XI

Well, we're into our final push of film. This past weekend (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) we shot each day. Shooting, for those of you who aren't film people, is exhausting. WHen you're only shooting a movie, your day is pretty much shot. You've got to be mentally "on" from the minute you get to set to the minute you're done. When we shot Brothers Keeper, we were shooting 5 days a week along with working full time. This is partially why that movie nearly killed us I believe. To keep Recoil fun, we've cut back shooting to once or twice a weekend...

Except for this past weekend.

In an effort to knock out a couple of actors, we decided to push and do a 3 day stint to finish some of the bigger sequences in the film.

On Saturday, we shot a reshoot of our coke deal. This was one of the fastest shoots we've had in a long time, simply because an actor had about an hour to shoot, while I had to be somewhere. Justin got to set and set up the sound equipment, and when I arrived we hit the ground running, and got everything we needed. Mrs. E did a great job, and Sean redeemed his performance from the last time we shot (to be fair, they shot really late and on little notice). At one point, Mrs. E grabs the bags of cocaine and runs out of the room, and it turned out that one of the bags wasn't quite shut... cue entire room being bathed in powdered suga... cocaine. It actually looked awesome on film, but it was quite the mess.

Sunday was the final showdown between McMurphy and Mangini. The fight scene was shot in the woods at a local park. This was my day as director, and not to toot my own horn, but I think it came out pretty awesome. This fight scene has been brewing in my head for quite some time, actually, a few years to be precise, so it wasn't hard to piece it together and make it work. Bruce and Sean did a great job with choreography as well. I had the big action beats down but they came up with the moment-to-moment flow of the action. All in all, it was a long day that I'm still a little sore from, but it came out better than we could have possibly hoped. We came up with an awesome idea for a section of the fight that is pretty much the most ridiculous thing you could do in a fight scene. It's in there because it works perfectly for the characters, but the selling point between Bruce and I was Josh, haha. We knew he would love it when he saw it, so it's in there as a hilarity gift for him.

Monday, of all three days, was the biggest. It also ended up being the most fun. We had a laundry list of shots to get, as we were trying to wrap Doug. We began by shooting greenscreen, which was a little bit challenging. It actually ended up working really nice, but it took some doing to get the shot correct. It is true that the sun is the perfect key light for greenscreening... except for when it moves behind a house. Then you got problems.

After that, we moved on to the beginning of the party shootout... This was when we were starting to get tired, but we got it done with some amazing deliveries by Doug. After this, it was on to reshooting the very first (or second, I don't quite remember) thing we shot, Boots and Peterson in the party. This was very good, but also very hard, because it's so damn funny. We got through it, thank God, and it ended up being hilarious.

For weeks after we shoot with Doug, everyone talks in a russian accent. It's so damn infectuous. I'm calling it now, Boots Randolph (no relation to the sax player) is gonna end up being the crowd favorite of this film. Something great about an aloof russian drug dealer that wears a toga.

All in all, this was our biggest weekend, and the most rewarding. Everything came out wonderful, and it didn't kill us (although I feel like it did beat us up pretty good). We have one more push weekend, where we have to get Josh finished up and finish out Murph and Peterson in the party, and then principle shooting is DONE! I never thought this day would come.

Believe me, world, that this movie is gonna rock.

X

 
What a shoot today!

What started out downhill ended up being surprisingly great.

We had permission to use this abandoned car dealership here in town. Great! What an awesome location to do the outside of our hideout!

Well, not so much, because we didn't really have permission, because the guy that said we could use it doesn't have that authority anymore. The current person didn't want to be responsible for any liabilities without anything in writing (can't blame her; I wouldn't either), so we had to nix that location.

What happened was a blessing in disguise, because we found a location that suits our needs just fine, and was completely void of people or vehicles. We had a full days shoot, including running and gun slinging, without being interrupted by anything at all. It was great.

It was good to see Sean again, Mangini'ing it up in style. I got to put on so good beat-up face makeup, and Bruce got to dress like a pimp. Great stuff!

Just wait until you guys see this movie... Dyn-o-mite!

IX

Tonight started off rough and ended great. I set up the green screen in my garage so we could shoot footage of Josh getting shot in the arm while hanging out of the car window. He hangs out of the passengers side and shoots at McMurphy, following in the car behind. So, when I pulled the car up to the green screen...

Nope. My garage is way too small for this.

We talked about going to Josh's house at a later date and green screening in his big ass garage, but I figured we could get this knocked out of the way doing it legit.

We hit the road in my truck, and got a lot of good footage! Green screen background footage, lots of josh hanging out the window, and a good few takes of a bloodless bullet hit (to add in digitally later).

We did have a condom full of blood, but the camera battery died 2 seconds before Josh was going for the money shot.

Editors Note: The preceding statement should read: "We filled a condom with fake blood, which we were going to have Josh slam against his arm to simulate a blood explosion. Right before going for the shot, the camera battery died, leaving us stranded."

All in all, we got a whole lot of great footage this weekend, a nice kick in the pants to put us back into the swing. I had fun these last two days!

Edit: For a little treat, I decided to upload a fun blooper from a shoot last summer.

VIII

Well, after about six months, Recoil has gone back into "active production" status. We shot all new stuff, stuff that isn't in the script that we began with. The "year" off has given us some time to really iron out the kinks in the movie, allowing us to see what a lot of the flaws and good ideas are.

We shot a scene depicting a gun trade, with Jay playing the buyer and the one, the only, Sweet Loobs as the dealer. He's actually reprising his role from the first Recoil, Vinny Mangini (although he's never addressed by name, he has face value.) He sells Jay a rocket launcher all smooth, and then we shot some stuff to cut him into the firefight later on. It's gonna be grand.

After we finished with his Majesty, we went to a local park and shot footage of Jay shooting a rocket launcher, which will play into the new ending of the film. Just trust me when I say it's gonna be sweeeet!

Jay really is a great guy. His fiance is a lucky gal (that is, if he's as nice to her as he is to this movie; I think he is). He's willing to do anything to help us with the production, so much so that he's become a very valuable member of not only the team, but the work flow of the set. His lighting expertise has helped us really up the bar for our production. It seems that every time we shoot, we're getting better and better stuff. I like to believe that Jay has a lot to do with this.

So, to thank him, we put him in a dress and a wig, gave him a rocket launcher, and covered him in charcoal ash. I can't think of a better way to say thank you!

Tomorrow we're getting Josh to shoot the out of the car shoulder hit for the car chase. I'm not necessarily looking forward to it (green-screening takes a while to set up, and the blood sprayer is always a pain), but it will be nice to have this in that bag. It's another effect I can begin working on, which is good.

Here's hoping for a good shoot tomorrow!

 

 

 

 

VII

New year, a new scene! We've been on hiatus since the last entry, as school schedules tended to be too big of an enemy for our meager production. We shot with Bernie today, the scene where Murph and Petey get assigned to crash the costume party undercover. It was long, but it was worth it. We wasted a lot of time on a track shot that couldn't be pulled off in the limited amount of space we had, and it took a while for Bernie to get her lines down. It was all good though, everything came out awesome. We had a nice little chunch of improv when we found a flask sitting on one of the shelves in the office.

We've got a cool production workflow going as well, where we gear up and shoot the scenes together, I upload the tapes to the computer, and then I transfer the files to justin, who edits the scenes and sends them back to me once they are ready to proof watch and then ready them for effects or to be integrated back into the film. This allows me to keep my digital organization system intact, while allowing Justin to edit the scenes without me having to show him what to do with everything, and I don't have to worry about editing and digital effects. It's pretty good.

I went through max's tapes looking for one of our missing ones.. no luck. Kid has like a million tapes.