DRY BONES Day 10
Today was the tenth day of production for Dry Bones, which I wrote and am co-producing and co-directing with Michael O'Hear, who stars. We didn't shoot last weekend or yesterday because of convention appearances, so it felt good to get back into the groove. We began by shooting a police interrogation scene with Michael and John Renna. I've written many such scenes in my novels, but haven't directed one before, and as a diehard fan of Homicide: Life on the Streets, I looked forward to it. This scene runs over four pages in my screenplay.
Because we're a guerrilla production, meaning we have no location insurance, it was impossible for us to get an actual interrogation room, like we did on Battledogs. Scotty Franklin, one of our gaffers, came through for us: he has an office at the Pierce-Arrow Arts Center, which is being developed as a film production facility. Scott's space has an office for him to conduct business within a larger space where he stores lighting equipment. I wish we'd taken stills, but we've gotten bad at that. The smaller office actually has a window in one wall, so we were able to dolly past it, looking inside, The walls were industrial cinder block, with a radiator and a water pipe, painted black with red trim - totally convincing as a police room, and yet oddly stylish. He cleared out the room for the day so we could move in a table and two chairs.
Considering we're using an unusual camera/audio setup - a T2i HD still camera combined with an audio mixer taped to our boom pole - we've had remarkably few technical problems on this shoot - until today. We lost 60 - 90- minutes due to various technical issues which turned out to be errors on our part (we got rusty during our time off!), and maybe an hour to a lighting setup which proved challenging. But once we got up and running we rocked - Michael and John were spot on and I got all of the coverage I wanted. For a rare treat, we had lunch in the outdoor portion of a bar across the street. I never knew a meatloaf sandwich could be so good.
After packing up, most of us returned to my house. As I explained once before in this blog, when you travel from one location to another on a movie it's called a company movie. At my house, we devoted our remaining time to shooting scenes and portions of scenes which we were unable to get when I scheduled them. First up we shot the last scene of the movie, which takes place in my front yard and driveway. The scene was staged as a single shot involving a dolly move, double framing, and a pan. It took six takes, but we got it. When I originally scheduled this scene, the weather was cold, gray and windy - we could have shot it, but it wouldn't have read as the happy ending we wanted. Today the sun was out and trees were in bloom, and the symbolism worked great.
The next scene was also set outside. We have a montage sequence early in the film in which Michael's character maintains "his" house and yard. An earlier draft of the script called for him to mow part of my lawn, but when we shot most of this sequence, my backyard was a swamp so we skipped it. I decided to get it today because I thought the yellow dandelions would look great, and I wanted to establish my backyard for a later scene with darker overtones. I framed a shot, but Sam Qualiana offered to improve it by getting down on the grass while Michael mowed straight to the camera - a "money shot."
Inside, we shot a scene in which Michael carries a can of red paint past Paul McGinnis, who is painting a living room wall. A simple bit of action taking 2/8 of a script page. I staged a dolly shot in which Michael exits a hall with a can of red paint, and Sam dollied across the room, revealing Paul as Michael passed him; then Paul turns in the direction Michael just exited and delivers a line. It was a nice shot. I went all of SLIME CITY without a single dolly move, and Sam wasn't able to use his only dolly shot on SNOW SHARK: ANCIENT SNOW BEAST because the second camera operator screwed up the camera settings; this was our fourth dolly shot today, and we have many in the film.
Our final shot of the day - "the martini" - was an insert for Paul's character's death scene. We shot the bulk of the scene already, but our "succubus hands" weren't ready. Today - for the second time - Tamar wore the monster gloves, doubling for Debbie Rochon. The shots went off without a hitch and we wrapped for the day. We're just past halfway through shoot days, and just under halfway through the script. Next weekend, we have an entirely different cast for two days, when we shoot the prologue for the film: Kevin VanHentenryck from the Basket Case films; Kim Piazza, who will be playing Kevin's wife; Mark Goodfellow, who will be playing his son; and Kaelin Lamberson, making her screen debut as his daughter.
