Vivid Morsels: 08/02: All About Neil, Niel, Neel, and Neal.

This past weekend we had a minor setback due to talent. Our male lead...overslept. Actually, he slept and didn't show up to the shoot Friday night: AT ALL. We were all there, ready to roll, all set up, I myself had raced as fast as could be in stop and go traffic for four hours...and...no talent. He had his phone turned off so there was no contacting him. Nobody knew were he lived, either, so there was no driving over to throw pebbles at his bedroom window.

We reconviened the next morning. The scene to shoot was Ian leaving his room, leaving his house. We used a room in our producer's home and matched it with the exterior of our director's home across town. You can see the "11" the closet makes in the background in this, behind Pete's noggin:

Now, in doing this online chronical of filming, I had a personal request handed to me. Need more cowbell. In this case, Need more Pictures of the Director, Neil McCay. So, here goes:

Here is Neil's foot beside the monitor.

Here is the rest of Neil, as he directs our talent, Ryan, "Do your thing."

The next scene we shot was an exterior, in the front of the director's home. The male lead, Ian, was to exit the home and get into his car and drive off. We had to set up a pile of trash to make it look as though he's leaving forever, so we brought Pete's mattress with us on the top of Jessy's, the Assistant Director, SUV.

Then, we had to set it up, for which I supervised, of course.

We had to modify a few things to get them to work.

Here's a nice picture of the lovely front lawn we had to work with:

That's Producer Dave right there, folks.

Here are Kristen and Corey, a couple of our toppest notchest production assistants.

And, our marvelous director.

Afterwards, we broke for lunch at a favorite spot, O'Toole's. This is how a director looks as food is being prepared:

Next, we shot our convenience store scene, where the character Ian gives the store clerk $100.

The location wasn't locked, which means that customers were still coming and going from the store the entire time, which was a bit INconveniant for a conveniant store. Many people were extremely interested in what we were doing and it was difficult to get them to leave. A couple of girls went home, did thier hair and makeup, and returned to the store, hoping to be in the background of a shot somehow.

Here's an awesome shot of our director, positioning the camera for our Director of Photography, Pete, and holding the monitor for Pete to see so they could get the framing of the shot juuuusst riiiight:

...and here is our main man, Ryan, checking out the merchandise:

...which evidently makes his right hand verrry happy:

When we were through with the convenience store, we moved on to our phone booth scene. This is where Ian looks up his old science teacher's name in a phonebook so that he may effectively stalk the man. It is also where he first catches a glimpse of the flyer of a movie being made locally.

This is our director as he expertly positions a Lucifer Cicero flyer into the phonebooth: