My First Movie - Production

I was pretty concerned that for weeks before shooting started. A location for my fight scene wasn't nailed down yet. Voicing my concerns first to Gary, and then Megan, the 2nd Assistant Director, once filming began. Only brought reassurances everything was going to be alright.

So I waited, and waited..... Twenty-four hours before shooting comes and goes with still no word on the location. An email to my scene co-star, Kate Mcglynn, reveals she hasn't heard anything either.

What no one is aware of, is that I live five hours away from Detroit. I recently switched to third shift at work and had to take two vacation days instead of one. I have spent $400 in gas at this point for the audition and pre-production meeting. I've got a lot invested here and am prepared to invest more to be in this film.

I begin to prepare myself for the worst case scenario. That possible scenario being that they decided to cut my scene from the movie.

One final email to Megan. "I have to know the location for our shoot by close of business today." I said. Knowing that if I don't hear anything I will be canceling my vacation and going to work instead.

I am relieved and apprehensive to get an email from Gary with the message to call him ASAP. When I do reach him it is good news. We have a location (his house) and he gives me the address. The filming is pushed back two hours because, so far, they have been shooting ahead of schedule. Sweet!!

Even after getting a little lost. I still find the location an hour and a half early. I do a drive by and turn around at the end of the street. I drive by once again before heading out to the main road to find somewhere to kill some time.

A half hour of sitting in my truck at the gas station reading the script and I'm like, "Screw This!"

I pull in and Gary is there bringing out equipment. We talk while he is setting up the camera. He was going to film on the back porch but decided instead to shoot our scene at the front door and yard.

He wants to use my truck in the scenes because it "Looks like a vehicle my character would drive." He has a point given the other vehicles that show up driven by other cast and crew.

Cast and crew arrive on time. We all know that the script will be played pretty loose. There will be a lot of emotion and anger so there will be a lot of improv to "keep it real". Just remember to stay in character and "just go with it."

The one line, and the first one uttered by my character, that is insisted on reads "How's it going chief?" I'm surprised to find out that my character says this in an extremely agitated and angry state. Reading the script, I envisioned a buildup up anger leading to the eventual fight scene.

In my experience, that line "How's it going chief?". In real life is never spoken in anger. It is usually reserved as a friendly greeting between strangers of the male persuasion.

They wanted me to come to the door ready to kick ass and take names. So I tried, and tried, and tried to get that line to come out like they wanted. After some coaching I think I nailed it and the scene was wrapped. We'll see how it looks on film.

The next scene was the actual fight scene.

Already pumped up from the first scene. I knew what was to be expected. A quick rehearsal had the neighbors dogs howling. Several angles, A motion cam, some closeups and an audio take later and my scenes were filmed.

I stayed around partly because my truck was still needed for continuity. I also wanted to watch them film the rest of the scenes. They mentioned watching the playback later. I forgot about it and left before getting to watch.

Gary told me in an email shortly afterwards that the scenes came out better than expected. No pickups (re-shoots) were necessary for any of the scenes I was involved in.

Cool, now I can get my yearly haircut.

In hindsight there were ideas floating around on set that didn't make it onto film. Everything went so fast that no one ever stopped to say, "Let's try it doing this or saying that." I guess it just "worked" the way it went down.