Howdy, anyone paying attention!

Well, it’s been busy. The Comic Con was a subtle smash hit, as DC and Marvel decided not to show and gave us little Davids a chance to shine with folks who normally wouldn’t take a stroll down Artist’s Alley. There were a few artists and writers “slumming” it in the Alley who would normally have been under the protective, sterile canopy of said super conglomerates had they been there, as well, so it was good for the fans as well.

I thank anyone who stopped by the WBD table and said hello, especially the kid from Logan Square who was nice enough to pretend he’d specifically searched us out. Hope you’re digging the books, buddy. Appreciate it. It was also a great weekend, as I was signing at The Comic Vault on Montrose and Ashland on Saturday and the turnout was better than I’d hoped (considering I just now advertised it on my own site, three days after its occurance). I am the worst salesman in the world, no wonder I got fired from the men’s Polo department at Marshall Fields ten years ago. That and I showed up drunk all the time. ANYhoo…

Believe it or not, I am still working on the film. Everyone is prepared to lynch me at this point, those who are still interested. Everyone else who worked so damned hard on it and haven’t heard anything from me, I don’t blame anyone for being irritated or just giving up on their favorite hard-luck hero. I am wrestling with a few factors, post-production issues I have no control over as well as things that are just my fault; like being caught between wanting Sam Fuller-style energy and Kubrickian methodology. You cannot have both, my man!

Don’t give up yet! I am hard at work! It will be done soon and it will knock the shit out of you! Thank you for working on it and I have not forgotten anyone!

On that note, I’d better get back to work. Anyone who’s picked up the books in the last month, especially the Lie Down Low series finale, I would love to hear what you thought.

04/15/09
908pm

I went for a little run this evening after getting home from work and I saw someone crossing the street who looked an awful lot like Glen Ford. Turns out it was Chuck and I sat and talked to him for a moment and he asked what happened with the blog. I hadn’t realized anyone was reading it, so I figure I’ll sit down and finish up what happened with the shoot.

Mike came by early to break down the set at Lupe’s and do what he could with the Receptacle. The little girl, Sydney, showed up with her mom while Andrew and I were trying to light the kitchen without blowing out the fuses in the house. Amber, the makeup artist who was helping us out, was working on Laura and Sujin was getting Phil together. Steve B came by and was helping Mike dismantle the Listening Room. The panic was on me; I had the boards up on the door but it was a snatch and grab deal, I hadn’t planned everything to a “t” the way I’d done with everything else. It was a dreamy sequence, so I figured it needed to be shot differently - not so controlled.

This is really where Andrew and Sujin rose to the occasion, and Andrew especially would prove valuable beyond words as the day continued. I found myself suddenly unsure of where to go, once we’d gotten the few shots I knew were essential. Sujin was great with Sydney, who turned out to be an incredibly professional little girl who happened to be unnaturally adorable. Andrew is experienced with documentary filmmaking, and he put it to good use with a handheld technique while they went about the motions of interacting. We gave Sydney a box of crayons and she went to work on one of my sketchbooks while we danced around the lights and wires in the kitchen. There was only one electrical blowout, fortunately.

We did a wardrobe change and went into the second half of the “family”’s day, it was oddly fortuitous that their clothes were color coordinated for each day, something that wasn’t planned as well as it happened. Laura was a pro with Sydney, Sujin was beating Phil up and ripping his crap suit up for his homeless experience. I told them that we needed to smear some peanut butter on his face, rub some vinegar in his eyes and take a hammer to remove a few of his front teeth but they were having none of it so Sujin did it all with makeup. He looked fantastic and I didn’t even have to beat him up at all, unfortunately. I kid.

For the last shots of the movie we needed an idilic home to shoot in front of, I’d boarded it in front of a fence - the kind you find on the north side but not down here in Pilsen where we were shooting. Andrew and I walked around the neighborhood and found a great yellow home with a well maintained as though it were straight out of a storybook. We set the shot up quickly, there was foot traffic everywhere and the girls were waiting in the wings for the okay. Steve and Mike were carrying reflectors for the low natural light we’d have to work with, it was gray and overcast but thankfully not raining. Since we didn’t have permission to shoot this house we wanted to snatch it real quick and with little attention. I saw this fella walkind toward us. I was preparing to wait for him to walk through the shot before we could continue and instead he walked right up to the gate we were in front of and opened it. He looked at me, silent and with a big stupid grin on my face, saw Andrew with the camera on the tripod, flanked by two degenerates with square white boards, and Phil leaning against his fence with crap all over his face - dressed in a filthy, ill fitting suit and clutching a busted briefcase. I said, “Excuse me sir-” He nodded, smiled, and said, “It’s fine, go ahead” like we were a bunch of silly kids and went into his house. It was a great moment.

We got our shots and packed up, thanked Laura and Sydney and her mom. Everyone was fantastic that morning and, though I had been bitch slapped by my unpreparedness, things seemed to have gone well. Since then I’ve looked at the footage from that morning and it looks great. The only thing that didn’t work was the sound, but I was holding the boom mic the whole time so I’ll take the bullet on that, glad to. As Andrew is fond of jokingly saying, “We’ll fix it in post”. God, I hope we can.

The first half was over. Andrew went to drop off some of the equipment that was so generously donated to us by several people who we will list soon on the website, once we get all their info. Phil stuck around to do his voice-overs, and Mike and Steve had just about knocked out the set and done all the clean-up at Lupe’s. My friend Nathan Leuking had been kind enough to lend us an automobile, compliments of his parents. I signed the makeshift contract, signifying that I, Jim Terry, was now responsible for any damages done to their vehicle. Smart son of a bitch. He split and we got ready for the second half of the day. Shooting in the streets.

April 6, 2009
746am

On Saturday night Sujin and I sat down and looked at the rest of the footage. I was nervous about sound and whether we’d gotten enough footage but afterward I was excited and ready to start cutting. She’s doing the editing, however, and we needed to back everything up first - which, with a USB port, says it will take 30 hours. We did the first half overnight and continued the next night. We’ll begin cutting on Wednesday, the alotted timespace we’ve given ourselves so we don’t get helplessly behind on Real World matters.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been two weeks since we finished shooting. Everything had been geared so intensely on that weekend that now it’s gone there’s a sort of hazey dullness in my mind. That Sunday was something else. Everyone showed up around eleven and started getting ready, Mike had knocked out the walls in the Listening Room. It wasn’t how I imagined it but it was close. If we’d had another hundred bucks and one more day to set it up the thing would have been remarkable, but it was great what we had. Mike did a hell of a job, never having done anything like this before. Andrew was impressed, which put me at ease about it. There was a feeling that I hadn’t done enough on it but I had to let that go.

Meanwhile Mike went to work on the Receptacle while Andrew set up the lights in the Interrogation room. He’d brought along a friend, Euri, who helped him set up an overhead while we plugged up any light coming in through the windows with massive sheets of heavy black plastic. He took two c-stands, which are handy collapsing … well, stands… that have grips on their top that are priceless and essential on every set. They are used for lights, holding odds and ends, the heads can be removed and they are some of the first things you need if you’re going to do the job right. Andrew used two of them at full extension and put a length of 2X4 that Mike had fastened together between them with Chuck’s help. This extended over the interrogation table and wala, he hung his light from that makeshift contraption and other than a few adjustments here and there the lighting situation was pretty much taken care of and it gave us the mobility we needed to get our shots and move quickly. A pro, I tellz ya.

We hammered through the interrogation scene, Phil’s makeup and hair were giving us some consistency problems but I think it’ll look fine in the finished product. What a damned trooper he was. I stuck that funky hockey helmet on his head, it had to be tight and uncomfortable -not to mention claustrophobic - for a good thirty minute stretch. I kept calling, “Phil, how you doing in there, buddy?” I’d get the muffled reply, “good, man”. I wanted to tell him he could kick Peter Weller’s ass but I didn’t think anyone would get the lame reference. Aside from that he’d truly nailed his lines, he was a rock. We did the wide shots first, then the Boss/Collector shots, then Phil’s stunt scene, getting his head slammed into the table and having a drill jammed into the back of his neck. Prime. I was glad to get that hockey helmet off set - I think there was dried blood caked on the inside of it, but don’t tell Phil.

Everyone was great, Tim was secure and in character, and though there were some people talking and there was a lot of foot/car traffic outside we were able to get mostly usable sound. The sound thing killed me. Anyway, we wanted to get the Collectors out of the picture as soon as possible so we got their scenes as much out of the way before lunch as we could, which was fantastic. Moving like a clock. The grub was out of sight, ridiculous. We had Italian beef and eggrolls (yeah…) at the house, and Lupe surprised everyone by creating an incredible buffet-style Mexican feast and opened her home up to all these strangers. Oh yeah, and out of nowhere Rick, our Associate Producer, pops onto the set with two or three buckets of fried chicken. It stank up the room fierce but it was a nice gesture, even though the PA was smearing chicken grease all over the actors’ faces.

After everyone over-ate we got back to business.

The second half of the day went pretty smoothly, we got Tim’s last scenes out of the way, he nailed them. We all shook hands and he was done after a few voice overs, which were harder to do than I’d expected. I’d spent quite a bit of time with the actors doing their scenes but none of the straight reading-type dialog and it took a few times, what with random noises here and there and getting the reading from a page sound out of there.

Andrew had the listening room pretty well set up and we went to work. Again, Phil was 200% and the rest was checking shots off the ‘boards. It got around five, six o’clock and people started running out of gas or had to leave to their lives. Chuck handed the boom mic to Euri, everyone got quiet for some reason. Euri maneuvered through the lights and wires toward him and he said, “Now pay attention, here’s how you do it. You see this button here? You turn that off when you’re not using it, otherwise the battery will die. That’s… pretty much it.” He handed it to him and everyone was busting up, we all needed a good laugh. It was great to have Chuck on set, he was a bigger help than I could have hoped for and I was sad he had to leave. Others split at the same time, catching a ride with him.

I was disappointed to see all the manpower cutting out so close to our finishing. I’m not talking Chuck, he’d done more than his share but I’m talking people that offered to help out with “manpower” issues. In the end it was Euri, Andrew and myself lugging all that equipment out of there at the end of a long night. I feel bad about this minor resentment, but I figure when you say “whatever you need I’ll do it” I get it in my head you’ll be there. Otherwise, say “I’ll have to cut out early” and I won’t have it in my noggin that you’ll be there to the end. I dunno.

The listening room stuff is fantastic. Everyone did a great job, Phil was about as heroic as could be, muscling through some awkward moments and getting toward that actorly “emoting” moment. We were all beat by the end of the night, which ended about eight o’clock. We left all the equipment in the living room of our house and said our goodbyes - Monday was the last day of the shoot and we had to meet back early in the morning.

I was worried about Monday. I wasn’t concerned about Sujin or doormen or money or cameras or the actors or anyone other than me. We were dealing with a child and a woman (I have very little experience working with either) and we were going to be outside for most of the day in unsure weather conditions. I slept little that night and my confidence took a beating.