The Great Production Experience - Saturday, July 28

Date: Friday, July 27

Location: My grandparents' property, Natural Dam, AR

Cast: Luke, Lana, Trevor, Daniel, Tony, Chris, James, Dusty

Crew: Hannah, Tara

*Yawn* Ah, there's nothing like waking up at 7:00 in the morning when you've been up working since two the previous evening. It was a lovely morning, but we weren't enjoying it terribly much, thank you. A couple of our group were up before me, but I managed to rouse the rest of them and even peek in and wake up Lana as she slumbered on a beautiful mattressed bed. OK, OK, so she was sick; is that supposed to be some kind of excuse? *Ducks*

Breakfast: Donuts and chocolate milk. Three cheers for chocolate milk! A truly wonderful way to kick off a day. After getting everybody up, fed, and dressed, we departed back into the woods to our set from the night before for a morning scene.

The scene went well. I cannot resist pointing out that a certain female member of the cast was not set to appear in the scene; her character is off-screen in Shawn and Travis' tent and only her voice appears. This esteemed actress did not need to enter the tent at all to play her role; she could have merely stayed off-camera, yet she somehow managed to stay inside the tent for the duration of the filming of the scene! I must admit, she delivered her one line beautifully during each take. If only I could have it this easy.

With that done, Daniel left with Trevor, Tara, and Hannah to drop off Tara at her abode and pick up our morning crew. Our morning crew being James and Dusty. While they were gone, well, what's a filmmaker to do but shower? It was a lovely shower, and I confess I took longer than usual. It was a bit disheartening afterward to put on the same stinky clothes, but I felt 500% better. Smelled 500% better too, even with dirty clothes. Old Spice is awesome stuff.

Because of various delays, Daniel and the others would end up being gone for about three hours, instead of the expected two. And they had already left a full hour late. The rest of us (myself, Lana, Tony, and Chris), after taking the showers, went off to scout locations along the sides of my grandparents' bluffs. Marvelous things they are, and they will look gorgeous when we use them in the climactic final chase of the film.

Here's one of the many brilliant sections of woods.

Pretty sweet view.

Could this cliff or another like it be important in the climax of the movie? I wonder...

Fast forward to lunchtime; the others had finally completed the trip up, and we sat down to a delicious meal of grilled-chicken sandwiches. Oh baby, these were awesome. The girls applied makeup to the newcomers while Chris ribbed Dusty about being so late. Ah, good to be among both of my fellow youth leaders again!

After lunch, it was time to go back to the original Shawn-and-Travis tent location from the day before, the one we'd done all the running around. This time, in a scene that takes place shortly after the aforementioned one, gang members Carl (Chris) and Barry (James) run into Shawn and Travis' tent. More running, but this time for the bad guys. Chris and James play their roles with the intensity of hunters in the midst of the hunt, while Daniel and Tony get to be laid back and cool.

Then Daniel had to take Tony back to Van Buren since his part in the acting had been completed. Meanwhile, we filmed a couple of scenes exclusively between Carl and Barry. My goodness, James had trouble with one of them! He could not stop laughing at a particular part. We went through probably about twenty takes but finally managed to salvage the scene. He did better with the next scene, and to his credit, you probably won't be able to tell in the finished film that he had such trouble. After a while Chris also got distracted and started laughing some too. Sometimes it's hard to keep yourself under control as an actor; in this case they needed to work quickly because both of them had to leave pretty soon.

At last the scenes were done. Exit Chris and James, both of whom did a fine job. We were now ready to do our final shooting of the day, all involving only one actor: Dusty as Clyde, the leader of the Gang and older brother of Eric. Only problem was, the first of these scenes happens near nightfall. We had to wait until the sun was nearly down to drive out to our road location (in my grandpa's nearly-brand-new Chevy pickup, which he graciously agreed to let us borrow) and film a brief scene where Clyde talks on the phone and then vents inner turmoil. One down, two to go.

Back at the house, we had a simple shot of Clyde sitting in a chair and staring into space. Really? you ask. What's that doing in a movie? Doesn't sound very dramatic. Well, time will tell, but I think it will be very dramatic when it's all put together. Anyways, it was difficult to try to light this scene; we ended up using some white Christmas lights (those come in very useful for night scenes) and a low-wattage blue light that Lana bought. It took a while to get them situated where the camcorder would pick up the light on Dusty's face correctly. To make matters worse, my grandparents don't have air conditioning, so it was like a sauna in the room. But we got it done, and it matched my vision for the scene very closely.

The final shot was just a brief look at Clyde in bed, unable to sleep. This one was easy to light; we got it and got the shot in just a few minutes. Then it was time to bid my grandparents goodbye, thank them heartily for their gracious hosting during the past thirty-two hours, pack everything up, and head for home!

Hannah and I finally made it home a little after 11:00. Oh, glorious shower and bed that I call my own at home! It's now Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning technically), and I think I'm almost physically recovered from the weekend. Pretty crazy, but we got a lot of stuff done.

I am so thankful for my fellow cast and crew on this project, who are willing to devote so much of their time and energy to a dream that was not their own. I love all of you guys and could not do it without a single one of you. Thank you also to all of our families, who have sacrificed much as well that we might be able to make this little movie. I pray that it is all worth it.

Here I go getting all sentimental. Can't let that happen yet; we've still got a lot of filming in front of us yet. Stay tuned once again for further updates!

The Great Production Experience - Friday, July 27

Coming Fall 2007


Hobbbottom Films presents


A Shadow of the Cross production



Hunted



That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest motion picture of the year is set to be released this fall. The buzz is growing; production continues; all eyes are trained on a little town called Branch, Arkansas, the home base of a Major Motion Picture.

So yeah, it's gonna be great. The film is written, directed, and produced by Yours Truly. I also play the main role in the film (hey, what can I say? I'm an idiot). I'll give production information and a plot synopsis later. For now, know that production (the actual filming of the movie) has been ongoing since late May. It's been slow and hard, and it will get harder while hopefully speeding up. But our most difficult film days of all have been this past Friday and Saturday.

So follow along with me as I chronicle the debacle that will become a no-budget film called Hunted. I will continue to provide production updates as we have more film days. For now, let's check it out what was up this past weekend.


Date: Friday, July 27
Location: My grandparents' property, Natural Dam, AR
Cast: Luke, Lana, Trevor, Daniel, Tony
Crew: Hannah, Tara, Chris
(Note: Those included in the "Cast" category are also generally part of the "Crew", and sometimes members of the "Crew" are cast members who aren't in any scenes that day.)

Here we were on a bright sunny afternoon, heading up to my grandparents for some intense filming. We had filmed there last Monday as well, but it was cooler and less humid then. This day felt more like a typical July day in Arkansas.

We got to the house at about 3:30, which was about what we were expecting. My mom and little brothers were with us, coming to spend some time with our grandparents and join us for supper. We had to apply makeup, study scripts to memorize lines, do some read-throughs, and then head out to the location to do our first shooting of the day.

This particular location is a small field with some great pine trees on one side and fairly thick woods surrounding on two sides. A solitary pine tree provides a good amount of shade, and it was there that we decided to set up our tent for our two crazy camper characters, Shawn and Travis (played by Daniel and Tony).

Actually, it wasn't quite so simple as that. See, we set the tent up prior to going in there for filming. After getting it set up, we headed back to the house to regroup and have some cold water (or for some non-brainiacs among us, root beer and Mountain Dew). It was then that we were informed that my younger brother Caleb, aged 10, had had a bad dirt bike accident.

A bad one. Apparently his face slammed down onto solid dirt, and he also scraped his arm badly. He was in a ton of pain and kept screaming, unable to form words because of a swollen lip and incoherent anyway. My mom took him to the ER in Fort Smith, where he was revealed to have had a mild concussion. Amazingly, his nose wasn't broken and his teeth were unaffected. Thank You, Lord! (Caleb is recovering and his swelling is slowly going down, but his face doesn't look so great.)

It hurt so bad to see my little brother hurting as badly as he was, and not be able to do a thing about it. Everyone else was affected, too. But we were thankful that he hadn't been hurt any worse, not finding out the details about his injuries until later.

After giving everybody several minutes to restructure emotions, I restarted our preparations and we went out there to film. We set our two intrepid heroes down beside the tent and proceeded to film a fairly brief scene where they first meet our other three intrepid heroes: Eric (myself), Leslie (Lana), and Ryan (T-Rev).

The scene went fairly well, but involved a bit of running for me, Lana, and Trevor. This film actually features quite a bit of running in a few parts. I hadn't been looking forward to doing that, considering that I am nigh totally out of shape, but doing these brief shots with running was actually quite enjoyable. Maybe I'll like it after all.

Once we'd gotten the scene, we headed back to the house to eat supper (burgers and dogs grilled by our grandparents, plus chili). It was then that Chris showed up to help our night shots. He plays the gang member Carl in the film, but didn't have any scenes until the next morning.

After supper, we embarked out into the woods for setup. At least, Chris, Lana, Trevor, and I did; the others, led by 1st Assistant Director Daniel, stayed in the yard and set up the tents we would be sleeping in that night. Little did we know how late it would be before we got to go to bed.

The four of us found a pretty sweet location for the first of three campsites that our heroes stay at during the course of the film, and we proceeded to build a campfire, set up the characters' tent, and position some rocks and logs around the fire as seats. By the time the others had joined us, it was almost dark.

Next, lighting. Our goal was to provide a wide range of sight that would cover the whole campsite. That's not necessarily the easiest thing to do when it's pitch black and all you have to start with is a fire. The solution was to set up a common domed work light in a tree above the fire and shine it down directly onto the fire. That way, we had plenty of light, but it would seem as if it were coming from the fire. Well, sort of. In the finished movie, viewers may well notice that there's more light than just that from the fire. But at least you'll be able to see everything that happens, which is top priority.

Now, finally to start filming a mammoth scene, the first of two that we would film that night, but by far the longer and more difficult. But before we did, Chris gave us a short talk about staying focused and doing all of this for God. Then he led prayer. I love that guy. That talk and prayer helped us so much that night. Now, on!

"The flames grew bigger and BIGGER, and hotter and HOTTER. . . . Chasing him down the corridors, and creeping, and moaning. . . . Until at last . . he had nowhere else to run."

Shawn, played by my aforementioned brother and First A.D. Daniel, held center stage as he spewed a riveting campfire scary story. We got several shots of his performance, as well as some shots of the four others intently listening.

It was a good start to a long shoot. That scene may well prove to be the most difficult single scene of any that we shoot on the movie. Long, complicated, but ultimately very memorable; at least I hope so. Several of our actors have named it one of their favorites, and the filming turned out well.

But talk about lengthy. We began setting up at about 8:30, and we didn't finish the shoot and pick everything up until about 1:30. Five hours, yeow. That's one thing about a movie: you put so much in and get so little out. Our efforts will eventually turn into about six or seven minutes of finished movie. But that's the way it has to be on a movie. No way around it.

Back we went to the place in the yard where we would spend the night. By 2:00, we had all rolled into bed. I would like it to go down for the record that the girls did spend several minutes longer talking than the guys did. Little did we know that Lana would soon abandon us and go sleep inside.

And that's where I'll stop for now; after all, it's after midnight as I write this and I'm still recovering from the weekend rest-wise. Hey, be thankful, because I actually carried this account a couple hours into Saturday. Next time I'll pick it up on the daytime for Saturday, July 28; and in the future, as I said, I'll give some more basic information on the movie. Most of you reading this probably don't need that anyway, though; you already know it.