September 27th, 2003

Dennis Long played Shivers in the promo trailer we shot to raise funding.

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We shot this entire day at the house I grew up in. My parents still live there. And I realized something in that one day that I never knew the entire time I lived there.

That house and neighborhood is LOUD. The kitchen floor CREAKS if you move an inch.

My sound guy was giving me fits and I finally said screw it--not much we can do now.

I can tell you, fixing sound in post taught me a TON about sound.

Sept 27th
Exhausted. No other word for it. It’s 4:57 am and I just walked in the door. We started setting up to shoot at 11am this morning—I’ve been awake and working for almost 18 hours. I booted up notepad and then excel before I realized I needed Word to continue this log.

I’m that tired.

The day was a bit of a disaster. I figured we’d fall behind, so you might expect that I was prepared. But no.

During the shoot inside there is so much noise outside--people using every fucking’ power weedwhacker and lawnmower, there’s construction up the street (BAM BAM BAM with the hammers) – it’s impossible to get good sound.

We’re so far behind by the time we finish shooting the first couple of scenes that it’s getting dark outside. We still have to do the scene where the hitman in a clown mask comes in, fights Tuck and gets shot—and all that takes place during the day.

Mun figures out a way we can light it like it’s day outside—close the curtains inside and blast just about every light we have at the curtain so it looks like sunlight outside. It works okay, but it’s still pretty dark inside now.

We choreograph the whole Tuck runs in, tackles him, fights, and then they stand up. The room is actually too small for this scene but we try to make it work. It takes a long time.

The scene, as envisioned, has Jacky shoot the hitman and behind him we see the picture shatter. He laughs, then we crane down slightly to show that the bullet went through him to hit the picture.

So I’m behind the camera with a BB gun. Jacky would pull the trigger on her blank gun and I’d fire the BB gun. It would crack the picture frame but not explosively enough that you could really tell anything was happening.

We did it a couple of times with a couple of different pictures. Never worked out.

There was a lot of sexual innuendo going on all day(and this was when the “nugget porn” conversation happened, which I think was on the Making Of. Also, Jacky scrunched up her boobs for the camera. She’s fun like that.

At the end of the night I called off the first scene of the next day, and thought I might call off the second one because we need a wig that Lisa Willis Brush said she’d get—we need her “corpse” to wear it.

September 26, 2003

Jacky's headshots sent to us WAY back when. If she asks me to take them down I will.

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Not sure why I don't mention casting Jacky Reres.

We were having a hard time filling the lead role. I really only had one other serious contender and then we got a video audition from Jacky.

Rick really liked her. She was a little nervous, very spunky, and cute. She did the audition and at the end said some cute stuff to us through the camera. I think Rick wanted to bang her.

I told him we'd have to see her in person before I could cast her in a role that could make/break the movie. She lived in Virginia, so we set up a time to audition her at a house halfway between us--a friend of Rick's.

We met her and auditioned her at a table in the basement of the house. You have to wonder how creepy it is for young ladies to go to strangers' houses and audition in their basements...

I wasn't totally sold. Still wavered between Jacky and the other woman because, to be frank, Jacky exudes sexuality. It's not on purpose, I'm sure, but it really was the opposite of how I saw the character. I had based the character on someone I know who is like a sister to me, so to think that her character would be like that...hard to wrap my mind around.

In the end I took Rick's advice and cast Jacky. Now I'm happy I did--she definitely took over the role and made it her own.

Sept 26th

First day of shooting.
Got to the main set and the crazy lady who lives there started screaming through the door to go away, she didn’t want us shooting there. Very embarrassing for me in front of the crew. So, thanks mom.

Went incredibly well. Working with a four-man crew for today, since we don’t need a sound guy. Everything we’re shooting is MOS(without sound).

Banged out the first couple of scenes and we were ahead of schedule. Ate some dinner of sloppy joe(thanks Mom!) and then moved on. I did get a little bored, since we were doing all the “Lynn paints” scenes—I’m aching to kill somebody…in the movie I mean.

Last scenes of the day involved Jacky in bed. We put her in bed, Rick sprayed her down(quick note: I’m not sure Rick really does this for the acting—I think he simply likes spraying down the actresses) since she’s having a very bad nightmare involving clowns.

The innuendo was flying today even more than on the set of “Hunting Humans”.

Even went to Jillian’s and had a couple of beers afterward and beat Mun in a game of pool. Better luck next time, my nine-fingered friend!

Came home, went over the shooting script scenes for tomorrow so I’ve got an idea of what we need to do. First thing we have to do is move all the equipment upstairs since we’re shooting in the whole downstairs tomorrow.

Hope it goes well, but we have a lot to do.

Okay, little extra here. What I remember from the first day was being very nervous. I was worried that Jacky would be underwhelmed by our crew--that is, me, Rick, Mun, and Steve Carson. She might not take us seriously.

But she did. And then I remember infinite boredom--taking an hour to light the scene and then shoot scene after scene of her painting. BOR-ING!

We made our day though. That's important. I think it may be the only day 1 of any shoot that didn't end in total disaster for me...

Sept 5th - Sept 22nd, 2003

There's a road under there--this is downtown Annapolis, about 20 minutes from my house.
I did not take this pic though.

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Man, shooting a low low budget flick isn't tough enough--we had a hurricane hit us. Every once in a while one will blow by but they NEVER do anything to us.

This time though, it kills the state. Knocks out power to my house for over a day. I'm supposed to be finishing the shot list and 900 other things, and instead I'm sitting around in the dark.

At this point I'm nervous because I've never seen Mun's reel. I'm going simply on the strength of him having worked with Gil. He clearly knew what he was doing, but I was still worried.

Turned out he was great. Easy to work with with great ideas, and very helpful in remembering shit like which actor was frame left and which was frame right in the shots.


Sept 5th – Sept 22nd

Mun said he could do the shoot if we pushed it back a week. This would also be helpful because then Andrew can still play Phillip. So, I push the shoot back and pray everyone’s okay with it.

They all seem to be. Hallelujah!

Comfuck—oops, sorry, I mean, Comfort Inn had said they would provide us with two rooms for the duration of the shoot, complimentary because we’ve been holding all the auditions and rehearsals in their conference room(and paying full price everytime). In addition, I have said we’d put a thank you in the credits.

So we’ve been calling them for two weeks just to ensure that we’re square. The lady isn’t calling us back. Finally my wife goes down there to find out what’s up and the lady says she talked to a manager and he says they can’t give us the rooms. If we want them she can give them to us for the bargain rate of $70 a night.

That’s $70 a night FOR THREE WEEKS. That’s their best rate?

I need a room for Mun and a room for Jacky, which she’ll share for three nights with Lauren, the actress coming from New York. I have already diverted the funds from the budget and spent it on other things. Now it looks like Mun will have to room with Rick at his place, and I’ll have to find a room for Jacky.

The lone lucky break is that Hurricane Isabel hit us on September 19th, which was our original start date. We all lost power. I’m still not entirely done my shooting script, and I lost a day and a half waiting for power to come back on.

Here it is September 22nd and Mun arrives tomorrow. There are a couple of small parts that we still haven’t filled, because they’re police parts and I don’t have any uniforms. Finding cops and their cars is one of the major challenges I still haven’t fixed, and we need a bunch of them on the 27th. Five days away.

September 1st/September 3rd, 2003

Once again, here I am slamming someone I know. But you gotta understand where I was coming from here.

First, actors come into auditions and tell you they will give you the world if you will only cast them. They will work 24 hour days, they will walk miles through smoke and fire, they will kill their mom and eat her...if you will only cast them in your movie.

So you cast them, and the first thing many of them do is turn around and fuck you in the ass. All sorts of conditions, reasons they can't show up, etc. It's pretty frustrating.

That's where I was here. Andrew's a good guy too. Hey, everybody's a good guy. So the next person I slam just assume he/she is a good guy, 'cause I'm done saying it.

Just assume at this moment in time they weren't. And I know all this text is blowing your mind. Pics will start showing up when we get into production. I promise.


Sept 1st

I get a call from Andrew Schneider. He’s playing Phillip, Lynn’s good friend and the gallery owner. A big part.

He tells me that he just looked over the schedule and realized he’d have to back out of the part because he has shooting days on two Jewish holidays.

Uh, hello? You knew when we were shooting. What the fuck? Now I’m forced to try to rearrange the schedule, which was a bitch as it was. I mean, one guy can only work on Monday-Wed, I have to schedule the girl from New York so she has three days in a row, one guy doesn’t want to work on Sundays when the Ravens play at home, etc.

Sept. 3rd

I’m attempting to get Dave Mun, First AC from HH, to be our Director of Photography on the movie we’re shooting in 16 days. He’s trying to clear his schedule. I’m contemplating moving the shoot one week back, but if I do it then I have to make sure everyone else can still do it.

In addition, some of the equipment hasn’t shown up. The company claims they need my driver’s license faxed to them so they know it’s not credit card theft. No explanation as to why they didn’t call me to let me know this.

August 31st, 2003

Picture I shot at first contact fitting, altered by Rob Long II

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Sticking giant contact lenses into another person's eyes is not fun. 'Nuff said.

August 31st

Gil has not called us back. We’ve sent emails, we’ve called and left messages, Rick text-messaged him. Nothing. I’m left with only one conclusion: We have no Director of Photography and we’re shooting in 19 days.

Like I don’t have enough problems.

The plaster mold Doug made of Lisa has fallen over and broken. He may need her to come back over. I’m sure she’ll be overjoyed.

Had Mark Lassise come over to test out the special FX contact lenses. These things are the size of a quarter. I tried to put one in my eye and couldn’t do it, and I’ve worn contacts before. Mark hasn’t.

After about a half hour of trying, we finally got one in by him holding his eye open and me inserting it. Looked real freaky. I opened up the other contact and find out it’s ripped.

Uh…can ANYTHING go right here? ANYTHING?

August 26th, 2003

Shot from 1st Make-Up Test with Shivers

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The worst part of this time period was that the Director of Photography, David Gil, was not returning phone calls or emails. When we last spoke to him he was good, but then months pass and we hear nothing.

We have no backup. I don't know any other DPs, and we're WEEKS away from shooting. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to be the DP, and I'm already wearing too many hats.

I'm not sure how I didn't get an ulcer.

I'm a little harsh to JP here--but in the interest of preserving what I wrote, I have not changed it. He's a good guy though.

August 26th

Did the first headcast for Lisa-Willis Brush last week. She missed the first appointment to do it because the big New York blackout trapped her out of state. We did it down in the basement of Doug Ulrich, the FX guru.

It’s a small dark basement and I’m sure Lisa was a little hesitant as it was; for all intents and purposes we were strangers to her. So he gets this alginate put all over her head, then plaster bandages are wrapped over that. She can only breathe through her nostril holes.

We were at the point where Doug was forming the bandages on her neck and she pushed him off and motioned to back off. Apparently her heart was running a mile a minute, but she couldn’t tell us that. I finally ended up holding her hand through the rest of the process so we could finish it. If she had ripped it off at that second, the whole thing would have gone down the drain.

We didn’t get time to do JP(John Patrick)’s head cast, so we rescheduled for today. Went over to Doug’s and waited an hour for him to show up. A no show. No call, no email. Nothing.

Pisses the fuck out of me. I don’t have time to waste. I only have about 1000 things to do before we shoot and I’m standing around pulling my pud waiting for an actor with a small part.

Lot of stuff to do. Shoot date is barreling toward us. I found a gallery to shoot in today which is huge, but we still haven’t gotten in touch with Gil, the DP. What the hell?

August 21st, 2003

I remember this vividly. We were extremely up front about the Amanda part requiring nudity. It said so in the casting notice, it said so in the sides, and when we auditioned people we asked beforehand if they were aware of it and okay with it.

Anyway, I looked her up today because her name is pretty unique. She has no listing whatsoever on imdb and I couldn't find anything other than a Facebook page.

So I can say with absolute certainty that her career would be in no worse shape had she taken the part of Amanda.

August 21, 2003

Had three full auditions. Sarah D. came back for another read. When we finished she says, “I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

Uh oh.

She then tells us she’s not so comfortable with the nudity. She talked to an agent who thought it wasn’t a great idea at this point in her career. So she’s out, and I’d pretty much penciled her in as Amanda.

All told we received well over 1000 headshots.

I’ve cast almost all of the roles now. We’re about four weeks away from shooting and we’ve got lots of obstacles. Lots of things that need to be done. I’m not even positive my DP is coming. May have to shoot this myself, which just puts more shit on my plate.

Tomorrow we get headcasts done for Lisa Willis-Brush, who plays Julie, and John Patrick Barry who plays Officer Patrick.