So we finally got to use Kim Lannon in the movie! As I had mentioned earlier, I had pegged Kim Lannon as the hired, annoying girlfriend back on January 3rd. She had told everyone that she's gonna be in this indie movie and had sent a few people to this site. It's now August and all her buddies were going, "so when are you going to even be IN this epic production?" Well, it took 9 months of "we're getting closer..I swear!", but we did it. At least my theory of "Even if we're out of money, we can still shoot because we OWN the equipment" is sound. I'm basically out of money and we're still shooting! Note: there's money coming (from assorted jobs I've pulled), but it ain't here NOW.

Todays shoot was Amanda's party sequence number two. (Scenes 98 through 106) 6 pages of script to chew through. The scene starts with Johnny and Darleen (Kim Lannon) together at Amanda's party, Johnny starts talking about how one can buy a cow for only a hundred bucks in Texas, and how it would supply a ton of food for a keg party. Darleen acts completely annoyed at everything and everyone. The others wonder why Johnny is apparently going out with her. We learn that Johnny had hired Darleen to BE an old girlfriend just for this party. (The implied joke here is that the longer you have a a girlfriend, the more demanding and bitchy they get.) I had sent this apology via e-mail to all the women in the cast:

===== Disclaimer to the women of the cast of alt.sex ======

Yes, this script was written by a GUY and this script expresses the delusion of said writer. Certainly it's the warped perspective of this writer that girlfriends (i.e. women) become like this after a while. (annoying and bitchy) The writer also realizes that GUYS (male boyfriends) become just as annoying after a while to women. (I guess we slowly become lazy, indifferent and smelly, or so I've heard.) But because this story has a male lead, it will pander to the whims of the male ego. I apologize. I'm sorry we had to film this tripe. I even apologize for a pervious comment which went along the lines of "girlfriends a like batteries, after 90 minutes you use them up and throw them out." I disavow any relationship to such comment, even though I did laugh at it.

===== end disclaimer =======

Kim Lannon was great for this part. (Even though she isn't the least bit bitchy or annoying.) One thing we found was that eye contact (or lack of thereof) made a big difference in the scenes between her and Johnny. She initially played the scenes with a fair amount of eye contact, making her appear more angry. When we played the scene with her avoiding eye contact with Johnny, she came off as more aloof. Interesting stuff, you can't really write this into a script, you've just got to play with it when you are there.

I'm quite grateful that Dave Chubet (the owner of the house that we were shooting in) was there for the day. Dave and I were in a rock band called "Fingle Bunt", and we're known each other since 1987. (I think there's a whole movie on that subject that might come out of me, I dunno.) He cooked up all sorts of food for the crew and was in the background for a couple of shots. We told him that he would get a catering credit in the movie, and we needed a name for his company. He said it would be called; "Here...eat this." Dave Chubet and his wonderful and charming wife Paula are the couple who are leaving the party as Amanda practically boots them out the door at the end of this sequence. (Bit of irony...no?)

A semi-major fuck up was the fact that my second roll of film was double perforated. I had gotten a couple of rolls of 16mm film in exchange for helping out on a commercial film shoot for a cinematographer called Doug Shafer. The new rolls that he bought for this shoot were "single perf." (Sprocket holes on only one side of the film, which ables you to shoot a wider super 16mm frame.) He had some older "double perf" film as backup stock. (Double perf film is the older style, there is sprocket holes on both sides of the film. Normally you can't shoot a wider frame because you will see the holes on one side of the film.) I had spooled up the newer stuff into my camera and threw the other roll of film into my kit. When the time came to change rolls of film, I spool up the other can of film and THEN notice that there's two rolls of sprocket holes.

Fuck.

I only had something like 6 lines of dialogue left to shoot. Instead of packing up and calling it a night, I just went ahead and shot super 16mm on double perf film. Screw it. I'm hoping I can do a slight blow-up on the video transfer to avoid getting the holes into the frame. What happens when the time comes to cut the negative into a 35mm print, I dunno. I know that you still have to crop a little off the top and bottom of super 16mm to get it to fit into 35mm. I'm pretty sure the video transfers will look fine, but I'll probably hafta come back to Dave Chubet's house to get the last few shots again. Damn.

Dave w banjo	Emery boom	Eric w camera	Geoff porch CU
Juliet & Dan piano	Kim & Johnny	Phil gets bit again	The caterer
Kim, Juliet, Johnny	Kim vamps	Johnnys hotdog	Kim on porch

 

Lauren was having a birthday bash at her place, so she invited everyone from the film. (Along with her real friends.) I had gotten a good "reading" of the film from a little preview showing of some of the edited footage earlier in the summer when Lauren threw an outdoor party. (Note: she claimed that this earlier party was gonna be wild. What bunch of "adults" can be totally loose when they've got their children watching them? Then she announced that she was going to get stinking drunk at her birthday party. Not one bit of vomit came out of her. I was disappointed.) :-)

At this point, I had about 36 minutes of the film roughly edited. Short sequences mostly, but I threw them together into a linear order. We had a crowd of Lauren's buddies (mostly 40 year olds) with us around her TV set. We got a couple of laughs and a bunch of positive remarks from our little preview. Sounds promising, even though I felt that this wasn't my target audience. Deirdre Williams hadn't seen any of the footage up until now and was very positive. (Good to have some "fresh eyes" look at what you've done.) She thought that the characters were identifiable and that the pacing was good and it seemed to feel like a movie, verses just a bunch of unconnected comedy sketches. This is a good thing.

Eric's beard

Lauren's hairpiece

We're # 1

Phil's boot fetish

 

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