August 19th

Setting up Duke's death scene
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Ha! We actually watched Mickey Blue Eyes! Man, that's the funniest thing in this blog...

August 19th

Good day. Lots of sleep. I woke up and made a phone call to Duke, who hadn't responded to my emails about showing up tonight for his death scene.

We couldn't shoot until Rick showed up, so I went and picked up Gil and Mun. We also stopped by FedEx, who had left a note on my door saying they had a package.

It was the two reels we'd sent off to RGB Labs. I was a little nervous before we sat down to view them. What would they look like? Would there be scratches through the negatives? Maybe even nothing on them?

We watched the video, commenting throughout. We all agreed that it looked pretty good, but the transfer sucked. There's an entire scene that you can't even see what's going on. They didn't monitor the transfer, they just set best light for wherever the reel started, and then probably left. Other than that, what we shot looked pretty good.

We showed it to Ganz. I think it gave him a little boost. It kind of picked us all up a little bit. Nothing like results to get you motivated again. I'm Jonesing to develop the rest.

We went out and tried to get the final scene of the movie, where Aric drives off in a new stolen car, off to a new city with new prey. I put Gil and Mun on an overpass and said to shoot our car while we drove under it and pull up to a wide shot of the highway.

We drove under, then back around and they had never seen us. They didn't shoot any film.
Daylight was fading quickly. I told Rick to drive around and come up the ramp and we'd shoot him driving there, with the sunset behind him. We shot it, but I don't know how well it turned out. If we have film left in the end, we'll shoot it again.

I made a quick call to Duke. His wife informed me that he had karate class that night and wouldn't be home until around 9:30pm. That means he wouldn't be on location until 10:00pm at the earliest.

The true face of Aric Blue

I cursed Duke's mom for ever having him, and we went over to the house to set up lights and get ready. We shot some pickup shots and then some close-ups on Ganz, then waited for Duke to show up.

An asshole neighbor came out and asked us who gave us permission to shoot there. I lied about a class project again and he asked whether we'd shot behind the houses the week before. I said yes. He said, "Yeah, we saw you aiming your camera in our windows". Dream on, pal, your wife's a cow. I don't say that, though. I just nicely tell him we were shooting in the house on the end and that I used to live there.

He doesn't relent. Get the lights and cord off his lawn, he wants nothing to do with it. Have we gotten permission from the Association(the community one, I presume) to film there?

We moved the lights. The neighbor continued to bemoan his woes to Mun, but we were pretty much ignoring him now. Duke showed up a little late, but we got the scene done and I think it went pretty well. Even managed to record sound this time.

We packed up fast and rolled back to the movie theater. We got there about midnight and shot the scenes we'd missed, as well as some more coverage. Ganz fled for home and the rest of us stayed and watched Mickey Blue-Eyes, which was actually pretty funny.

We've got Friday and Saturday off(thank God!) and then we shoot early Sunday, then have the wrap party in the afternoon. Technically we're not done, but it's close enough, and it'll be the last weekend day we have available before Gil and Mun fly back to Arizona.

"Hey, you got something on the back of your head..."