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.