PostProduction

I know it's been a while since I put up anything new, but that is mostly because there hasn't been much to say.
After I put together the initial rough cut we decided that we needed a couple more shots to tell the story.  That meant finding a time with all five of the principal actors and our DP and 1st AC that would work.  We ended up shooting on 7/24 and did three scenes.  The footage looks terrific, especially considering we didn't rent any lights or other equipment for the pickup day.

We did a brand new ending and got a lot of new footage in the motel room.  That scene just wasn't working before and now I think it does splendidly.

We did dialogue recording in a studio with everyone on the 25th and have been incorporating that into the edit as well.  Our sound mixer just got back from his world tour and is starting on his work in earnest.

We are still aiming to be done by early September for the Sundance deadline and just might make it.

Go Go Post Production!

So our 4 day shoot went really well and the raw footage looks fantastic.  I've spent a week doing a preliminary rough edit and it's looking pretty good.  I'm still worried the whole filmstrip gimmick will come across but I think it works so far.

Now we need to go through scheduling hell for a half day of additional photography and then get the actors in for audio recording.

People have been uploading a ton of photos various places that I'm not going to repost on this site because that's just a big waste of time.

Tim Daust's Facebook Photo album: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1063002477&ref=pymk#!/photos.php?id=747435415

John Paul's photo blog: http://jpmarston.com/news/

First Day of Shooting!

Well, first day of shooting is completed.  I did not know it was possible to be so sore just from standing around telling people what to do for 12 hours.  In what I'm sure is a totally unrelated coincidence all of the crew guys were skinny...perhaps I should look into that.

I think the footage we got is fantastic - the lighting is dark and hard and moody just like I envisioned.  The actors nailed their parts. 

We started in the room of a seedy motel and our crew had to build a huge cave in order to block out the sun going into the windows but still leave room to put our own lights there. 

We ended up tearing apart both rooms we rented in order to switch beds and then use all the linens to help block light. The other room was for staging, but it wasn't exactly a relaxing environment either.

Inside the room it was hot and steamy and had too many people, but we got into a rhythm pretty quickly and ended up doing 21 setups in about 4 hours.










From there we moved to the convenience store and started getting exteriors.  Our contact there Josh was awesome - he kept the place open for us to go inside and cool off as well as buy much needed drinks and supplies.  He even got into one of the shots as an extra.

The crew again was super fast, laying out dolly track and lighting both inside and outside the store in short order and we started making up some of the time we lost earlier in the day.  We ended up two hours over, but we did get all our shots.  I guess it's also not a real film shoot unless the police show up, but Josh was able to convince him we had the owner's permission and I had an email from a city employee saying that as long as we were not interfering with the public we didn't need a permit.  The email actually said "It is my understanding you don't need a permit" but fortunately he didn't make me show it to him.

I'm still trying to figure out a decent way to link to facebook albums (stupid facebook), but here are some pics from set taken by out lead actor: http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=2063690&id=1327537405  and our Hair and Makeup person: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/album.php?aid=174012&id=720763699.

This week is more prep, finalizing a restaurant location and then the marathon 3 days of shooting over the weekend.

Some Preliminary FX Stuff

With just over a week to go before shooting we're almost there.  Still lots of things to take care of but it's achievable.

I just got these videos in from Tim our FX guru and wanted to post them since they look pretty cool.  These will be combined with greenscreen work putting actors and props into the alley.

1st 3D Test                                                            3D Test w/ Movement

Alley Test - new alley                                             Test 4

Quick Crew update

We've got our Assistant Camera and Gaffer secured for the entire shoot.  Having continuity among the camera and electric leads ought to be very beneficial to the project.  We have queries out for some grips and assistant gaffers that should be locked down soon.  I need to start gathering PA's and other enthusiastic but inexperienced volunteers because we're pretty much out of budget for any paid positions.  However, we believe that as long as our department heads know what they're doing we'll be just fine.

Still on the list - we need a script supervisor and I'd very much like to get someone that knows about film make-up and hair.  Our FX Supervisor will also be looking for a helper with his on set work.  Wardrobe is starting to come together as are the props and set decoration.  The goal is to knock all that off our list by the end of next weekend so that final week will be putting out the unanticipated fires.

T minus Three Weeks (ish) and Counting

We had rehearsal for the motel room scene on Saturday and it went really well.  This scene more than any other I felt was important to rehearse before we all got on set with lights and people and money.  I decided to go to the actual motel location and I think that was a good decision.  For one thing we found out that the room is Extremely dark.  For another, I learned that some rooms are larger than others and have different furniture configurations so I'll need to be more specific when we reserve the final shooting one.

Having never actually directed a rehearsal before it took a bit to figure out what we should actually be doing, but fortunately everyone is still pretending I'm in charge so they all just keep doing what I tell them.  The scene itself it pretty intense so it was great to not only figure out the shots and blocking but also get the awkwardness out of the way.  I'm trying to cut together something from the rehearsal footage but considering how dark it was and how poorly I shot it I don't know how helpful it will be.  I think we'll probably end up shooting the whole scene about ten different ways so that my paranoia about sufficient coverage will be sated.  So few other scenes in the film will allow that kind of freedom so I'm going to take advantage of it.

I'm going out Wednesday with the DP and FX Supervisor to visit the locations and determine power/gear needs.  That should also allow me to finalize the schedule as well once the DP tells me the times I'm assuming aren't absurd.

Also on Saturday we had a production meeting and my Production Designer is actually making concrete progress on...designing the production.  We're collecting props and wardrobe bits - hopefully all that will be done in the next two weeks.  We're also making progress on collecting crew people, but that is going slowly.  I guess I'll need to start yelling at people soon on that front.

Sorry this post is so boring, I wish I had pictures or something, but I don't know how much of that we'll have until we actually start shooting.

Pre-production - Full Speed Ahead

I already sent a note to everyone who pledged, but I just have to say again how grateful we are for the support.  Having other people think we can pull this off has gone a long way to convincing us its actually possible.

As for actual pre-production stuff, we've got a big rehearsal for the motel room scene this Saturday.  I'll be taping it while we figure out the blocking so I'll have a chance to cut it together and make sure it works before we go actually shoot.  It should also be good for helping the actors get ready for what will be quite a tough scene emotionally and physically before we've got a big crew stuffed into the little motel room.

On the 4th I'll be meeting with the DP and Visual FX Supervisor to go visit all of our locations.  We'll planning out all of the camera movements, checking for adequate power supplies, figuring out parking requirements, deciding on additional lighting and grip equipment needs and determining what restrictions and marking will need to be done in order to add digital set extensions later.  Once we have that info I can finally get a realistic budget in place.

We are putting together our crew positions and will soon be looking to schedule extras.  If you have any interest in either please let me know.  For crew we have room for both experienced and unexperienced people.

Finally some Location Progress

I took the day off to go scouting around with Tim for some locations again.  To the zero people reading, you may recall that previously I went out but did not have much luck convincing the various people that A) I had any idea what I was doing B) I was serious C) I was not a pornographer.  My hope was that perhaps someone with - what do they call it - people skills might have better luck.  I'd been waiting a couple weeks without much movement but we finally had the time today and headed on out.

First stop was that same convenience store I found a month ago.  I had left my name and number on a napkin and I can't figure out why I never heard back.  Anyway, this time the guy there seemed to be an authorized dealmaker for the establishment and after Tim got to talking he opened up.  He seemed fairly enthusiastic and promised he'd bring it up to his partner and get back to us.  We also got His card this time - which is the sort of thing a normal person probably would have done last time.  We roughly blocked out the scene and tried to figure out all the CG background stuff we'd need but once we get the OK I'll take our DP out so he can sign off and we'll start pre-viz for real.  Fingers crossed.  This place is basically perfect - the tough part will be figuring out the camera moves and then replacing everything around it so it looks like we're in the middle of a city.

The goal then is to transition around the side of the building like the last shot above.  We'll cut to a new frame for our Alley shot.  Conveniently that was out next stop - Marietta Square.  I'd taken a quick drive by there a while ago and I thought that there were probably some good spots hidden among the old buildings, and poking around on google street maps confirmed it.  I guess objectively it was a really nice day, but seemed way too hot for April.  However it was worth it as we found some absolutely terrific spots.  All we need to do now is figure out how to get permission to shoot, decide how to power the lights (extension cords from friendly businesses or generator) and decide which of the awesome alleys are best.

I'm not exactly sure how Tim will be able to blend them all together for our long long zoom shot but he swears he can.  I guess worst case if the FX don't work we can just use one segment, although that will be way less cool.  I'll be sending emails to Marietta tonight to start figuring out who can authorize us to shoot in the alleys - I don't know if they are public or private property.  I also Really hope they don't want to read the script or ask what exactly we're shooting in the alley.  I doubt the Marietta Square Historical Society would be big on hookers giving BJ's in the alley for their tourist material.

On the Super Excellent Good News front, we have secured a location for the motel room scene.  Good PR/news writing would totally dictate putting this information at the top of the post, or at least alluding to it in some subheading, but whatever.  I demand more of my nonexistant readers.  We had stopped for gas and were just about to start going down the list I'd made based off review searches.  Basically I searched for cheap motels in Marietta and then the ones with the worst reviews went on the list.  "I'm glad I asked to see the room first."  "Floor was filthy and furniture falling apart."  "I think there were drug dealers outside."  Congratulations, you went on my list.

While pumping gas we noticed a really, shall we say "well-used" motel next door.  It was one of the great older ones with exterior room entrances and based on the numbers of lawn chairs and plants along the balconies I'm guessing it's one of those extended stay places.  I could possibly more accurately say flop house for truckers, meth heads and child molesters but A) I don't like jumping to conclusions B) They are lettings us shoot there, so in my book - they're good people.  Long story short, we talked to the lady at the counter, spoke with the owner and he said "Hell, long as you don't shoot the outside I don't care what you do."  That's a Bingo!

The room actually turned out to be nicer on the inside than I was hoping, but maybe we can ask for a room that was not as recently refurbished when we go to actually shoot.  The best part is that it's only $36 a night.

We still have to figure out the exterior for Bob's house, the Restaurant and a couple minor things, but today was excellent progress.  The restaurant looks to be a choice between a very nice fast food type place that we know a manager of, or doing major set dressing on a meeting room or possibly using a recently out-of-business place.  We've got a call into a realtor about that now and I should have a secision in a week or so.

The next stage in pre-production is a quick meeting with most of the actors this Saturday.  I just want to get everyone on the same page and answer any pertinant script questions they may have.  COmbined with the stunning recent success of Kickstarter I think things are going very well.

Actors!

So we're done casting.  We had over thirty people show up for five real roles.  If nothing else it makes me want to immediately write something else to get all the awesome people we couldn't cast for this project.

I spoke to all five principles and even after reading our messed up script they're all still somehow in.  I hope to have a table read in a couple weeks and then we'll figure out how much more rehearsal we need from there.  I just hope that the scheduling works out, because it would be a shame to lose someone for such a stupid reason.

Here's our cast!

John Paul Marston                                                                                          Pamela DeRitis

Amedria Murphy                                                       Jess Chancey  

Alisha Harlan

Second Audition round

Wow - we had 9 people last week and over 20 this week.  Never did I anticipate that kind of turnout.  This makes it even harder than last week.  We've got probably a dozen people that I very much want to work with, but just don't fit the parts.  Next time maybe I should write something with more than 5 speaking parts :)

I hope to make a decision on Bob and his Mother tonight and get an offer email out.  Hopefully we won't have too many people bail on us once we actually send them the twisted script, but I've always known it was a possibility.

If anything picking the smaller parts will be more difficult because there isn't such an exact "type" in my head leaving a lot more people that I want to say Yes to.

On another note I talked to our DP Tom to make sure that May was still good for him and so far it's wide open.  We need to finalize some locations in the next week or so in order to get a more accurate shooting schedule.  I'm still hoping we can do all the video stuff in 3-4 days, and I think it's doable but it will be a tough shoot.  That's where Kickstarter is so important (hint hint) because that will give us the ability for all the days we need to pull it off properly.

First Audition Round Complete

On Saturday we held our first auditions for "Better Living Through Chemistry" and it went both better and worse than I was hoping. On the one hand we only had about 10 people come, but out of those were some really talented actors. We have a couple very strong candidates for Bob as well as several of the female roles. I'd love to post pictures and some video clips but it wouldn't be appropriate. We will be making decisions very quickly after next weekend’s auditions and at that point I can give more specific details.


This was my first time actually holding any auditions ever, and it showed. Joe and I were pretty bad at communicating what we were looking for – apparently some of the actors didn’t even get the message to have a monologue prepared. Some people brought headshots and some didn’t and because we were overly optimistic regarding turnout, we ended up sitting around all day after spreading people out in scheduling. All stuff to go on the ever-growing “what not to do” list.

Because the script is so weird and doesn’t really have any good dialogue bits to use we didn’t do the traditional “sides” method of having them read a scene from the actual film. Instead I decided a couple weeks ago to have them do some improv. Seemed like a great idea at the time. Then a day or two before I decided that it would be pretty tough to have them completely improve, especially considering at the time I wasn’t sure we would have Deborah to help with the readings. So Joe and I spent until 3 AM or so the night before the auditions trying to find some short, simple neutral type scenes that we could then have them take direction on. We ended up with a half dozen decent little bits but still hadn’t figured out what kind of prompts we would provide. So I spent the drive down, and time sitting at the table waiting to come up with things like “You’re running late for a job interview” and “You’re in love but the other person doesn’t know it.” Some went better than others, and some worked better with certain scenes than others, and by the end of the day we had some good stuff worked out. Unfortunately there were some serious clunkers along the way. I was extremely impressed at the way some of the actors could read depth into such non-sensical scenes and then totally change up the interpretation after some feedback. It almost felt like directing!

It's weird; one of the things I didn't expect was to feel so badly that some really talented people simply don't fit the role. Just seeing how eager people are to come in and audition for a nobody like me, on the chance they'll get to work for free, demonstrates how hard it is to get into the industry. Two guys in particular were both great looking and very talented, and the best we can offer them is a bit part just because some roles need such a specific type look.

We also had some people come in that just didn't even fit the basic requirements we had listed in the casting call, i.e. an 18 year old for our middle aged main character. I think they were both new and just want to get as much audition practice as possible, which I totally understand, but if we had been busier it would have been a bit of an annoying time sink. Again I wish I could get into specifics but it would be rude, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s my place to suggest that perhaps one of the guy’s monologue was not only a terrible terrible choice, but not even actually a monologue when I let him know he didn’t get the part.

All the women that we saw were good also, but we just didn't have enough respondents yet to fill all the roles. Two that were scheduled didn't make it for various reasons so hopefully we can reschedule for next week. We also still need to make a final determination on how old Mother needs to be - which partially depends on who we pick for Bob. So many decisions :)

On a last note I wanted to mention that we had fantastic assistance from Deborah Childs who is not only a very experienced actress but does her own casting for commercials and local theater. Her professionalism combined with my complete lack of experience to raise the entire endeavor to something actually productive.

Auditions this Saturday

Just a quick note that we still have spots available for auditions this Saturday, March 6th.
Please see the Casting Call sheet to the right for details of roles and how to request an audition slot.

Location Scouting

Making movies seems like a lot of fun. I kept trying to tell myself that Saturday when I spent 6 hours driving around looking for locations. Since one of the green screen studios we'll be using is in Marietta I started out over there. I thought I remembered a bunch of skeezy motels along Hwy 41 and was pleased to see they haven't all burned down yet. These look perfect - the kind of place where ex-cons cook dinner over hot plates in the courtyard and the police just don't bother stopping unless they need to "confiscate" some more weed. Since our hero Bob will be taking his hooker friend here for a relaxing first date, the ambiance is just what I want.

This place wasn't actually the best I saw, but it was still great for what we needed. So I went into the office, a 4x8 white box, and rang the little bell for service. I tried to explain what I wanted, and he just kind of stood there. I asked if we could take a quick look at one of the rooms and he shrugged and handed me a key. The room was exactly what I was looking for as well - and we'd be able to do plenty of dressing to give it just the right tone. When we left the room the guy was waiting for us outside, but instead of talking there motioned us to go back in the claustrophobic little interrogation box.

He had the owner(?) come over to talk to me through the bullet-proof plastic and I explained again what we wanted to do.  I said we'd be happy to rent out two rooms, that the shoot would be about 4 hours and would that be cool.  He just stood there for a minute, shook his head and walked away.

At the next place a couple hundred yards down the road we didn't even get as far as looking at a room.  They said they didn't like it, but I could come back and talk to the owner Monday if I wanted.  I'm fairly certain they thought we wanted to shoot porn.


That left me a bit confused though - they didn't seem like the kind of places that would Mind us shooting porn.  Maybe I should have explained it wasn't porn - I don't know.  I'm not very good at talking to people.
I skipped the third place because I didn't want to jinx it with my bad karma, maybe I can get someone else to go talk to them.  Maybe I should look for motels that regularly Do have porn shoots, at least they'd be cool with the cameras.  On another note - it was only $35 a night for a room, which is nice.

On the other hand this convenience store is Exactly what I was looking for and the guy wokring seemed very positive about using it.  I've got a call into the owner there and hope to hear something very soon.  Unfortunately, I didn't find much else on that trip.  I still need to find the perfect alley and a restaraunt.  Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

Thanks for reading - and a detailed list of the locations we're looking for is linked over on the side bar - if you have any ideas please let me know.

Auditions

We have officially scheduled a first day of auditons for Saturday March 6th at Creative Studios of Atlanta.  It is a couple minutes from Atlanta Stations, so should be pretty convenient for just about everyone.  We will be beginning at 10:0 AM and going into the afternoon.  If you would like to auditon or have any questions please write to beardrivingcar@gmail.com.  You can find a link to the casting notice in the links in the right-hand pane.

We've had a really great response so far, but can always use more people.

A second round of auditions will be held March 13th at a place to be determined.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Bear Driving Car's blog.  I just formed the company about three weeks ago after I decided it was time to actually do something concrete to make films instead of talking about it a lot.

We are currently in pre-production on a major short film titled "Better Living Through Chemistry" which will shoot later this Spring.  I'm just getting started on this page, clearly, but the plan is to chronicle every step along the way towards making this happen.

On the right-hand side of the page you can see the widget for a fundraising site called Kickstarter.  Basically, Kickstarter is a site used to help artists find funding for their projects. We set up a project page describing what we want to do with our short film and why we need the extra money. If you like the idea, you can kick in anything from $1 all the way up. If the project gets fully funded to at least the target level, you get charged through your Amazon account and we get the money to make our movie. If we don't get enough pledges by the deadline (April 25th is the deadline we set up for this project), no one who has pledged to back the project gets charged and we go back to the drawing board, probably after a good long cry.