“Still Life” Principal Photography - Day 2 (Saturday)

Tremendous day of shooting. Crew call at 8:00am, cast call at 9:00am. Crew was right on time and we spent the early moments chatting and reviewing the shot list and started setting up our first shot which included Marilyn and Ivan. So, after spending some time clearing out the garage (our first location), I get a phone call from Marilyn. See, she agreed to shoot this film with us even though she has a very busy schedule and is used to working on much larger films (and getting paid for them quite frankly), but out of the kindness of her heart and because she liked us and she liked the script, she agreed to work with us. She mentioned weeks ago that there was only one thing that would prevent her from shooting the film. If her daughter went into labor a week early. No problem, it was a risk we were willing to take. So, as I was saying before, I got a call from Marilyn. Turns out her daughter was en route to the hospital. I thought we were screwed. In fact, Marilyn apologized profusely and asked if she could push her scenes back a couple of hours. Umm, yeah, no problem (I thought she wasn’t going to show at all!) Whew. So, we had a lot of interiors that we needed to shoot later in the day, so we got all of those going, pushed back Jim’s call time and got the schedule underway, though in a slightly different order than I’d planned. You gotta roll with the punches.

I mentioned yesterday a special guest might show up. Well, riding in on a bolt of lightning in a wing-ed chariot, arrived Larry Boulden, lighting/grip/gaffer/filmmaker extraordinaire, raising the professionalism level of our shoot exponentially. After he lit our first scene, I knew we were in for a treat, especially having wrestled with the lights for hours last night trying to get the breakroom scenes lit properly. I am not a lighting guy. I know what looks good in a monitor, but I don’t know how to make it happen. Guys like Larry know how to make it happen. And he did today, time and time again. What a tremendous treat having him available. Thanks Larry.

Okay, my requisite thank you paragraphs. Biggest ups of the day go to Chris Harrell for the use of his fine pad. While he slaved away all day selling furniture, we captured every angle of his house on tape. Thank you Chris. Secondly, thanks go to Stephen (you can plant your flowers now) and Chris, Paul and Mike for the use of their houses as well. The odds of us finding a neighborhood where we could shoot three houses side-by-side was so low, but thanks to Matt we found these. Awesome.

Huge thanks goes to our fantastic cast as well. Marilyn for coming in and performing great against significant odds, Jim for coming in and having to wait several hours before we could shoot him because our schedule got jacked up, Ivan for continuing to personify his character and turn in a great performance, and last and certainly not least to Cristy for sitting on set for about six hours before your 15 seconds of screentime. What a trouper. I’m thrilled with the performances of each of you.

Last but not least, huge thanks to crewfolk Larry, Jason, Matt, Julie and Rick. You’re all doing a tremendous job. You all have a place on my future films. Big thanks also to Leon and Pete for coming out for a few hours and giving us some much needed assistance in the world’s busiest/loudest/errr…scariest? neighborhood. Can those shell casings be submitted as evidence?

Great job again Luis. Great script…it’s coming together nicely.

Congrats on your new granddaughter Marilyn. I assume she’ll be named Marc!

Tomorrow’s another day. Crew call 11:00am (I’m sleeping in) and cast call at noon. Until then…