Day 8 of Matthew Lillard's FAT KID RULES THE WORLD

There's something strange about life on location.

When you shoot a film, you never shoot it in order. The chief reason being that it's never easy to load in and out of a location and location moves themselves are time consuming and costly, so you want to shoot all of the scenes that require a specific location all at once. Makes sense, right?

So what ends up happening when you've got a location that's in the film a lot is that you spend a lot of time there. And after a couple of days, a sense of belonging starts to settle in. The location becomes the production's home, for lack of a better word. You get used to the place. You get to know the neighborhood (and the neighbors. And you even unpack, sort of.

And this happens really quickly. Like in a day.



But then, eventually you have to move on to another location, and it just isn't the same. The rhythm is all different. Everything is in the wrong place. You can't find the bathroom. And where the fuck did craft services go?

Sometimes you can't even find the new location. Or, at least the road that leads to it. (Yes, I got lost.)

But I found it. Today we're filming in a abandoned wing of a hospital. I find hospitals weird enough by themselves, but an abandoned one? Creepy. There's all sorts of stuff in the rooms that's at the same time fascinating and off-putting.



We're shooting a couple of scenes using the hallways. A hallway, by definition, doesn't have a whole lot of room to set up lights. You can change out the halogen bulbs in the overhead light and you've got a little bit of room in doorways and whatnot, but there's not a ton you can do.



But logistically, the big challenge comes in coordinating extras. Sure, you don't necessarily need extras, but an empty hallway means something completely different from one with doctors and nurses wandering around, doing their thing. And that wandering takes coordination. That falls to Allison Eckert, our AD.



It basically works like this: Allison is standing behind the camera (and video village) on the walkie. There's extras in a couple of the rooms, and some of those rooms have PAs in them who are also on walkies. Down at the very end of the hall, there's a little alcove where we've hidden a light and more PAs. Also, me.

On action, Allison directs the PAs to cue the extras. One extra will have instructions to walk from room 5 to room 8. Another will walk down the hall half-way and pause to look at the chart outside a patient's room. Allison will whisper "go Lucas" into the walkie. I point to the extras and they do their thing. You get the idea.

On the scale of things we've done while I've been on this film, it's really pretty simple. There's a bunch of extras, which is always a little tricky, and it's a location move to a new place, but other than that, there's nothing crazy going on.



But, then again, I'm not there for the whole day. Tomorrow I fly from Seattle to Newcastle upon Tyne, over ye olde Atlantic Ocean and today's shoot goes pretty late. Not to mention I've got to get my car to Phil Seneker's house a half hour outside of the city and I don't want to be that guy who shows up at 2am. In reality, I wasn't even supposed to be on set today, but when I realized I could work in half a day, it was an easy decision. More content is better than less, right?

I make the rounds and say my goodbyes. Jacob Wysocki jokingly asks if we'll ever see each other again. The way the indie film community works these days, it's a pretty safe bet.



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Day 7 of Matthew Lillard's FAT KID RULES THE WORLD

It's 1am and I'm sitting by myself on the sidewalk at the corner of 3rd Avenue & Seneca Street, 4 blocks from set. The battery on my phone died an hour ago, I really could use a jacket, and I think someone was supposed to bring me lunch at some point.

I've been here almost 3 hours.

Why? Because there's a light here--a 9 bank pointing straight up at the building across the street--and you can't exactly leave expensive stuff unattended on the corner of 3rd & Seneca while drunk assholes and trannys and drunk trannys mill about. Not if you want it to be there when you get back.

Someone has to babysit it. And right now, that someone is me.



And let's be honest: it's a shitty job. It's boring and you're far, far away from the action (unless you count the activity on the street). It's easy to start thinking what a bullshit deal this is, because no one wants to do it and there's not much else to do except think about how bored you are.



But then you realize what an egotistic way of thinking that is. You aren't that important. You're there to help in any way possible, be an extra set of hands for a production wherever needed. Sometimes that involves using a rope to help pull a light up the side of a building. And sometimes that involves sitting on a sandbag and freezing your ass off. Neither of those things is inherently more helpful than the other, but one of them is cool. And so what if it's keeping you from doing other, more fun things? That would just mean that one of the regular G&E guys would have to be doing this and couldn't be doing something more important.

So you bite your tongue and suck it up like a motherfucking adult. It's only for 3 hours and then Art comes back and you can get some food and charge your phone and put on a jacket.



And it's not like you've had such a terrible day. The film is shooting all day in a parking garage and you've been on roof duty all day. That involves helping the grips every so often, and helping set up craft services and making sure people don't park on the roof, since we've only got clearance to block off a couple of levels of the garage.

There's something strange about being on the roof of a parking garage, listening on the walkie talkies to the commotion below. There's extra wrangling, which means there's never enough extras and keeping track of them is kind of like herding cats, especially when there's scenes down on the street. There's PA's blocking off street corners to pedestrian traffic and from the roof it sounds like absolute chaos. People are yelling things like "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT 2ND AVENUE!!", but then when you go over to 2nd Avenue and look down, it looks totally calm and serene, which kills the entertainment value, so fuck that.



In reality, they're probably just yelling because the traffic noise is really loud, but what fun is that? From the roof, it's like listening to a great old time radio show. Down there, it probably isn't nearly as cool.

As the sun goes down, the production starts to move up the parking garage, until finally we're on the roof for the big scene that's kind of spoiler-ish. But it's a cool scene with dozens of extras and lots of vehicles and moving parts. There's a lot going on.

Which is why it sucks to be 4 blocks away, sitting on a sandbag.



By the time I get back to set, things are in full swing. It's really dark and everyone is running around, which gives me ample opportunity to take photos. I find Billy Campbell sitting in a car among all this, reading a copy of AMERICAN GODS. There's a lot going on. Like, a lot. You help out where you can, but it's hard to even figure out what needs to be done. It's dark and a lot of people and things are in silhouette and often you don't even realize that the person you're looking for is 5 feet away.

I take a lot of pictures.









We shoot the big finale of the scene, which looks big and epic in person. On a monitor, over Matthew Lillard's shoulder, you can see that it'll be more so on screen.

You can see the buildings we lit, so none of that time on the street corner is wasted, which is always a good feeling.



Near the end of the shoot, I spot Matt sitting against a wall, looking over his shot list. It's a nice photo, so I try and sneak over to get a good shot. He holds the shot list so it catches more of the light.

"I see you, Lucas," he says, not moving his head.
"And yet you hold still. A pro."
He motions to the shot list. "I see you. And yet I'm giving you fill."



Then Art calls on the walkie. There's some shady characters milling around. So I head back down to be a criminal deterrent. Sunrise is fast approaching, so we wait for a half hour or so and then start breaking everything down.

Back at the garage, everyone is breaking down the equipment. Jeremy helps out for a few minutes. Matt pitches in, grabbing what the grips will let him handle and getting it in the truck before someone drags him away.



He's excited. It's a big set piece of the film out of the way. And it looks like they got what they needed. He wants to do everything he can to get his film made. And I love that. It's that same spirit and enthusiasm that drives someone to make a tiny little DIY film with a crew of three, just here writ large. Because dammit, that's what got most of us excited about making films in the first place.

You hope it never goes away.



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Day 6 of Matthew Lillard's FAT KID RULES THE WORLD

Yesterday, there was a car parked on the street near craft services. In and of itself, this is not unusual. Craft services is on the sidewalk and we're shooting in a neighborhood. Still, we have "No Parking" signs and all of the cars on the street are supposed to belong to the production.



But this one…well…this one stands out.

It's not in anything approaching good shape. The trunk is totally gone. The seats are nearly gone, and it's been painted God knows how many times. Also, I think there's stuff glued to it. It probably shouldn't be parked there.

Except it's in the movie.

It's an Art Car, which means exactly what you think it does. And where does one find an Art Car? At church (where else?).



The story (if I'm remembering it correctly) is that our Production Supervisor Jim Charleston spotted the car in a church parking lot and knowing the film needed a picture car for some punk rock characters, tracked down the owner. Simple as that. Sometimes the Art Department and Props go to great lengths to create something unique and sometimes you find it in the parking lot of a church. You never know with these things.

In the story the car belongs to Michael Freiburger and Ian Lesage, two punk rock non-actors who show up to pick up Jacob Wysocki and Matt O'Leary's characters. Where the production found them, I have no idea, but they're pretty much perfect. They show up in their own clothes (which are better than whatever we would have given them), ready to go. And they've brought their own chess set to play in-between takes. Why a chess set? Because fuck you and your stereotypes, that's why a chess set.

I'm projecting that last part, but the chess set is real.



But they're still non-actors, and non-actors carry with them a lot more risk than actors do. The reasons are often obvious, a non-actor can be flat-out terrible or just become really aware of where the camera is, taking a person that looked authentic in pre-production and turning them into something completely different on camera. That's where it really helps to have an actor-turned-director at the helm. A director like Matthew Lillard will have a better idea of how to pull a performance out of a non-actor than, say, someone who started as a writer. They have a more intimate knowledge of the process and, therefore, a better idea of what's going through that person's head.



So it's interesting to watch how Matt's approach changes. Like most good directors, his approach changes from actor to actor. The way he talks to Jacob Wysocki is different from how he talks to Billy Campbell. But there's a shift with Michael and Ian. He spends less time trying to get in their heads and more time trying to make them comfortable. After all, you want them to be natural. There's no point in overcomplicating things.



All week we've drawn interest from the neighborhood, but now we're filming outside with big lights on at night. Out come the lawn chairs. Out come the kids. Someone gives them a quick primer on the importance of being quiet while the camera is rolling and Matt takes time between takes to run over, sign autographs and take pictures.



Jim Charleston says it best (I'm paraphrasing): "We want to be good neighbors" and he's absolutely right. Basically we live here for X number of days and everything a production can reasonably do to keep their neighbors happy will pay dividends. And even if it doesn't, it's good karma. It's the right thing to do.



It's our final day at the location and except for the fact that whoever's driving the Art Car isn't so great at driving a stick and a couple of us have to push the car for every take, it goes smoothly. At hour 10 of production (around 11pm), the producers make a Starbucks run. Honestly, there are few things better on a film production than a coffee run at 11pm when you've been shooting outside for 10 hours.

Except, of course, for wrap beers. Nothing beats a wrap beer.


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Why @TheiPhotographr Represents the Future of Film Production

For every film I work on, there's usually a Twitter hashtag or account dedicated to the film (What if there's no hashtag or account? That's a red flag.) where people will post stuff that's going on. Some films it's just me posting and on some films (like FAVOR), the Twitter feed is pretty active. You'd think the Twitter activity on a film wouldn't have any correlation at all to the quality of the production, but it does. Maybe that's because you'd be a damned fool to be a filmmaker without a Twitter account, but there's something to it. FAT KID RULES THE WORLD is pretty active. There's @FatKidMovie, of course, and Matthew Lillard (@lillardmatthew), but also lead actor Jacob Wysocki (@JacobWysocki) and his movie dad Billy Campbell (@WOCampbell) have been tweeting regularly about the film.

And then there's @TheiPhotographr. For the longest time, I had no idea who @TheiPhotographr was. There's two people taking still photographs on set--myself and Gabe, one of the PAs. But I've seen Gabe's photos and the style doesn't match at all. It can't be him. For a while I thought maybe it was someone who was on set before I showed up, but then he/she kept posting photos from days I was there, like these:













Who doesn't love a good mystery?

Then I looked at the account a little closer and pieced it together. @TheiPhotographr was very likely Key Grip Patrick Barcroft. It made a lot of sense. They were the type of photos you could only get if you were right in the middle of the production, and a key grip would be that guy. Plus, they're really good photos.



But let's think about that for a minute. Here you've got a Key Grip (and, from what I can tell, a good one) who posts a production photo or two a day from your shoot. He's got followers (461, as I write this) who are going to get a very small, but very pretty window into your production. It's kind of like A Year Without Rent, without the risk of someone writing that your production is a clusterfuck. Basically, he's going to make you look good.



I think this is the future of production. Instead of being a rarity, people like Patrick are going to be the norm. You'll have a crew full of people sharing photos and thoughts from your production. They'll all bring their own built-in audiences along with them and it'll be the production's job to maximize that contribution. Some productions will clamp down and try to control it in the same way that corporations try and get their employees to toe a line, but the smart ones will give them free reign. Sure, they'll give parameters like "don't reveal the killer", but it won't be much more than that. And the productions will be better for it. They'll have an easier time of finding their audiences because the audience will come from the processes that get the film made in the first place.

Plus, they'll draw better crews.



There was a discussion on Twitter some time ago about whether or not directors let the social media following of actors influence casting decisions.

Of course it does.

It's more than that. Social media is going to influence your choice of a Key Grip and on down the line. Everything else being equal, would you rather have Patrick or someone with 10 followers on Twitter who hasn't posted in 6 months?



And it's not as simple as requiring people to post stuff on social media sites, like a lot of productions are doing now. That's a band-aid, and not a very good one. There's no really incentive to engage with people, which is the key benefit. The posts come off a perfunctory and they accomplish almost nothing other than looking desperate. You're better off having them do nothing.

Or, you hire someone like Patrick who already engages with an audience who likes and trusts him. Because someone like that won't just help you get your film made, but he'll help you get your film seen. And isn't that the point?



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Day 5 of Matthew Lillard's FAT KID RULES THE WORLD

I come from a basketball family. My Uncle Dale was a 3rd team Parade All-American and once beat Bill Russell at HORSE. My younger brother coaches at Medomak Valley High School and started for a team that lost one game in two years. I was a 4-time all-star guard. Or, to put it more cleanly: the men in my extended family have produced more state titles than children.

My ex-girlfriend used to call me "the Al Bundy of Maine".

So you can imagine my reaction when I realized we'd be spending most of the day filming on a basketball court.



But first, there's a bit of filming to do in the apartment. And for that I'm helping our old friend Dan load up a pickup truck with enough gear to cover whatever we might need--sandbags, c-stands, 12x12s, and so on. For a day exterior you aren't so much going to create light as you're going to control the existing light provided by "the Great Gaffer in the Sky". Either you're going to be bouncing it to fill in shadows or you're going to be keeping it from creating shadows. Direct sunlight is harsh and unforgiving. Cloud cover is better. But if you can't have clouds, you have to figure out ways to diffuse the light, and the sun can be a lot of light to diffuse.

Today is kind of sunny and kind of cloudy, which is a pain in the ass because you have to bring everything.



The truck loaded, we head over to the school where we'll be shooting, but we're early so we have to circle the block a couple of times (something about children being in the way). It turns out we're really early--too early, in fact--and can't set up anything for another twenty minutes. Out comes a soccer ball to kill time.



Even apart from the company move, it's a hectic day. We've got visitors. Kristin Kreuk from SMALLVILLE is here (one of our producers, Rick Rosenthal, directed several SMALLVILLE episodes). And then, for reasons I never did catch, Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet from LOST) is on set.

They're hard to miss because it's all anyone is talking about for at least a hour.

All the while, the actors are preparing for the basketball scene. It's a 3 person scene between Jacob Wysocki, Dylan Arnold, and Billy Campbell. I show Dylan how to spin a ball on his finger after he sees me doing it, and rebound a little while they warm up.



The scene involves the 3 of them shooting around, with some intentional misses in the script. After the first take several of us realize that we're probably running the risk of the camera being hit by a stray ball, so 2nd Assistant Camera Coty James stands on one side of the camera and I stand on the other for the express purpose of grabbing the ball before it does any damage to a pretty expensive piece of equipment.

As the scene progresses, I stay nearby, either grabbing rebounds to speed up the filming or guarding the camera. I even end up jamming my thumb, which brings back all sorts of high school basketball memories.



The clouds go away half-way through the day, so we bring over the 12x12 on a couple of these things to negate the sun. It's on wheels and, like anything on wheels, it can kind of get away from you once it picks up some momentum. I look up and I'm heading right for Elizabeth Mitchell, but thankfully she scampers out of the way when I yell "Points!".

Fuck. Can you imagine?

An old man decides to stand in the background and watch the filming, so Production Supervisor Jim Charleston gives him a newspaper so he'll at least look like he's doing something else (we have neither the manpower nor the permission to block off the entire area).



You can feel, in stretches, the relief of the crew to be shooting outside after so long in such a cramped environment. The impromptu soccer game has something to do with that, but just the ability to be able to spread out a little bit and get some sun is a nice change of pace. Matt, as usual, sets the tone. So what if he misses a bunch of free throws and loses a bet? Bill Russell missed some free throws. Just ask my uncle. I almost injured an actress who isn't even in the film. Nobody's perfect.




Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.