Swordplay

Reed Papadopoulos is no stranger to me. In a way, I’ve known him for years, and so when Vaughn needed to give him a breath of life, we went to the source—Gint, of course.

The similarities between Reed and Gint are numerous. Gint injured both his arms fighting in a medieval combat sport tournament—so did Reed. Both have scars from the resulting surgery. Both wear the same green tunic. And both know the significance of lemons and cloves, baby.

So we raided Gint’s armory. Weapons, helmets, plate mail—he has it all, and we posted pics for Vaughn and Rob to review. Rob took what he needed, which was a lot--he was using the props and costumes for various locations.

When Gint showed up at my house the day of filming, I wasn’t sure what would happen when he and Reed met up. Would one of them disappear? Like Superman and Clark Kent, I wasn’t sure which was the guy from Krypton and which was the mild-mannered reporter. You never see them at the same time. But neither disappeared, and in fact they were happy to see each other since it had been a while.

They worked on a couple of moves with some foam swords. Santino joined in since he knows his way around a weapon. Cute but scary—I stayed out of the way.

Later in the evening, Reed went to Gint’s house to try on the armor and take a few swipes at the pell, which is a striking target. In the end, I was able to tell Reed and Gint apart, but they are still like brothers of the sword.

I think we can do better, part 1

I had read the script a few weeks after Vaughn wrote it. I loved it. Quirky characters on a road trip who happen to save the world. You don't see that often. He talked about getting some "friends" of his as producers on the project to finance it, and I thought "OK, this script is definitely doable on an extremely low budget."

Fast-forward 5 months - The producers hadn't raised a dime, the SAG contract would cost $20,000 just to start it, and Vaughn said the producers wanted to wait 6 more months, which often turns into 6 years. So, Vaughn says "I am not waiting for these producers, I can do it myself, without SAG actors and I can shoot it in my 2 room apartment with no dough!" Realistic? Somewhat. Dramatic? Definitely! AWESOME! I think we can do better and I am on board.

What was I thinking? I've done many projects for people for free in the past and promised myself never again. This time not only was it free, but I would use my own funds, becoming a producer with Vaughn. I would be making a movie I love and believe in; maybe not a bad move. I love the indie film world, film making, and applying my craft: production design. Little did I know at that time, what kind of film we would end up with. SUPERB.

As mid-December approached, our actors fell into place. At a meeting, Vaughn and I were talking and into the office walks a guy who looks exactly like our main character. He is an actor, and we cast him right there and then. From the time I was committed, the project always felt to me that things fell into place. Even if our plans fell apart, I always said to Vaughn, "It's for the best" or "something better will rise from the setback." We had a table read for the cast and I was pumped up.

End of Part 1.

Vaughn wants to do what???

Rob and I were able to read the script for "Night of the Alien" back when Vaughn seemed to be pumping out a script a minute. They were all great, but that one stood out as truly unique. We loved it. Later, we heard that he was going to get it made and that he had some producers on board. Great! I don't remember how much later, but Rob met with Vaughn, and when he came back, said that the producers had backed out, and Vaughn planned to shoot the movie in his bedroom if need be. "Vaughn wants to do what??" Rob said we could do better. At first I was horrified at the thought of making a movie with zero money. How many projects had we done thus far for free or next to free? Hadn't we said we were not doing any more FREE projects?? But the more I thought about it, and the more time went by, more and more people were on board and it seemed like a doable thing.

Casting had started, consisting of many of Vaughn's friends. Rob went to a table read and thought they were great. Our mutual friend Neil, the brilliant DP was on board and Rob would be production designing and producing, along with Vaughn. We had an initial meet and greet and the incomparable Shakey's Pizza in West Hollywood. We met a lot of the actors and other awesome people who were ready and willing to "throw down" for the good of the project. Rob and I tried to collect people's availability, so we'd know how best to schedule things. We felt good, leaving that evening.

We spoke to our friend who is a veteran First AD. He liked the script and had offered to help, but had to back out in the end, due to another project. He did, however, give us a template for a schedule. If we were going to do this thing, we had to do it right! Not only did we need a daily shoot schedule to keep track of all the scenes and characters and locations, but we were making a movie here! Money or no money, it was a bonafide movie and we needed to treat it as such. We made a contact list, e-mail list, call sheet and schedule. This movie was coming together. Our friend who is a prop master, and who conveniently had recently worked on a bong-heavy movie was willing to loan us a bunch of props. We met him at his trailer and collected bongs of various sizes, fake guns, fake weed, fake money, rings, rolling papers, etc. We were on our way. We rented a few Renn Faire things from a local prop house, where we got a great deal. This was a real movie, afterall. We couldn't forget that. Luckily, Rob had just come off of big movie job, so he had a bit of money at his disposal, which he used here and there to pay for things. We got a great deal at our big location, where we ended up shooting 5 days. And though money was extremely tight, a movie wouldn't be a movie without craft service! Though we often were hitting up Trader Joe's close to their closing time, and fully exhausted at the end of a shoot day, we had to have breakfast items, snacks and drinks and a ton of coffee on board each day. Keeping up crew morale on a movie where no one was making any money was of the utmost importance.

Things went along. We started shooting before Christmas and got a lot done, but had to come back after the holidays to get the rest. Scheduling became harder for some, but we made it work. Any road block or obstacle we encountered, though they may have been frustrating, we tried to think of it as having happened for a reason. Something else was going to happen that would lead us in a different direction, which most often was better than the first plan.

I mostly handled props and craft service on a daily basis. I had to keep the food on the table stocked and drinks readily available. We went through pots of coffee like it was the only thing there keeping us going. Also, partway through the day, I'd have to work on the schedule for the next day, with an advance schedule of the upcoming days. That was often hard or impossible to do alone, since call times and scenes to be shot needed to be discussed with Vaughn, Rob and Neil.

The shooting was fun, but days were long. I got sick in the second half, after the holiday break. The longest day we had, I had to leave early, since I was just so sick. I could hardly breath and was not an asset at all. I felt awful leaving that night at 10PM (yes, 10PM was leaving early), knowing that they'd be there many hours later, to finish shooting, and to wrap out of that location for the last time. Rob got home at 4AM and I was so glad to hear everyone stuck around to help wrap.

Now that shooting is done, post production is well underway and things keep moving along. It's great to continue being a part of this miraculous production of such a truly unique film. Onward and upward. I am so happy that Sundance has started a new category for their festival, called Next. They allow 8 movies in the under $50K category. It's non-competitive, but could definitely allow us some buzz.

LAST DAY of SHOOTING STUFF

Mid-way thought posting it becomes clear. GOTTA SHOOT SOME MORE STUFF.

Could today be that day? Lets hope.

Early afternoon starts with a Set General and Raz pow wow about making a shot list. Raz has been compositing and we need more plates, especially for the frontal shots of the van. The General and Raz look at stuff, make a list, and off we go:

To Santa Clarita to shoot plates. Turn off onto a country road. The General gets in back, with all the math in his head for getting just the right shots needed along this stretch of road, inclusive of going the right speed. He shots right, left, straight ahead. Then:

More plates on the 14 & 5 freeways, staying in the left-ist of lanes for the greatest of depth. Then:

More plates on the road to nowhere in Burbank, took like forever to find, but is the road to nowhere. A little desert town in Burbank? Who’d a thought?

Wait for dusk. Then:

Shoot MORE plates in Eagle Rock, need a funky town look? Eagle Rock is pretty funky. Then:

Meet the Deals at Gina’s to get a newly needed establishing shot. One of the actors in this teeny-tiny scene is out of town so good ‘ol Gint is there to double. Ironically the costume said character’s been wearing in the movie actually belongs to Gint. The scene is wide, at night, so no one will hardly be be able to tell.

As per usual, we don’t have enough lights, so the General has Gina turn her car in the scene’s direction, turn on the cars lights, and Wha-la... scene is lit.

Grab another establishing shot in this same location. Then:

The General heads to East Hollywood for the last(WE HOPE) shot of the flick, conveniently the location is right by where another movie the General also shot is screening.

SHOOT RECAP - audio

Production audio consisted of a 442 mixer and mish mash of sennheiser lavs and boom, which had a fuller sound, but picked up all kinds of extra stuff that could be isolated by the lavs... long as the actors had ‘quiet’ clothing.

The sound department was expertly handled by the Jones family. THE WHOLE JONES FAMILY... Kelly, Suzan, Zeke, and Dekland, who(and don’t let the ages fool ya) both have work permits.

For the first day of shooting we used a boom and another sennheiser mounted on the camera. The boom sounded pretty good, but the mounted mic sounded horrible. So:

On the second day we used just the boom. 

Same for days 3 - 5.... NOT too fun for Kelly, who thus far was pretty much a one man gang except when he was shooting then Suzan was a one girl gang, so during the forced break:

Kelly borrows five lavs and we stop using the boom, until:

The mother of all scenes, where up to eleven actors all had lines in the same scene, for that we used all the lavs and boom. Then:

Another forced break, we lost all the laves so borrowed one from Raz to go along with Kelly’s. This is how we shot all the green screen scenes.

Last couple days it was back to using two lavs and a boom.

Over all we got very good production sound on a budget of space air.

photos by Suzan Jones

Character interlude

Meet Reed Papadopoulos

ASCENT INTO MADNESS

So Vaughn and I are at lunch one day and he tells me about this crazy idea he has for a script. Two friends on a road trip who meet and alien who wants to get on American idol. Okay....hmmm....sounds interesting....funny....are you taking any drugs I don't know about?...tell me more! We were walking on the street behind Aroma coffee in the Valley when he tells me this. One block away from where Robert Blake shot his wife, not that theirs the least bit of significance there, just trying to give you a picture. At this point Vaughn was fed up with trying to do something "studio" and he wanted to let the guns blaze and have some fun. We had been talking about this at great lengths in the days/weeks/months leading up to this. (Vaughn can talk, and so can I). He wanted to do something Beppo-ish, referring to his short "Beppo the Clown", and I couldn't agree more. If you haven't seen Beppo, you should. Its about a future where well-to-do people have their own personal clowns to entertain them, and it's pretty awesome. (Especially the two flamboyant flamer fellas, one being played by the hilarious Scott Ward and the other by some other awesome guy... ) Anyway, so we were discussing ideas for things we could shoot ourselves, and he tells me about this idea he has. It's about a couple of fringe folks who pick up a hitchhiking alien in the desert, whom they assume is just some lonely soul who got lost in the desert after a rave. They then encounter a few more oddballs who do a lot of drugs, shoot guns and play rock and roll really poorly. The alien has an amulet that can end the world, and he (he was a man at this point) wants the start a band to compete on American Idol, in order to spread his message of love and acceptance. He tells me it would be self contained and easy to shoot, most of it either taking place in the van or at the shack in the desert where the weirdos hang. Then he tells me he most likely has the van already secured. Okay???

We meet up and talk about the idea a few more times. Actually VV just rambles wildly over the course of a few hours and I nod. Maybe two weeks later he tells me to come over and do a table read of his new script, tentatively entitled Night of the Alien. Really? Already? Did an alien visit you at night and mind meld it to you??? So we do the reading, and its just the two of us doing all the characters at this point, or it may have been Gene Charles with us too, not sure. He was definitely there for one of the early ones. Now, its hard to digest something when you're reading it aloud for the first time, especially while acting out 28 different parts, but I remember liking it VERY much right away. It was wild and full of energy, jumping all over the place in time, just like the characters it was chronicling. While I was doing my reading, one of the characters I was doing really stuck with them, and I was locked in from that point on. I guess it was destiny. "Lemons and cloves..."

So we did a few more reads, adding people as we went, and the script got better and better. I have to say that it is now my favorite, or second favorite script VV has written, at least of the ones I have read anyway. The nutty thing is, now that its shot and in the edit room, the finished product is something entirely different. Just as crazy, just as funny, just different. Its crazy how the actual movie making process and a bunch of actors playing the characters will do that. Not to get too ahead of myself. So, everyone loves it and after one of the table reads, Vaughn tells me we are going to shoot it by the end of the year. Its now probably July and he says were going to shoot before New Years. Okay??? How??? Remember that the script seemed to fly out of him overnight. A couple of days later, and as if on cue, two members of Vaughn's posse step up and offer to produce. They start doing the legwork a producer must do, scheduling and paperwork, but get stuck somewhere in the middle of asking people for money and dealing with the Screen Actors Guild, which is one hell of a nasty bitch for anyone interested. At this point VV decides to take matters into his own hands. Hell bent on shooting by the end of the year, he gently parts ways with his producing friends, for the time being we hope, and begins to work on producing things himself. Okay? Don't we need money to shoot? And a crew maybe? Just asking... He tells me he wants to use Neil Lisk as our DP, but Neil is expensive, and since we have no money, this probably wont happen. Then, a few days later, as if the aliens came to him again in a recurring-abduction-nightmare-probing-mind meld sort of way, he tells me Neil is on board and willing to shoot for FREE, if we do it over the Holiday when he's not working. It is now October by the way. Just two short months from our start date. No biggie. Their are only a few little things left to do like finding money, a crew, locations and about 20 actors!!!

From that point on the rest is a blur. Rob and Pia Deal are there doing a ton of heavy lifting. Actors are being recommended and cast, then bailing at the last minute. Were shooting. People I recommended are showing up 4 hours late for shooting. I'm picking up lunch for 30 people at an El Pollo Loco in the barrio....and voila!!! The film is suddenly being edited and were talking about posters and log lines.

It's crazy what one madman can get a bunch of other maniacs to do if he's mad enough. I'm sure I'll probably wake up tomorrow with Vaughn telling me we won Sundance or he sold it to Fox Searchlight. Until then, I'll just keep being amazed.