RISING STAR screening, Part 1

Marty Lang sits down with us minutes before the rough cut screening of his feature-length debut RISING STAR.

He's nervous.

Day 3 on Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER

One question I've been getting a lot (or, at least, has been asked a lot) is "what exactly do you do on these productions?". The thinking being that I'm sitting at craft services all day or something. I don't know. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to take you through a day that more or less summarized a lot of different aspect of what I end up doing.

10am: Last night was a late wrap, somewhere in the vicinity of 1:30am, so our call is noon-ish. But, there's stuff to do before the call, and I'm sleeping on a couch in the gathering room, so whenever someone gets up, I'm up. At minimum, I'm awake. Kim Fletcher, our makeup artist slash embedded reporter is working on an article and interviewing the one actor who's name I didn't catch. The little bit of footage I saw of him last night was impressive, though. I get up, pop open my laptop, and spend a few minutes editing footage and photos.

11am: Veronica Nickel, our intrepid producer, is off making sure the vehicle that went into a snowbank yesterday is able to 1) get out of the snowbank, and 2) function. So the making of breakfast falls to me. Never fear, I'm given pretty good instructions.



Noon: Everyone is up and fed. Stuff needs to go in vehicles and the crew needs to go to the houses and cabins from last night to load out for the next location. (No one really felt like doing that in the freezing rain the night before was a good idea). So we head to the location, then get in a 4-wheel drive pickup and head down through the field to the cabins by the water. We're all riding in the back, and Andreas starts tells a story about a bunch of Frenchmen. I whip out my camera.



1pm: The cabin is full to the gills with gear, so we move it out into the truck. It's 20 degrees out and the wind is whipping around at 30mph. The cabin isn't insulated. You can do the math. It all has to go--c stands, sandbags, flags, stingers, speed rails, space heaters, you name it. It takes a couple of trips in the pickup, and we have to walk up the hill to then unload the pickup into the production truck. The walk back up is an opportunity to get some pictures of the landscape.



2:30pm: The gear is loaded. And other than the icy patch where at least 3 of us fell, it goes off without much of a hitch. And then a U-Haul gets stuck trying to go uphill. I get the camera out and head down to help push, but they've got it un-stuck before I get there.

3pm: On the way to the new location, Steven Harris, the Art Director, asks me to help him wrap out the cabins. Sure, I say, that's why I'm here.

Steven has a bunch of pictures of the location and we go to work taking our props and such out of the cabins and replacing them with the original stuff. This time, we have a hatchback. How he got it down that field is beyond me.

However, he's brought in some fantastic props--old typewriters, rotary phones. I get the sense that he spends a lot of time at antique stores and yard sales, looking for that one perfect prop. He's managed to turn this cabin, which is generally used as a summer hang-out, into something like a monastic retreat, the sort of place you'd go for a month to finish your novel.



3:30pm: Each of the cabins has a metal bed frame and a mattress in it. Only, at some point the production decided to swap them. So the mattress in cabin A has to go in cabin b (about 200 yards away), and vice versa. We're literally feet from the ocean and the wind is a-gusting. The mattresses have no straps to hold on to. Somehow we get them switched.

4pm: No, scratch that. The pictures don't look right. Steven stands in a spot where he sort of kind of can get a signal (clearly he doesn't have AT&T) and calls Lisa Myers. The mattresses need to actually go up in the main house. Fuck.



5pm: The cabins are wrapped. We go to the main house and wrap that, which is significantly easier. Move a few things around. Sweep up. Hang some painting back up. Take out the trash.

6pm: We get to the new location, where they're deep into the day. They've saved us a plate of food, God bless them, and we get to take a break. I pull out my laptop and download the photos from my camera.

7pm: Kit, the AD, calls for me. They need a stand-in for Richard. I'm about his height, so I'm a stand-in while they point lights at me. Audition the apple box, the diffusion, etc. I talk to Patrick as he fiddles with gels. One of my favorite things to do on these sets is to watch the DP and the lighting crew figure out how they're going to light the scene. On this project I haven't read the script, so I've really got no idea what the scene is about, so it's interesting to try and guess based on what they're doing.

7:30pm: Richard comes in and I sit on a spare sand bag behind a wall. I talk to Richard a little bit about yesterday's water stunt. He does his scene and then he's wrapped. Applause all around. Richard goes around the room and personally thanks every crew member by name for all their help in making his job easier. It's a really classy move.

8pm: And that's a wrap for the location. Time to load out all the gear. I'm a grip again (or something). It's incredibly dark out and I'm not entirely sure where my headlamp is. Apparently we're done early, so the wrap out moves slightly slower than normal. Getting out early is really a blessing after yesterday, which was easily the hardest day of the shoot.

The location is a loft in a barn and the owner, an artist and tool aficionado (among many other things) shows up. She's thrilled to have a film crew in her space and spends a good 45 minutes talking to the crew, showing them her work. She's got wood working tools from the early 1800's. Also, she has a swing in the middle of her workspace. She's crazy, but in an awesome way. Before we leave, she takes us over to her desk, where above it she's got 2 calendars of scantily clad women with tools. The story is that this calendar alternates two photographers. One year a man does the photos and the next year a woman does. She goes through the calendar, telling us why she likes the woman's photography so much more than the man's. And she's absolutely right. She just keeps his calendar on the wall as a contrast.

10pm: We're done and on the way back to the hotel. Stuff needs to come out of the car. And then, I open a beer. Time to start editing the day's photos.

photos from the set of Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER

Day 2 on Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER

After today, I'm petitioning IMDb for a new category: door puller.

Imagine this scene: a shack/cabin roughly 400 square feet, steps from the ocean, has an entire film crew in it. Most of the room is in the shot, so everyone is huddled in a corner or going back and forth outside, where all the grip gear is under a tent, seeing as there's freezing rain outside. The cabin has a door on wheels which makes a squealing sound something between bad brakes and nails on a chalkboard. This door must stay closed, in order to keep what little heat there is inside. So someone must man the door, opening and closing it every few seconds as the crew shuttles back and forth.

Enter me: door puller.

It's a glamorous job, for sure. But, that's exactly the type of thing you need on a film set--someone who can do random stuff like that. Or, as Andrew said, "I've scouted this building a hundred times, and I never noticed how loud that door is". It's that sort of stuff that doesn't become apparent until you've got the room full of people.

Today started with snow, which led to one of the production vehicles in a snowbank (thankfully no one was hurt). Nothing kills the momentum of the day like a car going off the road. Not to mention the fact that within an hour it was the talk of the island and the island's one tow truck was on the mainland for some reason.

Then, it was really a day full of rain and snow and sleet and slush, the kind of rain that gets down to your bones so much so that you'd kill for a hot shower. Or even a warm shower.

We got to push at least 2 trucks out from spinning on ice, and recruited a local kid named Tyler to shuttle people back and forth from the holding area through the field to the set down by the water.

This is Day 13 and, man, it felt like it.

Oh, and we had to do a water stunt. In the ocean. In February. Tyler won't even go in the ocean in June. So you can imagine.

Day 1 of Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER

Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER is filming on the island of Vinalhaven. This is an important distinction. Getting to Vinalhaven requires a ferry ride of over an hour from Rockland, Maine. It only, of course, holds so many cars, so you have to wait in line and hope you can get on. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

It's enough of a hassle that having grown up very near Rockland, I don't think I've ever been to Vinalhaven in my life. Maybe once when I was little.

This has created a us vs. them mentality on the island, even more so than Maine's normal distaste of "people from away". Enough of one that before I got on the ferry, my mother told me to tell anyone who asked that I know the Crossman's, even though I don't. I do know some of their relatives.

I got the last ferry of the day and hit set late in the day. I know absolutely no one on this set, and everyone was pretty busy, so I didn't really have a chance to figure out what I could and could not film. Discretion being the better part of valor, I kept the camera in my bag.

People here have some idea that I'm doing "a project". Well, except for the guy who asked me if I'd ever been on a film set before.

Hopefully we can rectify that tomorrow. It's a shame too, because man we were in a cool-looking house.

Also, I have WiFi, but it's slower than dial-up.

Travel Day

Click to Play

Heading north for Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER

more photos from DREAM LOVER

You know how earlier you were wishing there was more photos you could look at? Well, here they are.

Running scared

Click to Play

The craziest part of this video? Mattson got permission to do this.

Day 2 of Mattson Tomlin's DREAM LOVER

20 February 2011



My call is for 10:30am, which isn't so bad. Sure we were on a soundstage until roughly midnight, trying to figure out the best way to build the "endless bed" (most of which the bed crew, led by Shane, did well before I showed up). The trick, at least last night, was that all the new sheets had the sort of hard creases that you get when you take them out of the package. How then, to best fix it? Would it even be noticeable? We decided it was easier to just wash them all, which added time to the evening, but seemed to work. Shane was up until well after 2am.

And Maria Rowene was in makeup at 6am, getting turned into a monster. Meagan Hester and Jason Milani, our makeup artists, have turned the lovely Maria into some sort of human-lizard hybrid that's creepy as hell.

Today, the set is closed for "monster sex", which is pretty much what you'd expect out of a scene with three people, only one of whom is a monster (and she's a middle school teacher in real life. Can you imagine if your middle school teacher was spending 6 hours in makeup to be a monster on the weekends?)

The tricky part, on my end, is how to document this scene in a PG-13 way while I help out with various bits of execution. It's a lot of angles, a lot of framing and using things as shields, and a lot of discretion. A LOT of discretion.

And, really, you haven't lived until you've had a conversation about cameras with an actor who's decided that any sort of, um, attempts at modesty weren't really accomplishing anything. It's distracting, you know? Eye contact is your friend.

Also today, we wrap our blood-soaked lady-in-white, Jenna D'Angelo, a real trooper of an actress. Look for her on a screen near you.

Editing RISING STAR

We've left DREAM LOVER behind (but we have more video on the way). But first, we're in Rhode Island, as Marty Lang and Alec Asten prep RISING STAR for a test screening tomorrow in Hartford.

Marty Lang's RISING STAR

Marty Lang and Alec Asten are hunkered down in the editing suite. The film screens tomorrow.

Meet Adam M. Griffith

The lead in DREAM LOVER is Adam M. Griffith, who was also in Mattson Tomlin's SOLOMON GRUNDY. Adam plays an older version of his character and, well, Mattson thought this might be fun.

Jenna & Maria

From the set of DREAM LOVER

Meet Jenna D'Angelo

Click to Play

We're going to try and introduce you to actors we meet along the way. Up first, DREAM LOVER's Jenna D'Angelo.

The DREAM LOVER Waltz

Click to Play

We've got dancers in crazy makeup, choreography galore, and some cool music (that's been in our heads for DAYS, by the way).

And now, director Mattson Tomlin is ready to kick things off.

19 February 2011

I signed on to do DREAM LOVER mostly sight unseen. Actually, I backed it on Kickstarter pretty much sight unseen. I was online as the campaign neared the end, and word got out that Mattson Tomlin's new project needed to raise $800 in the final hour or so. I did what I imagine lots of people do in the final hour of a Kickstarter campaign--I pitched in $5 without really knowing what I was backing (I know for a fact a number of people ended up backing A Year Without Rent in the exact same way).

Being a backer, I knew Mattson was looking to film at around the same time I was looking to start A Year Without Rent, so it made a lot of sense to make it the first project.

And really, it doesn't always matter what I'm helping out on. A talented filmmaker is a talented filmmaker. There's some filmmakers I'd volunteer to help film their kid's birthday party, if they asked. (But only if I was promised cake)

Long story short, that's how I ended up in Purchase, NY, on a college campus, volunteering on a short film that I thought was a feature.

I imagine that'll happen a lot on this trip.

DREAM LOVER is a short, directed by Mattson Tomlin (SOLOMON GRUNDY: BORN ON A MONDAY) and photographed by Filipp Kotsishevskiy. We're actually filming in the same building as BLACK SWAN, which at least for today is rather fitting, as we're on a stage with lots of dancers and female leads dressed in a black vs. white motif.

This is the biggest day of the production, as we started the day by applying some rather creepy makeup to a cadre of dancers. Beyond that, it's a pretty small crew: director, cinematographer, producer Nicole Favale, two grips, a sound operator, and the composer, who's playing back a temp version of the score for the dancers.

Well, he was. But he had to leave, so now I'm manning the iPod, which is how I'm able to write this during filming.

Tomorrow: more of DREAM LOVER. More dreaming. Fewer dancers. Or so I'm told.

Frozen toes

Click to Play

After 2 days in the studio, we're outside, taking advantage of the freshly-fallen snow. It's been too warm lately to actually shoot on a frozen lake, so we're using a pretty big clearing in a park. Jon and I are using this as an opportunity to not stand in the snow for a few minutes

How You Can Help

Today, we officially launch this crazy little project as we travel from our starting point in Midcoast Maine to Purchase, NY to work on Mattson Tomlin's DREAM LOVER. This is a massive project, and one question I've gotten a lot from people is "how can I help?" Specifically, "how can I help in my current situation of being broke?"

Turns out, there's lots of ways.

++ Follow our progress

This is kind of general, but the more "fans" of the project there are, the easier everything gets. So, find us on Facebook and follow the blog and everything. There will be a lot going on and there's strength in numbers.

++ Watch the videos with ads

This seems obvious, but apparently it isn't. The daily videos are going to run in a bunch of different places, but in some places they'll run with ads. We get money from those ads. Roughly $1900 per 100k views. Now that's a lot of views, but with a daily video over the course of the year, it ads up. So watch the videos. Or, hell, don't watch them, but just click play on your computer a bunch of times. Sure the ads are annoying, but they're helping pay for gas.

Start out with this one:


Was that so hard?

++ Got a couch?

A lot of people have volunteered their couches for when we hit town, which is fantastic. It saves us the cost of a hotel room and/or sleeping in a car. The easiest way to know if we need a couch is to follow @lmcnelly on Twitter (or, @YearWithoutRent). Twitter is far and away the quickest and easiest way for us to put out a call for help.

++ Engage

Let us know how we're doing. Give us tips on projects. Tell your friends. This project will only be as cool as the audience lets it be. Let's make it super fucking cool.

Lucas vs. UPS

Click to Play

The car is packed, ready to head south for New York, where our first project will be Mattson Tomlin's DREAM LOVER. Only, once again we're waiting for UPS to deliver something.

And Away We Go...

Tomorrow, I'll be in the car, heading south to work on Mattson Tomlin's DREAM LOVER.

He's been posting behind-the-scenes videos of pre-production. Here's the 4th one:

BTS- Dream Lover 004 from Mattson Tomlin on Vimeo.