There is something very, very wrong with the people at Filmmaking Frenzy.
I'm not joking.
There is something twisted and sadistic and more than a little malicious about them!
Okay, going into Bloodshots I knew that I would have to wait until 7:00 pm before we would know what Sub-genre, Weapon, Shared Prop and Line of Dialog we HAD TO USE in order for our movie to qualify for the contest.
Which means that the writing process could not begin before
When you have only 48 hours to shoot, edit and burn a movie to dvd, you'd really rather have a script already written.
Tommy, Brian & I had worked on our quick-writing skills, flexed the Creativity Muscle to limber-up and get prepared to write on the fly. We had examined and considered a number of Horror sub-genres that were likely to be thrown our way, so that we could -- hopefully -- quickly cobble together a great story in an hour or 2.
I wake up late. WELL late. In order to get to the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar before
That's about the time I woke up.
Luckily (for me), Tommy went there after work. The unfortunate part is that he didn't discover this contest, he didn't sign up for it, and the real reason he's doing it is because Brian and I are committed to it. We need a director, and he's not gonna let his life-long buddies down -- whatever the personal inconveniences to himself.
Because I'm all groggy and stuff, I'm thinking that it doesn't really matter if we pick up our instructions late, so long as our shooting and editing and burning are finished in time.
But Tommy has been waiting around outside the Drafthouse for, maybe, and hour for his buddies (whom he's sacrificing for) to show up.
So Tommy isn't in the best of moods when I finally call him, lol.
Very luckily for me, when I awake Brian has baked up a pizza, and has left half for me. (The frozen pizzas I usually buy cut neatly into 6 decent-sized slices, so that leaves 3 slices for me.) PLUS, Brian has made coffee!!! (He works at Starbuck's, so we get to drink really, really good, strong coffee!)
By the time we're on MoPac (close to the Drafthouse) it's
Our sub-genre: Child Possession.
Our Weapon: Lasers.
Our Shared Prop: Corn
Our Shared Line of Dialog: "Is that thing real?"
WTF are we gonna make of THIS MESS?!!
Okay, here's what we KNOW we can rely on to make this movie: Brian, My Super-Hot Friend Whom I Will Never See Naked Traci and me, plus a handful of interesting interior and exterior locations. Brian's got tons of stage blood, and several fascinating (REAL) edge weapons.
And our sub-genre is Possessed Child.
:(
Now, it just so happens that Tommy has a very intelligent and articulate 3-year-old daughter. He and his wife, Becky, raise her with love and attention and communication, so we can count on at least 3 good scenes out of her.
But obviously we need to cut to the possessed daughter as an adult, so that Traci (a non-actor) can take on the dramatic responsibilities of the character. (BTW, Traci, at this point, has NO IDEA that we're going to ask this of her. She thinks she's going to be a pretty victim off-ed in the first couple of minutes, lol.)
So at Whataburger off Ben White and Lamar, Tommy & Brian & I try to work out a story wherein a child is charged with holding a demon into adulthood, when she will eat the heart of an influential politician and (a) destroy that politician and his work and (b) gain more power for the demon she holds inside her.
But I – “the writer of the group" -- have a problem with this: The story Tommy & Brian are into really needs to be a feature, because there's too much back-story (even if we DON’T "spell it out" for the audience and explain EVERYTHING that's going on) for a 2-8 minute short.
Still...
It's the only story we have. And as Brian & Tommy head to our apartment in Tommy's truck, I drive alone in my car, trying to force all these elements into a satisfying short story THAT WE CAN SHOOT IN 46 HOURS.
The advantages of their story is that we can shoot the majority of it Friday night/Saturday morning, before the sun comes up, which is one of the major points of our plan. If we can knock out the actual "production" (or filming) portion of our movie Friday night/Saturday morning, that leaves us Saturday day, Saturday night and Sunday morning-noon to edit the flick and burn it to disc.
THAT is the way you make a movie in 48 hours... You shoot in less than a day and use the rest of the time to edit it. If it takes you 36 hours to shoot your short, you WILL NOT finish in time.
One thing people don't realize about movies is that it takes the LONGEST time (usually, if it's a GOOD movie) to write it. Then the second-longest amount of time is spent in the editing/pick-up shooting period.
Production (the actual shooting of the film) is the SHORTEST, easiest, most fun process of the production. If the movie has a good producer, or good producers, then the Production part (which, interestingly, is the part MOST publicized by Entertainment Magazines and Behind-The-Scenes documentaries) is really just adults playing Pretend, and other adults capturing the playing in the most artistic way they can manage.
The "heavy lifting" of ANY movie is Pre-Production and Post-Production.
Understanding this, my brain wants to burst out of my skull trying to fit all the elements Brian & Tommy & I have discussed to make sure that the story we shoot is layered and textured and worth watching more than one time. I want to make sure that the very short story we're telling is a story that's worth being told.
And I can't figure out how to make what we've discussed into such a story.
I'm being melodramatic -- a luxury of hindsight, lol -- but at around 8:00 pm I was ready to throw up my hands and say "We can't do this" and just count my $25 entry fee as a financial loss and forget about it. I desperately wanted a drink, and I really wanted to play some Playstation 2 and just forget about this stupid-ass contest, lol.
Okay, so
Just a footnote: How bad-ass is it that telling stories is maybe the ONE occupation in which you don't discuss THE OPTION available to you, but instead you discuss the OPTIONS available to you?!! THIS is one of the reasons I want to tell stories for a living!
So I call Traci and tell her about the monkey wrench that has been thrown into our plans and calculations.
At this point, I really don't understand how we're going to make anything that Rodriguez will watch and take note of.
If I haven't mentioned it before, Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado, The Faculty, Spy Kids 1-3D, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Sin City, The Adventures of Shark-Boy and Lava Girl 3-D, Grindhouse) will be judging the finalists, picking Number One ($1,000 and a computer set up as an editing suite), Number Two ($700) and Number Three ($300).
It is my opinion that the ONLY reason Tommy, Brian and I aren't working filmmakers right now is that no one knows us or what we are capable of. So if Robert Rodriguez were to see our short for this contest and recognize the ability we possess, we might have a shot at breaking into the industry and making our money doing what we love and are gifted at.
So I want a story that Tommy can shoot and get (positive) attention for!
But the story we're working on now (8:30-ish pm) doesn't feel like that story.
So Tommy & Brian & Traci & I keep going over and over our story possibilities, trying to figure out what we can shoot (and edit and burn to disc) in 45 1/2 hours that will be a fun ride for the judges.
With the sub-genre (Possessed Child) and weapon (Lasers) and shared dialog ("Is that thing real", which Traci immediately felt sounded like a penis joke) and shared prop (corn) that they've giving us, it seems like the judges of Filmmaking Frenzy are trying to coax us into a spoof flick. I mean HOW do serious filmmakers incorporate those limitations into a serious film within the genre of Horror?!!
Still...
The later it got, the free-er our minds became at exploring possible story potential. We came up with several seeds of several stories, exploring where each seed lead.
Until we found THE SEED...
Just looking at what (and who) we had to shoot with, and considering the limitations Filmmaking Frenzy had placed upon us, we discovered a story about a little girl with neglectful parents who is given an amulet -- discovered while she's wandering where she's not supposed to be while her neglectful parents are fighting with each other -- that possesses her and causes her to kill her neglectful parents!
Now THAT is a short film!!!
We talked and joked, and got the ball rolling. We were several scenes into the short before we realized that we really didn't know how to end it.
I -- with my 15 years of study in Writing, in general, and Screenwriting in particular -- realized that we needed THEME to figure out how the story was going to end. What would the movie be ABOUT? We've got this beautiful setup, but what are we trying to say with this setup?
Then Brian chimes in: "If you don't give your child attention, someone (or something) else will."
The notion was of the parents who let the TV baby-sit the Next Generation.
And the notion explained EVERYTHING we had come up with!!! Nature abhors a vacuum, so when you create an emotional/mental/spiritual vacuum between you and your child, you leave room for (possibly) a supernatural force to enter that vacuum and take on the role of child-rearer.
And that concept gave us the end of our movie!!!
NOW...
The problems presented themselves immediately...
We wouldn't be able to shoot a single frame Friday night. Tommy's 3-year-old daughter Amber was asleep and wouldn't wake up for 9 more hours. (It was about
As we let Traci go to get a (more or less) decent night's rest, we understood that we had quite a daunting shoot ahead of us. But only Tommy -- Amber's father -- REALLY understood how daunting the shoot would be.
Brian and I packed up and headed for Tommy’s house, where I would spend the next 2 nights. Brian had to work Saturday and Sunday (poor dude!) so he would only spend Friday night there. But the story we had worked out had him playing a Creepy Stranger, and we could shoot him as soon as the sun was fully up.
Before we let Traci go, I had written a few pages of paragraphs that described our story in detail. Before Tommy and I could go to bed Friday night we needed to transcribe those paragraphs into something like a shot list, so we knew exactly how many scenes Amber was needed for, and exactly what happened in each of those shots. Brian and Tommy had drinks as we sat on Tommy’s back porch (where we could smoke) but I stuck with water, as I wanted to stay as sharp as I could be this weekend.
Brian retired to Tommy’s guest room before we were finished with the shot list. (He wasn’t really needed for the shot list, he was just keeping his friend and his brother company while we worked, bless him.)
I want to say it was about
I woke up at
I had a smoke and some coffee (Tommy and his wife don’t usually drink coffee, but they have a coffee maker which they bring out and plug in when Brian and I sleep over, hehe) and when Traci arrived at 7:30 am, we 4 set to work.
I say “we four” but really Becky, Tommy’s wife, worked just as hard as we did! When Tommy couldn’t figure out how to get Amber to do a scene, Becky knew how. In fact, I commented to her that it seemed as though she knew the answer all along, and just let Tommy and me try it our way first, then when it didn’t work she provided the ACTUAL solution, lol.
It was tough.
Things that Amber would regularly do without any problem became chores for her when the camera was rolling. Playing turned into work, it seemed, when “daddy’s movie” was on the line, lol.
We had a shot list with 45 scenes, and 26 of those scenes required Amber. By
And we were shooting against the light. Once the sun went down, we would not be able to fake sunlight in the house (they have A LOT of windows) and so we couldn’t shoot. The only sequence we could shoot after the sun went down was my death scene in the garage. That’s IT. That’s all we could cheat. Everything else HAD TO be shot during the day, or the movie wouldn’t work.
AND…
It had to be shot SATURDAY or else we couldn’t finish the edit in time!
We discovered a working rhythm: We get a couple of shots out of Amber, then we play with her. Let her chase us, have tea parties with her, whatever she wants to do. Then we coax her into a couple more shots, then it’s Play Time again.
Around
I’d like to note here that Amber, STILL, has NO IDEA what this movie is about. Tommy and Becky are not irresponsible parents, and the way we shot Amber’s scenes was such that she has no idea she was in a Horror film, lol!!! I point this out here because there are scenes when Traci and I yell at Amber, but Amber was eating Chick-Fil-A when we shot those scenes. I have a daughter (WHO TURNS 17 TODAY!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TISHA!!!) and Traci used to help with her mom’s nursery, and we’re all very respectful of the very sacred trust between adult and child, and we do not take our responsibilities as parents, “uncles” and “aunts” lightly. We adore and respect the Next Generation, and we have no desire to be the topic of future psychiatric sessions, lol.
So no children were harmed (physically, emotionally, and psychologically) during the making of this film.
Amber has no idea she was possessed, lol.
In the hour or so that Becky and Amber were eating lunch, we knocked out quite a few scenes.
I want to take a second to note that Traci and I are dear friends, and we’re both people who used to argue (with others) a lot, and then gained a sort of enlightenment about Life in general. And we have NEVER argued with one another. But the film required us to argue for at least 5 minutes straight. And watching the finished product, you would think that we genuinely HATED each other, lol! The movie’s not scripted, really. So we had to improvise our arguments (except for the line “Is that thing real?”) and it took Traci and me A LONG TIME to figure out what we were going to argue about!
There was one particular section where the argument was supposed to be very heated, and I called Traci a bitch. And the first take she broke up laughing. So we rolled again and then the second take she broke out laughing again. And I asked “What am I doing?” and, through her laughter, she said “You called me a bitch”. So I dropped the “bitch” part on the third take and the “argument” flowed seamlessly for many, many minutes after that.
So with just Traci, Tommy and me we were able to knock out 7 scenes, out of 45, but we still had more than half the movie to shoot with Amber.
When Becky and Amber arrived home, they had some Chick-Fil-A for us, so we all broke for lunch.
And I swear to you, as much as I love Chick-Fil-A, it has NEVER tasted as good as it did Saturday afternoon!!! OMG that was such a DELICIOUS sandwich!!!
Now we had until Amber’s nap time to get some shots, and then we’d have a few more hours after that before the sun went down.
It was an up-hill battle, a combination of shooting and playing with her (some very interesting games, I might add, that revealed the depth and breadth of her formidable imagination) but we eventually got ALL the footage we needed!!!
And I’ll be honest; there were about 3 shots that I thought we’d have to do without! They were shots we could live without and still tell the story we wanted to tell, but the movie would be richer if we had them. And in the 11th Hour Tommy and Becky managed to coax them out of Amber!!!
Around
We still had 3 shots to capture: My death scene. We needed a 3rd person to shoot that, because it involved blood squirting into frame as I sawed myself (under the possessed child’s power) with an electric saw.
Brian called after he got out of work and asked if we needed him. He wanted to just go home and get some much-needed sleep, but we talked him into coming over and helping us.
I have to note that Brian & I and Tommy live at the OPPOSITE EXTREMES of
So asking Brian to come help us get these shots was the equivalent of asking him to drive out of town.
But Brian is a trooper, bless him! He helped us out.
And God bless him! As short as that sequence is (the whole movie comes in at just under 5 minutes) it wouldn’t have been NEARLY as grizzly a death without his work!!!
So after production was completed, Brian and Tommy had a drink and we 3 had a smoke on Tommy’s back porch as Tommy and I prepared for the last stretch of the process: Editing.
With 22 ½ hours to go, Brian left to get some sleep before work Sunday and Tommy & I sat down at his Mac to cut this thing together.
Tommy had created this GENIUS setup with an extra monitor, so I could see EXACTLY what he was doing as he cut!
He used Final Cut Pro, and I’m more used to AVID, so he did most of the actual cutting. But was there, a second set of eyes, to help him make creative choices and to help him remember where the footage he wanted was. (If you haven’t edited on a computer before this might not make much sense.)
We were cutting about a page (of Shot List) an hour with smoke breaks after each page. Tommy cut 2 and I cut one page, moving a bit slower (I’m an AVID guy) than Tommy.
We edited until about
I woke up at
I think poor Amber was feeling a little lonely. Daddy and Ray Jay were obsessed with the Mac and Brian wasn’t around, and the day before she had Ray Jay, Traci and Brian to play with. :(
But Tommy and I edited through lunch (Tommy in the “driver’s seat”) and we arrived at a more-or-less Final Cut around
We burned a dvd, as a backup in case we didn’t have time to complete the flick, but we still needed 5 sound effects to fill in the sound. I was exhausted (I wasn’t just acting in and producing this film, I was also playing with the adorable – and ever-energetic – Amber) and at this point I was happy turning in the film as-is.
But Tommy (the director, the guy who gets credit for, or shit for, the finished product) felt we could probably record the missing sound cues and drop them into the flick and still burn a disc in time.
One of the sound elements we needed was 5 minutes of “ambient sound” or “room noise”, so than when a scene doesn’t have dialog or sound effects, you’re not just listening to silence.
We had 2 ½ hours until the deadline… 5 minutes is A LONG TIME!
But we recorded the ambient audio and the sound effects (we thought) and then discovered that I had hooked the mic into the WRONG INPUT on the camera!!!
We hadn’t recorded ANYTHING!
I’m thinking we go with the disc we’ve already burnt, and call it a weekend.
But Tommy re-hooked the microphone and went again, recording all the sound we needed to REALLY complete the picture, and then dropped them into the piece while I loaded the car (Brian came straight over after work, and he had the car we came in), and we said good-bye to Amber and Becky and we sped to the Alamo Drafthouse.
We dropped off our dvd at exactly
And THAT is what I did over my Summer Vacation, lol.
I didn’t do any drinking this whole weekend, so I’ve been intoxicated since Brian & I got home Sunday night, lol. I’ve also done A LOT of sleeping! Monday was pretty much a blur, interrupted by 2 hours in which Brian and I watched SECOND HAND LIONS. :)
And I’ve watched our movie several times, and I can’t believe what we pulled off in the time we had to make it!!! It has layers! It has texture! The death scenes are grizzly! Amber seems spooky when she’s supposed to be spooky, and cute when she’s supposed to be cute!!!
Seriously, there is no reason we shouldn’t be doing this professionally!
We can’t post the video on YouTube until after the judging is over, but I will post a link THE MOMENT we can, so you can judge our final product for yourselves!
In the meantime, I’m gonna fix myself another drink and SLEEP some more!
:D
PEACE!!!
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1 comment:
glad u had fun! well im gone for a few days now so continue to have fun as i will be soaking up the sun while getting completely smashed! have to remember my sun glasses and sun lotion. well time for me to go cos its getting later and later.
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