um... we're done.

almost. pretty much. basically.

there are a few shots to pick up on saturday before the wrap party - mostly joe driving around on various freeways.

we pretty much went out with a whisper. the last full day of production consisted of myself, joe, alicia, and lucy in salem shooting scenes in which joe was mostly in a single room, had no actual interation with other characters, very little dialogue and a lot of repeated shots. it went well and was a reasonably short day. no major issues or concerns or weirdness.

and like that [poof] it was done.

(at least for most of the other people. joe and i still have a lot of work to do (me: editing; joe: music) and we'll still have to call on our friends mike johnson and lisa wells to fill in a few gaps (mike for music/lisa for adr (we had some microphone failure in one of her scenes)). and, of course, there's the building of the ambient soundtrack as well as securing the rights to source music (most of which we're hoping will come from our good friends parks & recreation... but we won't know exactly what we need until the cut is assembled (unfortunately, we are no martin scorsese). then there's all the business of film festivals and publicity materials (and, oh yeah, we've got to try and arrange cast photos before anyone else changes their appearance too drastically) and trying to find a way for people to actually see this movie.)

but for now, we can give ourselves permission to breath again. most of us have our weekends back. and the work becomes much calmer and almost meditative (at least, the editing seems that way). they say that every movie is written three times - once in script form, once during production, and once in the editing. the first time, with the script, was fantastic - mostly joe and i sat around in bars and argued over the details and thought of things to make ourselves laugh (then i went home and typed it). the second time was (to borrow a term from the poetess, b. spears) chaotic, but fun, but still crazy and too fast and too slow and stressful and brilliant. and now we're back to beer and laughs. hopefully.

sorry... do i sound pessimistic and/or "bummed out"? really, i'm not. i feel great about everything and the scenes i've cut together so far look terrific and i'm excited to see all the moments that we worked so hard to capture all lined-up and playing off of each other. it should be a lot of fun. really.

(maybe this is the whole post-partum thing flaring up. and i wasn't even aware i had a birthing canal. (sorry, is that too graphic?))

long way down...

the second to last weekend has passed. so we say a hearfelt (production) goodbye to our dear old/new friends: michael george johnson, actor/musician; lisa wells, actress; erick custodio, actor; gerald lewis, director of photography; peter huszagh, production assistant/grip; yona prost, extras coordinator. you will be dearly missed.

but yeah... the weekend went well. the short version: we lost our coffee shop location on wednesday - but everyone kept their cool and raced to fine a replacement. the winner of the race was alicia, who had a new location (la razza tazza) secured by 4pm that afternoon. we shot there on saturday (they actually locked out customers during business hours so that we could get what we needed!). then we shot a few quick things outside mike johnson's apartment before heading off to berbati's pan with 'the band'. a few minor snags getting the tascam to connect to bob's laptop so that we could get a soundboard recording were ironed out relatively easily. in warming up, mike played 'yours' in a lower key and it sounded fantastic, so we went with that at the last minute. the dolly-pan shots of mike on the stage were damn near impossible to coordinate and may not work out at all. we had just enough extras to provide the illusion of a crowd. and it all looks and sounds fantastic. sunday - we got together around 8am and realized our exterior location for april's apt would not work due to construction in the area. so we cruised the neighborhood and "borrowed" the front door from another building in the area. joe and alicia were great in a break-up/argument scene (which is always tough). we picked up a few other pieces and headed back to april's apt for the remainder of the day. all went smoothly from there on out - there was some fun 1st person perspective shots that involved a group hugging of joe and alicia's arms suspended above her head. and we wrapped at a reasonable hour.

i'll see about posting some actual screen shots from our dailies within the next day or two.

one day to go...

big pictures

i thought rather than me rambling this week, you might enjoy some fine photography from the good folks on our crew... and per the requests of you fine readers, some explaination of each photo: 1. matt knapp (left, director/co-writer/producer/editor) and joe ballman (right, actor: colin/co-writer/producer/music supervisor) discuss the blocking of joe's hands in a very delicate scene. 2. alicia tolman (producer, actress: april) and lisa wells (actress: keira) hang out between set-ups outside pizza schmizza on sw yamhill. 3. andy mills (sound recordist) does his traditional pre-take good luck shuffle. 4. joe "acts" like he's perplexed by what's on a computer screen in colin's childhood bedroom.