Edwin Wise

Loathing

So, Matt and Paul have sucked me into playing a silly little online adventure called Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com). It's goofy, and it limits your play each do to 40 "adventures", though you can boost this number through various means. It's fairly fun...

I still haven't looked at mirroring this in Live Journal, and as busy as I am, I don't know when I will.

This weekend was our first official shoot for Deadbacks (www.deadbacks.com). It was tiring and we only got about half of the footage in the can that we wanted (if that), but it was still good.

Saturday call was for 9:00am, but most folks didn't drag their sorry butts out there until 10:00 or 10:30. There was some fiddling around and setting up and then lunch at 11:00, which put a big pause in the festivities.

After lunch, I made up Kodie (the lovely female lead, pictured on the Haunt section off of the main page here), which took an hour and half easily... the face took an hour since I'm getting the feel for this, and then there was costuming, some hair work, and I had to do her hands.

So we started shooting about 2:30 or so. Then we wrapped at 6:30 or so... having put about three pages of script to bed.

Sunday was going to be an *early* start, with myself and Kodi getting to the site at 8:00am so the makeup could go on early, and the rest of the crew targetting 9:00 again.

Of course, the thunderstorms put a bit of a kink into that. There was some conferring and analyzing of weather data, and we decided to trust that the weather would blow over by 10:00 or 11:00 and we could get another scene filmed.

THAT didn't happen. But my makeup on Kodie is getting better. We found a base to put down on her eyelids to lock the eye shadow into place, and the powder went down over it very smoothly. I was quite happy.

Instead of filming by the pond, we set up in the "studio" (located in a giant quanset hut on the property) and prepared to film indoor scenes. Those actors were slated to show up at 3:00, and they made it on time.

The set wasn't quite ready, though... but everything converged to filming by about 4:30 and we got a couple scenes into the can by 9:00 or 9:30 or so. We didn't break for dinner, but ate on the run as we filmed...

Marla was doing fill-in cooking while our primary craft services person was out, and though she approached this job with great trepidation she did beautifully.

Our new camera person (actually, director of photography, or DP) is an experienced and capable guy who looks like he will do the movie with us. Which is amazing, since he is paid to fly all over the country to film stuff... he brings a welcome touch of experience and professionalism to the crew.

The actors continue to be great, too. I'm anxious to see some dailies to see how this all looks on film. It plays great on set at least.

Standing around all day is wearing, so there is a bunch of goofing off and joking on set between shots as we set up. But the moment the DP calls "ready" everyone clams up quickly, the actors drop into their character, and by "action" it all becomes very real. You can feel the tensions, the fears, the anxieties in the air... it's like flashbacks to my first divorce. It's amazing.

Then, "cut", and the joking and noise returns.

It's a good group. I bet we make a good film.

Posted by Edwin at May 9, 2005 08:08 AM