) and her bf josh are filming. it's called "cope: a small film about a big decision" and it's going to have more documentary than film, i think. which is the beauty of an indie film.
it was just so nice to belong. and see the bright lights of some kind of theatre, and smell ben nye makeup again. *sigh* so lovely.
stephen (aka daddybear) was also there, doing lights and general guidance, as he's had lots of experience with filmmaking. i ended up doing a variety of things--makeup, holding the boom (that mic on a pole), script and shot supervision, gofer. (hey, we need some masking tape to mark the floor. could someone grab the powder for chris' nose? et cetera.) i think that was what got to me the most--it reminded me SO much of being in any theatre production i've ever done, wherein you're acting during one scene, but then you also are doing props and calling light cues for part of the show...so on and so forth. it reminded me, as i was standing there holding the script and shot list, of just how much i missed stage managing and theatre in general.
as a bonus, i got to hang out with some laid back but artistic people, which is always a pleasure because i despise being rushed and pushed and coerced into hurrying. by the end of the shoot (at which point it was realized that there would have to be a reshoot of the night scenes because josh and sarah both appeared in the sliding glass door reflection like ghosties. which was better than that morning, where, after filming for how long, we watched the dailies and everyone about bit it laughing over daddybear, who thought he was out of frame but really wasn't. colie (the "heroine") is saying good bye to chris ("hero") in the BEDROOM and all you can see the whole time over colie's shoulder is this florid blue and yellow hawaiian shirt, a leg with shorts and a wool sock and sandal, and an arm on top, clearly holding another camera. turns it into an entirely different movie. LOL) anyway by the end of the shoot everyone was beat, myself included. i sat down for "a minute" on the couch with noah, an art major who brought these fabric squares to decorate one wall of the living room--amazing what you can do with thread and fabric if you're an artist. so we sat there discussing this poem that chris had been reading by i think charles norse, it was called the priest and the matador. and in the kitchen they kept shooting and reshooting this scene in which chris' character has to respond to colie's character:
colie: it's just tea.
chris: it's never just tea.
but it kept sounding more like: it's never justy. or it's never justine. so there was a chant that erupted at one point, something annunciating "it's never just tea" but we couldn't get the other videocamera ready fast enough to make a difference. so then we digressed and discussed the monkey who played a nurse on the soap opera "passions."
speaking of names. after shooting and shooting this scene in which chris pours cereal, daddybear pointed out that we couldn't use the cheerios box unless general mills was funding some part of the film. after we got over the "well, shit" portion of that moment, we realized that BEHIND the cheerios box there was a nicely displayed bag of starburst. so that whole scene will need to be re-shot as well. *sigh* but it was a learning experience for everyone, and a valuable one, too.
i also got to have some fabulous homemade spaghetti for lunch, and then steve's pizza (small pizza joint, great pizza) for dinner--we had a greek and it was divine. course we were pretty much starving at that point so it went very fast. one minute there was a pizza on the table and another minute we were asking for the check. snap of the fingers. i think i got home around 1120 or so last night, and by that time i was totally exhausted.
blue skies and sunny today. i feel like writing. or going back over to help film some more. but they're not starting until 8 tonight and that's a bit late, if i want to get up at 6 for work. blech.
so yeah. that was my saturday. i don't think i even told you what the film was about: a man who is OCD; mom wants him to start taking his meds again, new girlfriend has no idea that he's OCD, etc. i'm looking forward to the screening portion, and the "behind the scenes" that is going to be part of this. in theatre you're usually a long ways away from the actors, when the performance is in progress. in film, you see the scene, and you think: my god. there were how many of us in the room at the same time, redoing and redoing the scene.
interesting.
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