KILLER RACK Day Nineteen: That's a Wrap!
Day Nineteen of KILLER RACK was the final day of principal photography (although one of those days was seciond unit). I'd originally scheduled eighteen days, but that wasn't quite enough for a shoot this size. Our agenda included three locations, which meant two company moves, not exactly an easy day despite the low page count, First, we returned to Paul McGinnis's house to re-shoot a special effect I wasn't happy with, and a shot that "crossed the line," meaning that in one exchange two characters appeared to be looking in the same direction instead of each other (my mistake). Since we were going to be there anyway, I added a cutaway of Nick Lama. Nick plays one of our "three bumbling cops," and had been unable to participate when we shot the bulk of the scene we were now completing. By adding the cutaway, his character is in the scene, and we got an extra joke I came up, one of those little touches that can improve a sce visually.
I met Paul an hour ahead of call time so we could arrange the furniture and set up, and our director of photography, Chris Rados, was the first to arrive. Rod Durick, our co-producer, was unable to be on set because he had a wedding to attend. Corin Defabbio joined us again to help with lighting. We shot Nick out first and called a picture wrap on him. Then we re-shot the effect, in which 1st AD Sam Qualiana, playing Betty's boyfriend Dutch, loses a hand to the boobs. The first take looked better than what we shot a month and a half ago, but I called for two more takes, each one better than the last. The blood was nice and red, and Sam walked around looking crimson the rest of the day. We re-shot Jessica Zwolak's reaction to this event, and it was like traveling back in time to see her wearing one of her earliest costumes again. I added another shot of her which I felt set up the next scene in the film better. I'm always adding things...
Our next stop was my house, and we were already an hour behind. We shot a series of shots of Jessca in Betty's apartment, mostly short bits requiring one or two setups, mini-scenes or missing elements of other scenes. Given that it was our last day, and we had to make it, the temptation existed to cut corners and just blast through the shot list, but that isn't what we did: we took our time with each one, lighting them just right, and Chris executed some really nice camera moves I thought up pretty much on the spot. The material was beautful. I added another short bit, one which I felt clarified what happens when Betty is possessed by her boobs: just a short shot, but something I felt her character needed. Our last scene in m y house was a scene in which Jessica wrestled her boobs for control of her body, a riff on the old Jeckyll and Hyde transformations. Jessica nailed what I wanted even though we hadn't rehearsed this part in advance - in fact, we hadn't done any rehearsing in quite a while.
Now for our fina company move! We vacated my house, leaving a broken stairway railing and sundry set walls in our wake, and returned to the alley behibd Pierce Arts Film Arts Center. We were an hour late and the pressure was on, but I knew we'd get everything we needed to in the time we had. Once again, we were shooting portons of the climactic scene, For those keeping track, this was our third night in that alley for that scene, plus we'd shot pickups of Michael O'Hear and Ale McBryde in aother alley, which be cut into this sequence. The last time we shot here, I realized we weren't finishing and had Chris shoot all the shots requiring the entuire alley to be lit; now we had much tighter setups requiring less complicated lighting. We began with, I don't know, maybe ten shots iof Jessica in the killer boob rig, covered with blood; these will all be used to augment the main action. I knew exactly what I needed and we burned through them. Then we took Jess out of the rig and shot all a dramatic scene between her and Paul. Both of them had their lines down and delivered them with the proper gravitas despite their silliness of the dialogue; the crew was cracking up. Then we shot some pickup shos of Stacey Book's crawling boobs. That is now a sentence. Then we captured Jessica's final confrontation with the boobs, and she impressed me with something she added to her delivery. To reward her, we threw two buckets of methocelulose (standing infor silicone) on her. And then we shot the end of the film and called a picture wrap.
Wrapping a feature film on which everyone pulled together like they did on this one is an iodd mixture of feelings: elation that we did the best work we could and sadness that, once again, a "movie family" has to break up. It's part iof the porocess, you can't move on to post production if you doin't finish production. Chris keeps his equipment at Pierce Arrow, and while he and some of the crew packed up his gearand moved it upstairs, others cleaned the alley and packed to leave. At the endof the night, a small group gathered, enjoying each other's company before moving on.
This was a great shoot, and even though it was spread out over ten weekends, it never dragged, I know we made a special movie that everyone who worked on it can be proud of the finished product. But we're not done yet! We still have one green screen day ahead of us, in which Jessica's bloody hands will battle a monster boobs puppet.
I met Paul an hour ahead of call time so we could arrange the furniture and set up, and our director of photography, Chris Rados, was the first to arrive. Rod Durick, our co-producer, was unable to be on set because he had a wedding to attend. Corin Defabbio joined us again to help with lighting. We shot Nick out first and called a picture wrap on him. Then we re-shot the effect, in which 1st AD Sam Qualiana, playing Betty's boyfriend Dutch, loses a hand to the boobs. The first take looked better than what we shot a month and a half ago, but I called for two more takes, each one better than the last. The blood was nice and red, and Sam walked around looking crimson the rest of the day. We re-shot Jessica Zwolak's reaction to this event, and it was like traveling back in time to see her wearing one of her earliest costumes again. I added another shot of her which I felt set up the next scene in the film better. I'm always adding things...
Our next stop was my house, and we were already an hour behind. We shot a series of shots of Jessca in Betty's apartment, mostly short bits requiring one or two setups, mini-scenes or missing elements of other scenes. Given that it was our last day, and we had to make it, the temptation existed to cut corners and just blast through the shot list, but that isn't what we did: we took our time with each one, lighting them just right, and Chris executed some really nice camera moves I thought up pretty much on the spot. The material was beautful. I added another short bit, one which I felt clarified what happens when Betty is possessed by her boobs: just a short shot, but something I felt her character needed. Our last scene in m y house was a scene in which Jessica wrestled her boobs for control of her body, a riff on the old Jeckyll and Hyde transformations. Jessica nailed what I wanted even though we hadn't rehearsed this part in advance - in fact, we hadn't done any rehearsing in quite a while.
Now for our fina company move! We vacated my house, leaving a broken stairway railing and sundry set walls in our wake, and returned to the alley behibd Pierce Arts Film Arts Center. We were an hour late and the pressure was on, but I knew we'd get everything we needed to in the time we had. Once again, we were shooting portons of the climactic scene, For those keeping track, this was our third night in that alley for that scene, plus we'd shot pickups of Michael O'Hear and Ale McBryde in aother alley, which be cut into this sequence. The last time we shot here, I realized we weren't finishing and had Chris shoot all the shots requiring the entuire alley to be lit; now we had much tighter setups requiring less complicated lighting. We began with, I don't know, maybe ten shots iof Jessica in the killer boob rig, covered with blood; these will all be used to augment the main action. I knew exactly what I needed and we burned through them. Then we took Jess out of the rig and shot all a dramatic scene between her and Paul. Both of them had their lines down and delivered them with the proper gravitas despite their silliness of the dialogue; the crew was cracking up. Then we shot some pickup shos of Stacey Book's crawling boobs. That is now a sentence. Then we captured Jessica's final confrontation with the boobs, and she impressed me with something she added to her delivery. To reward her, we threw two buckets of methocelulose (standing infor silicone) on her. And then we shot the end of the film and called a picture wrap.
Wrapping a feature film on which everyone pulled together like they did on this one is an iodd mixture of feelings: elation that we did the best work we could and sadness that, once again, a "movie family" has to break up. It's part iof the porocess, you can't move on to post production if you doin't finish production. Chris keeps his equipment at Pierce Arrow, and while he and some of the crew packed up his gearand moved it upstairs, others cleaned the alley and packed to leave. At the endof the night, a small group gathered, enjoying each other's company before moving on.
This was a great shoot, and even though it was spread out over ten weekends, it never dragged, I know we made a special movie that everyone who worked on it can be proud of the finished product. But we're not done yet! We still have one green screen day ahead of us, in which Jessica's bloody hands will battle a monster boobs puppet.
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