"She Cried Alive" - post-production - BAFTA LA etc

OK straight into the edit room. First cut ran at approx 24 minutes. Shown at edit analysis and some interesting observations - people were confused over her job, didn't see the prosthetics and the piece pissed a few people off re his choice to leave etc So key thing is it is causing a reaction.

Nick and I headed into the edit room to work on the cut.



Just before edit analysis I headed off to a BAFTA LA newcomers drinks party down at the BAFTA LA offices on Melrose. Lovely evening and met a number of the board of BAFTA LA. Then back in time for edit analysis. Our cut ran at 24 minutes. Comments were by and large useful. Was surprised with a couple which included 'didn't realise she was a lawyer' The film also pissed a few people off re the ending so even in its raw state is seems to spark a debate.

So next couple of intense days spent in a claustrophobic room with poor ventilation trying to mould the footage. Nick did a fantastic job. We did get sidetracked and started to edit a relationship/love story before we got back on track with the story of a woman opening up to vulnerability.

A couple of test screenings with Zeke and a couple of the second years.

On Sunday went with Jennifer Sullivan to see 'the diving bell and the butterfly' directed by Julian Schnabel. Excellent. Beautiful heart wrenching story. Cinematography by Janusz Kaminski. Afterwarss the scriptwriter, Ronald Harwood, spoke about the film and his process. He was given cart blanche to structure a narrative as he saw fit, the first draft was the last draft and he didn't work with Julian Schnabel on set!





Jennifer came and looked at 'She cried Alive' she got it. So picture was locked and we went on to sound design. The key problem we have faced is that this is a 30s plus story and so the demographic at the AFI isn't who the film was developed for. So a real breath of fresh air that Jennifer saw it and got it!

Classes

Classes have continued despite the pre-production, production and post-production on 'She Cried Alive'.

John Clark was asked to direct a scene and he chose a Walter Mathau film and cast John Ford and Zeke Hawkins - it was hilarious and both had great comic timing.

OK some catch up to do...

We were lucky enough to get the editors of 'Babel' in to speak to us.




HLMS - Frank Darabont (writer/director/producer) most famous for the 'Shawshank Redemption' and 'The Green Mile' came in to present his latest creation 'the Mist' based on another Stephen King Novella.



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Day 3 and 4

Day 3 - Los Feliz P

OK - so day 3 was at Los Feliz Plaza. Most of the day we locked off the set - for two reasons: nudity and sensitive perormance. Here is Jeff blocking out the scenes once again!






Sound has been a big issue on this shoot. The first day Nick did the job and it was fine, but he is now in the editing room. So Larry, Nodoka and at time Gina and John took over. To be straight the sound was f---ing awful for days 2 and 3. Nick was livid as it means we will have to try to ADR some of the lines, considering teh short time available for post this is a serious requirement. After a few words sound was much better on day 4.

All in all day 3 was amazing with Fanshen rising to the challenge and giving a wonderful delicate emotional performance. Very excited to see how this works overall.



Day 4 - decided to delay the start as our location was effectivley a giant goldfish bowl with glass everywhere and thus impossible to black out. Well it proved to be a bit fraught. Crew worked beautifully, quiet. professional and extremely respectful of the actors. I was very impressed, even Fanshen and John noticed and thanked the crew. Bottom line was we were a little over confident having shot these scenes at boot camp and ended up rushing at the end of the day. We got what we needed but it certainly didn't have that little nervous energy we found in bootcamp.






So its a wrap!!!!

Thank you so much to the follow. Without you we could never have done it:

CORE TEAM

DIR Martin Stitt
PRO La Monde Byrd
SCR Adam Benic
CIN Jeff Bierman
EDT Nicholas Quinn


PRODUCTION

1st AD Christina Rubenstein
UPM Stephen Paratore
2nd AD Michael Pomphrey
Truck Driver John Ford

ART DEPARTMENT

SET DEC Andrew Hines

CAMERA

1st AC Chris Hamilton
2nd AC Jaime Mengual
KEY GRIP Matthew Lloyd
GAFF David Stragmeister
BEST BOY GRIP Katie Goldschmidt
BEST BOY ELEC Jeff Powers

SOUND (1) Nicholas Quinn
SOUND (2) Lawrence McGinley
SOUND (3) Kyle Smith

SCRIPT SUPE Adam Benic

VANITY

WARDROBE Natasha Dyer
MAKE-UP Jennifer Leng

She Cried Alive - Day 2

OK Day 2 - Our impossible day according to Betsy. So arrived at 10am - oh forgot to mention that our body double dropped out yesterday so feel in quite a predicament. However, last night cracked it. We will do what was done in Se7en, Jaws, the Elephant Man and WDYDD? Feel really excited and think it will work!

Anyway back to day 2. Started with the Hospital scenes - looked lovely and worked well. Then onto the Court Room scene - use of dolly always a bad move. We got our shots but feel it will be a massage in the edit. Then upstairs to the Office scenes. All went well, all be it a bit fraught as the lighting set up was a little ambitious and involved extensive ceiling mounted lights which trouble our monitor Officer Gray, he was great and we certainly owe him a debt of gratitude. To top it off there was more conern about the time it would take to wrap out rather than shoot the scenes which was annoying and distracting. All went off OK in the end and we made all our shots by 8.59 in the evening and were wrapped by 9.30 so who said we couldn't do it by 10.00?



Mr Andrew Hines - a right geezer. His Father is a professional photographer who strangely enough took a photo of the DWP building where we are filming in 1968 - the year I was born!



Mr John Patterson feeling rejected.



Christy with the worst job of them all - 1st AD. She was great.




Fanshen and her surrogate Mother - Teddy Vincent

Real buzz as everyone felt they had hit the mark. Think we made 30 something setups. Another good day.

Off to the SDAC and Nicks first cut of day 1 material and a quick viewing of some of our dailies. Kicked out at 11.00.

Once more unto the breach dear friends....

Don't know why I am quoting Shakespeare as I am not that fond of theatre. Anyway what a start day! Everyone was eager. All arrived at the location early, as did many of the actors. Unfortunately 9.00am came and went and still no sign of the owner. So everyone chilled out and waited and waited and waited.

9.30 passed.....



10.00 passed....



10.30 passed......



They say if blocking is thought out it will tell the whole story. Think the picture below verifies this concept...



Credit to La Monde. He called the owner repeatedly, tried other avenues contacting his wife, employees etc. Then Spoke to Claire in Production sevices, spoke to Film LA and by 11.10 he had found us another venue for the bar scene. So within minutes we were straight into the cars and off. I was dawdling. Just about to get into my car when the guy turned up and opened up the car! Immediate turn around and we were unloading by 11.30.



Now at our production meeting we were told that this would be a tough day to make our shots. So loosing 2 1/2 hours would make it really difficult. Well we made it.



The morning was fraught as we rushed in, set up ligts and camera and started shooting. Now I have seen the rushes and am very pleased in deed, but at the time I started to realise that we had put the camera in the wrong position and were shooting it all too close. Now it works but it was a difficult morning. Packed set, lots of catch up and an element of chaos which I hate. So we reconvened at lunch and started out again. This time it worked smoothly.



The club scene looks great. Rob, Jason and Adam are fantastic in it - full of energy and life. We were so lucky as crew invited friends along to be background artists and it brought the scene to life, with the club feeling full and busy. So thank you all!!



Fanshen and John were great and definitely the right choices for the roles. Wonderful little looks, smiles - its playful and meaningful. Lots for Nick to play with in the edit suite. Big smile.

Jeff and his team - Matt, Katie, David, Jeff and Chris did a great job buying us back time, it looks great and works for the story.

Nick and Larry - fab job on the sound - this will be a toughie!

Andrew Hines, one of the Directors on the course has stepped in as Production Designer - he has been wonderful. It really helps having someone in this role who knows a set, looks in the monitor and most importantly cares - cheers Andrew!

Christy with help from Michael Pomphrey did a great job as 1st AD - it was a tough first day, with a stupid amount of cast and extras, fighting back time - she got us through with our shots!

Natasha - she is such fun! All the costumes worked and added story value.

Jennifer - everyone looked natural except the dancers who looked very sassy - great job.



Oh and one final thing......

Last week of Pre-Production

Well its been a busy day. Sunday rang round the key cast and all in place.

Found a great 'Mother' in Teddy Vincent - Fanshen, Teddy and I had a rehearsal on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning rehearsed the court room scene with Lance Harding, April Tromontana and Jospeh L Murray and Fanshen. Went really well. I love work with the actors and seeing the story realise itself!



Next problem - strippers. Karl from the SAG office was extremely helpful and wrang round a host of actresses assuring them of my credntials and that the film would not be exploitative in any way. So four girls agreed to work on the film though just a few hours ago one of the girls dropped out.

Also found a great Bruce in Ron and an Assistant in Deena.



Locations - well La Monde secured DWP and The club in Los Feliz. Next problems - Steve and Abby's appartments. By Thursday we still had not locked down the locations. We thought we were high and dry with Steve's appartment as Fanshen allowed us to film at her place, but this was subsequently vetoed. Nick Quinn enquired about his flat but again not allowed by AFI. So by Thursday we were still two locations short. La Monde juggled the budget, called in some favours and we are now set.

Oh forgot to mention that on Tuesday we had our sign off production meeting with Betsy and Claire. It went realtively smoothly though she did say we would never make our daily number of set ups - so we are now rising to the challenge! Also she was worried that we didn't have a production designer.

At the last minute Andrew Hines stepped in and has done an amazing job in an extremely short space of time! Very impressive.

So shot list finalised. Final rehearsals with Fanshen, Rob and John and we are off tomorrow morning.



Only thing I can think of is a quote by Carl Von Clausewitz 'no plan survives contact with the enemy'

Jim Hosney and Halloween

Wednesday was Halloween and boy is it a big thing here. HAve of LA was dressed up for the day. The photo below was taken in the whole foods on Santa Monica in West Hollywood!



In the evening Jim Hosney showed 'Rosemary's Baby' - what a great film! In essence the first gynaecological horror film! Jim discussed the evolution of the horror film along with certain specific facts about the film. One being that Mia Farrow was married to Frank Sinatra at the start and was served divorce papers at the end!

Horror - its what we try to get away from all our live - Boris Karloff

Horror is more effective in a movie theatre.

OK so the other reason for this single entry.

Jim took a look at 'What Does Your Daddy Do?' and he was full of praise and impressed that a short film could be so disturbing and yet enlightening. It was a success and certainly deserves being developped into a feature film. I was rather giddy with his strong praise - I was delighted.

Update - classes and screenings

OK so there have been a number of narrative workshop classes and my tardy blogging has meant that I have been a little less than diligent recording all the comments etc. So will see what I can remember.

Brett Comden's team - the story centred round an anti-social man who was obsessed with photography. One day he spies a woman with whom he becomes infatuated with. He follows her and starts taking photos. From a neighbour hood watch man he learns that there is a 'sexual deviant' in the area. He becomes alarmed when he sees a drunken man banging on her door. He climbs up to her room to warn her and falls through the window and they fall in love. The film wasn't well received, though it had moments it was unrealistic and the acting weak.

Clay Reed's team. A waitress falls in love with an artist only to learn that he is a thief. Stong piece with good performance and well realised. Overall the team worked extremely well together and it felt good. Jonathan the scriptwriter is also an awesome artist!

OK so next day we saw Alex and Sara's film. Which centre on a bitter rich old lady whose husband was straped to a life-supprot machine.She discovers he had an illigitimate son who wants a share in his fortune. Rather than give him the money she unplugs the life-support machine leaving all the money to the Richard Nixon library. It was a fun script though variable in tone, but the execution didn't work for me. Frank Pierson was rather fond of the piece reminding him of Alfred Hitchcock presents - though again he found problems with the production.

Silvia's team presented the 'Boob Tale' a comedy about a girl who wants bigger breasts. It proved a riot with the audience bursting out in laughter. Frank was lost for words! It worked, the tone, performance held the story together. Silvia had come up to me a couple of days before worried that nobody would talk to her after the screening. How wrong she could be!

OK so what else. Rob Spera Class. We are building on the Meisner technique and a couple more people directed scenes.




In fact another double bill of Rob Spera. Friday we had the second class and so I was chosen to be one of the actors for both Kyle and Dave Herman. It was a lot of fun.