Joe Britz Update

IT'S A WRAP!

After two days of shooting, we have finished enough to make the first rough cut of the movie.

I will be sending this to a program down in Florida where I would go there for a week and study film.

It is muy exciting.

So I will detail the two days for you:

SATURDAY

7:00 AM - Wake up. Shower. Fun.

8:00 AM - I showed up to John's house and awaiting outside was Miss Emylee Covell.

For those of you NOT aware of the casting change, Emylee is now playing Gwen because of scheduling conflicts with Kayla.

So, we arrive there and Luke shows up minutes later. I got all my stuff out of my car and moved them to John's room. Apparantly, John hadn't informed his mom that we would be showing up at 8, which is fine, I just love them all for letting us use their home for the setting of the movie. It has been an incredible help.

9:00 AM - We begin filming. This was to be the most intimate of all the filming, which was appropriate for the scenes in the movie. For those of you who haven't read the script, Gwen is Joe's finacee who died two years before the day he learns he is going to die (Don't worry, you are informed of this in the first five minutes so nothing is spoiled). Basically Gwen is the entire motivation behind the movie and the subplots and themes I worked into the script. In fact, I re-wrote a scene after I realized that Gwen was the center for this entire movie. So it was VERY important that these scene's be correct and be intimate. In fact, we only had three people on the set this day: Emylee, Luke and I.

We got some really awesome footage and Emylee captured Gwen perfectly. I'm not going to think I'm extremely good, so I will say this: dialouge in those scenes could come off very cheesy, but Emylee and I's interaction took out much of the cheesiness. In fact, only one line now, in my opinion, comes off as cheesy. One, which bothered me that I wrote forever and was thinking about cutting, was made into a sarcastic line and makes the scene come off very well. I don't know why this is, it could be that Emylee and I have always had the same sort of fast talking and bouncing off eachother in real life also. It is also interesting to note, that even though Emylee and I have done several shows together, this is the first time we have interacted acting wise as friends for more than one scene. It truly seems that anytime before this, if we had a fair amount of lines with eachother she was trying to expose me for not being a woman. I don't know, interesting thing I noticed (sort of like how Kyle and I have known eachother almost all my life and we have both been actively involved in the Woodland theater community for a very long time and this is the first time we have acted together).

So, we finished all of Gwen and Joe's stuff together in only an HOUR AND A HALF! Yup, by 10:30 we were done. It was a great experience and really, truly rocked. I've finally perfected this style of directing I've been using on this movie that is very much along the directing feeling of a Judd Apatow film (now, this movie is no where near as good as his films, but it looks sort of like one). We have it down to a science and it adds much more to the script than was there before. It creates a very colloquial feeling to the entire movie and not just "look at us, we are just saying our lines really well." There are pauses and there are stumbles, but everybody does that in real life and it works very well in bringing the script to life and I will definately try to adapt it somehow with the play of "The Death of Joe Britz."

SUNDAY:

7:00 AM - I woke up after being out until about 11 the night before and hunting for the gun that is featured in the film. I looked through my entire closet and took almost everything out of it. So, on the off chance that I put it in my desk, I check it... and it was there. I quickly shoved everything into my closet and got out of the house (I took a shower and that stuff also).

8:00 AM - Luke and I get there right on time and John's family is just leaving. That day, John did join us. This was the day that we had a lot of different things to pick up.

Kyle was the first person to show up at about 8:30 AM. I'm surprised he even made it to the house without getting into a crash, because the moment he stepped in the house he fell asleep on the sofa. I quickly woke him up with gun shots from John's airsoft gun.

So we filmed it, the infamous Jesus Rant. We finally got it on tape. It took maybe and hour and a half. Now, the scene is not that long, it is only 5 pages, but it is a difficult 5 pages for Death. Mainly because the scene goes as follows:

ONE PAGE = Death Speaking.

ONE LINE = Joe sets up Death's next part.

Not only that, but Death has to go from being very funny to very serious in this 5 page segment. It really has to show that Death does care about Joe, for some strange reason (once the movie is shown I will unviel why unless I already have).

Half way through this scene we did have an accident. I'm not going to lie either and say it was minor, because I almost killed Luke for it: Luke dropped my nice camera. Now, I've dropped cameras before and usually they get some chips in them, but nothing serious. So after the initial shock of "HOLY SHIT THERE GOES MY CAMERA!" I wasn't worried.

Until Luke tried to turn it on and said, "Um... Robbie... the screen isn't working." Neither the LCD screen or the Viewfinder was working which was NO GOOD. It ends up that it is only a minor problem though, thankfully.

Truthfully, this has been the scene I've been waiting to shoot since I said we would make this a movie. I know Kyle's acting is awesome and hilarious and I knew that he would rock it. And he did. In fact, he added one of my favorite parts to it now which I will blatantly steal for the play version when I play Death.

After that scene was done we went on to the scene with Michael and Padrutt which is the scene that I knew would have to be the most visually engaging and create tension. Luke (first time actor in a movie for us that hasn't been for school) and Sam did very good jobs as Michael and Padrutt and there are parts of their performance that is very eerie, just the way I wanted it. I tried to shoot it to create tension which I hope it does. This will be about the only scene with a lot of talking that isn't a monolouge that has music underneath it and it should be really good.

Ray showed up, we did his reshoots and BAM! I got to say the three words: "That's a wrap." It is the first time I've ever been able to say that with a feature film (I looked up the time and over an hour is a feature). Now, it isn't technically 100% complete, but for the florida project it is. We only have one more scene to shoot for the regular version and that is the date scene.

I'm also hoping to do a showing somewhere for the movie and while the cast memebers know where I hope I can have it, I won't unviel it until it is 100% certain.

Thanks,
Rob