Why not post it as it happens? Well high up Linganore officials don't really know about this. It's called Guerilla Filmmaking people! (Okay a few teachers know, but more on that for day one.) ... (Truth be told, you should really see my revelation on Day 3)
Conception & Pre-prod:
It's not that difficult, Brad and I were goofing off before school one day, he started using an Arnold voice, and then this idea came to light. We got to talking about it and developed it more. I began writing the screenplay during Thoroughly Modern Millie, and finished a little afterwards. I then graduated and elected to film shortly after that so I could just drive the equipment there and not lug them around the halls all day. I gathered the cast and crew the day before, including my sister to take pictures on the set. I then took care of all the other Pre-prod. jobs, getting costumes and organizing a filming location for days 2 and 3 (I ask permission to film in class rooms, but not hallways, weird).
Day 1 (June 10):
We were hoping to get more finished today, but last minute Brad tells me he needs to split early for family reasons. I don't delve into personal lives here, but don't worry it wasn't a family emergency or anything, everyone's fine. So I was frantically texting him during the day trying to see how much time I could squeeze out of him. He's in just about every scene except for one, which will be filmed on day 2. When we came to the realization that there was only a half hour tops, we filmed a few short bits that weren't scripted, but good trailer footage. So in a half hour we got 48 seconds of footage. Only half of it usable, but I have no complaints, we started
production on SOMETHING so I'm happy.
Apparently with our mass of equipment teachers don't make a fuss if your out in the halls, at most you get a reaction like "Oh making a movie?" One teacher asked what it was about and then kept walking like she didn't even ask. The only people who seemed to care were the administrators, and only one stopped us. She told us the usual "if your here after school you need to be supervised and if you're working on a school project you can't be goofing off, which you appear to be doing." This was her reaction to us close-lining Alex Richardson. To which Brad replied "But it's for our movie." Then she looked at me, noted the camera and said "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were making a movie." and seriously too, not a single hint of sarcasm. Then she just walked off. So apparently if you look important and the teachers you know like you, no one really cares.
So we unfortunately wrapped early that day, leaving a heavier load for Day 3. But it should all work out well in the end.
Day 2 (June 11):
Alright, today we filmed in Lazarus' room. We had permission, so we just went ahead and shot what we needed too. It was one scene that took a little less than an hour to wrap on. There's not much to post about, but we had a few weird freak-outs that occurred on the set. This is one of the things I love to catch on film. The footage is essentially unusable in the context of the scene and in fact happened in between takes, but I love when we're all relaxed on the set and the cast is comfortable enough with each other that a bit of improv. shows up and creates some wild event. These outburst usually end as abruptly as they started, with every one of us wondering where the hell it came from.
That's about it for day 2, so I guess that means we're off to Day 3, the big shoot. We begin in Laz's room, and by the time we're done hopefully a good percentage of the faculty will have left, making our hallway shoots go very smoothly.
Day 3 (June 12):
Ha wow, so we got permission to use Laz's room and we did. And all went smoothly. Then we moved out to shoot in the hallways (to clarify "shoot"="Film" I don't want to end up on any watch lists). I figured we'd get off easy with it being a Friday afternoon and teachers wanting to leave, little did I know it would be THAT easy. Turns out no one cared at all, in fact at one point an administrator who I was worried would get on our backs about it commented on how she liked our HALL MONITOR costumes and how she wanted one.
So there's not much to write about for day 3 (and maybe that's because I'm writing this 2 days later). But we wrapped every shot that was needed inside of Linganore today in about 2 hours. A HUGE THANKS to every administrator/teacher/faculty member who had every right to kick us out and didn't.
We have 2 more scenes to wrap and we'll catch those on Day 4 ( do note the date difference).
Day 4 (July 10):
The final day of shooting went well, it was only 2 short scenes. I'm pretty disappointed in Brad and I's poor ability to get together and film one damn scene (Cite the MONTH's difference between the two last shots). Anyway Production has wrapped, Brad and I discussed some ideas, and Post is pretty close to being done, so expect the finished product within the week!
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