New Mexico

We're currently about to go to bed as we all spend the night here in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. (which we just found out was named after a game show)

This is at White Sands National Park.

Lots of fun has been had such as spending all day in the desert, eating good meals, having good conversation, jumping off of sand dunes, and poking HUGE spiders. All the while we have been having Time Closet convos here and there and although tired, are ready to get back to shooting. As far as I know, we have about a 65-70% chunk of the movie finished. There are bugs EVERYWHERE.

Production Diary 3

We were rained out for a little while today. But we still finished everything we were supposed to finish. Except for one scene.

Next week we'll be taking a production break/vacation to New Mexico where, at some point, we'll be watching Facing the Giants. We'll let you know how much fun we're having while we're there.

It's Become A Drug

In the process of shooting this movie, one of the most prevalent recurrences has been the way Jeff has chosen to respond to people who opt to use sarcasm for any form of self-expression. Jeff will stop what he's doing, look you in the eye, and with a face straighter than light, correct you or question you as if you were speaking literally.
I pulled up GarageBand today and happened to find the first half of our table reading we did back in May. I forgot we recorded this. I dropped the cursor to a random point in the timeline and hit play, and discovered that we had plenty of warning ahead of time for this crap:

Production Diary 2

Production Diary 1

David Kiern is graciously and beautifully shooting and editing this behind the scenes stuff for us. It's just another effective tactic in keeping our ego's as high as possible throughout the shoot.

It's Dinosaurs.

Last night we shot outside. At night.
We pulled off a ridiculously cool steadicam shot. Not bad for the very first exterior night shot in our entire lives.
Kristen shot her first scenes (yep, there's actually a girl in this one, and she's really good).
Arley repeatedly placed large pots of plants in Tyler's designated path for previously mentioned steadicam shot.
Jeff took his shirt off.
Darren officially put "Murder, She Wrote" into the movie.
Lauren Smith brought us Rice Krispy Treats and Brownies.
My parents let us turn their AC off for half an hour, and somehow lived.
Tyler revealed to me that the To-Do List written on his character's arm throughout the movie has included the term, "It's Dinosaurs," in every scene shot so far.

We finished our first week of shooting.

Apparently, it was awkward photo night for everyone. Jeff wasn't wearing a shirt, Kristin gave quite the seducing pose, and Darren... Well Darren was just being himself. 11 new photos are up on my flickr.

almost a full week!

So we are entering into day 5 of shooting and it has been BUSY so far. The footage looks great and all the actors are delivering very well. Today was a little bit flustering because we were supposed to shoot ALL outdoors and it ended up raining so we had to completely change everything that we were doing and for a lot of things go off the cuff. I love this picture of Tyler, Seth and I because it basically summed up what went on that day: Tyler wore a collared shirt and didn't feel very well, Seth is hunched over planning on what is going to happen and wondering about the reason that something isn't working and I am carrying hot equipment with gloves on whilst purposely annoying Tyler.

I'm looking forward to a few things in the next few days.....
- Shooting some of the inserts with Daniel Hassell
- Kristen's first day
- the outside, glidecam scenes
- hopefully seeing some of the footage cut up

ONWARDS!

Sorry I had to bail early today, that pizza pasta wasn't mixing too well. I hope we're shooting tomorrow night cause I'm ready for some diversity in my photos. Aren't you? 10 new shots total up on my flickr (see sidebar).

Mas!

Another great day of shooting! I'm really impressed with how much we are accomplishing each day. Given our history in speedy filmmaking. Pray for no rain!

WHOA!

oh man, look at this blog!

What Kind Of Day Has It Been

You may find here that none of the posts have included more than about eight and a half actual words. It's because everyone involved has gotten home the past two nights and checked to see if they were still alive. Except Clint. He's got actual stamina and energy, whereas I fed all of mine to a dog or something over the past 2 days.
Day 1 started for me in the ER. My son has Croup, and we found that out when he woke us up at 11:30pm barking like a dog. His barking turned out to be his attempt at breathing, and so we were at the ER until about 3:30am. (He's doing great, though, as seen here with Uncle Ben and Uncle Darren:)

The rest of day 1 was a completely divine work of art. We shot four (FANTASTIC) scenes and got out on time. I came home incredibly fulfilled, but also incredibly worried that everything was going to fall apart at any minute. Because, you know, I just have to think that way.

Day 2 wasn't the debacle I expected it to be, but it wasn't the best day I've ever had in my entire life. We got off to a slow start and never seemed to get our engine running. Honestly it felt like we were still running off Day 1's fuel, chugging toxic fumes essentially. We were also filming a lot of inserts of stoplights, which, I'm convinced, are incapable of delivering a satsifying level of onscreen energy, no matter what lens you use. They just sit there and shine on cars, guiding traffic, a bunch of uninspiring sons of b's. It also felt like we were underprepared and understaffed. My theory is that it's because we were underprepared and understaffed.
And yet after all the fumes and untalented stoplights, I came home, strangely enough, feeling more fulfilled than I did on Day 1, more excited to take on tomorrow, to point at things and frame things with my hand, to rig heavy cameras and spring-loaded arms to Jeff and push Ben down the stairs and instruct Tyler to choke Darren, and then to make everyone do all of this a minimum of twelve times. I can't wait to get up tomorrow and go to work on Day 3.
As long as my arms and legs don't fall off first.

Short day for me, but still got 26 quality photos out of it. All 26 are up on my flickr.








Lookin' forward to day three!

Photos Galore

Ok, so I've got way too many photos to put on this blog. So I'm putting some here, more on my personal photoblog, and all of them are available on my flickr page (which I have links to on my facebook and my blog).








See ya'll tomorrow!

These shots are from November 2004. We were filming Suburban Tumbleweed back then and it was cold, miserable and fun. I have the feeling this film shoot will be hot, miserable, and even more fun.

I just want to say that I'm very excited to be working with you guys on this. Onset photography is something that I've been giving considerable thought, as of late, and working on this project will only help me out with my personal portfolio.

I'm going to have watermarks on all the photos that I put on the blog; but once production is all said and done, I'll have copies for everyone without watermarks.

yes.

well, if there's one thing we have....


...it's credibility.

Looking forward to it!

Thoughts for Posts

Catherine makes another point in an argument with Caleb.

This is going to be great. I was telling Seth that we need a place to go and be encouraged about the work that we are doing. So, this is the place! If you ever take pictures or have any cool thoughts about the shoot, I hope you'll get on here and post them. It only takes a few moments and it's great for morale to be able to see how awesome we look in pictures.


I thought I would include a picture of Seth and I on set of our first full-length film. It was called Trampoline and it had nothing to do with trampolines. We were in the back of his mom's van, trying to make it look like a van that spies would use. I still think we did an okay job with the resources we had. Anyway, it's one of my favorite pictures because I think it does a great job representing that period of our lives. I still have the picture and I find it oddly inspiring. So, I hope that this site will be something that we will all look back on and be inspired by.

Even if we hate each other in the future. Here's to a good shoot!

"Our hearts are too big for our bodies" - Abraham Lincoln

Hoo-Wa

I'm really only typing this specific post to fill up some space on the blog before I invite everyone else to it.
Hopefully, you can plan on seeing up-to-date pictures and stories and status updates from the shoot on this blog over the next 3 weeks and beyond.
Pray for us as we embark on this thing. Pray that we make a great movie, that we do it without breaking or damaging anything, that we keep our jobs and our wallets in tact, that we have the most fun we've ever had shooting anything and that we make something that's truly an accomplishment for all of us involved. But most importantly that it glorifies God. That could happen in a thousand different ways and I pray that it happens in as many of them as possible.