Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Sine Fine Films!

I am thankful for all of the actors who 

have filmed with me over the past 17 years.

Thank you!

Bloopers 101 - Add Ons

This month's Bloopers 101 is a selection of bloopers involving actors who either get creative when they forget their lines, or just keep going after the line is done.  I call this category Add Ons, and here a few of my favorites.

Bloopers are from:

The Gift Bearer

Pandora's Box

Destiny III

Fortunate Ones: Only You

The Curse

Twisted Tales: Charming

Eidolon

Twisted Tales: The Stranger

Production Diary - Fortunate Ones: Only You

Once a month I’m going to talk about a specific production, what it was like to film it, and what was involved in making it happen.  This month I’m going to talk about Fortunate Ones: Only You.

Fortunate Ones is a series of short films with one common theme – the main characters wishes for or wants something, then suddenly they get it and realize it’s not what they really wanted after all, which usually results in a dramatic twist in their life.   Only You differs from this theme slightly because the two main characters don’t get what they want, they get exactly what they don’t want – each other.

This wasn’t a script that I ruminated over and spent weeks or months or years developing, it was something I came up with in a pinch, thought about for a day, then sat down and spewed out the script in a few hours.  Needless to say it’s not exactly a work of art, but I really liked it in the end.  I think it’s funny and cute, and we had fun filming it so that’s really all that matters.  Really it is.  Really.  And I’m gonna say really one more time. Really.

I wanted to film something in November of 2012 and picked the weekend before Thanksgiving – November 16-18 – as the shooting date for various reasons.  The script I was going to film fell through, but I had a bunch of actors committed to filming that weekend, some of them rearranging their work schedules and driving several miles to join in so I didn’t want to cancel it.  I came up with multiple ideas, but things kept happening.

  About three days before we were scheduled to shoot I only had two actors I was certain would available to shoot on Saturday, November 17 and no script. So I took a look at what I had available, and wrote the script to work with that.  What I had was one guy, one girl, and a tipi.  Yup.  I made a movie out of that. 

Casting was very easy: the only available actress – Brittany Ann Whalen – played the girl, Bethany, and the only available actor – Bryan Kieft – played the guy, Jack.  And the Tipi played the tipi. I ended up having an extra actor for the weekend – Syndi Eller.  I didn’t know she would be available all weekend when I wrote the script so I had not written a part for her, which meant I had assistant director for the day - which is always awesome. 

Since the script was relatively short for a Yibble production – only 8 pages, and most of them a sit down conversation – I knew I could film it in day and not need to rush things too much.  That meant the shoot didn’t have to start at 8am, which was nice.  We arranged to meet at the MacLeod Farm at 10am and start shooting by 11.  Since Brittany and Syndi were staying with me that weekend it meant all of us could car pool together.   Which was a good thing because we had push the shoot back to 11am as we dragged out sorry asses out of bed, still groggy from the previous night’s late filming, hilarity, and general fun.   A call to Bryan made it clear he didn’t mind the extra hour to get ready for filming. 

About 11:30 we finally arrived at the farm and were filming by noon.  Syndi or Bryan, I can’t remember who, started the fire that Mark MacLeod had already set up for us (Thanks Mark!) while Brittany and I headed out to the road to film the “forlorn” sequence, ie Scene 2.  After some shaky camera work and many mishaps involving me not be able to shoot a close up of a cigarette (don’t ask) we finally converged in the tipi and start shooting the big scene, ie Scene 3 - the multi-page heart of the script.

We began with a full read through – which the actors did using their Smartphones.  That was a bit weird for me.  I’m sitting there with a paper script and two extra copies and they’re reading from a screen.  I’m totally a murderer.  I killed trees for scripts.  I committed arborcide.  Which strangely sounds like a holiday drink, or a garden store…

Now the script is rather raunchy, so everyone’s minds were in the gutter pretty much from the start, which gave the shoot it’s own brand of hilarity.  We were also cooking hotdogs and yes, there are wiener jokes in the script, and so there were twice as many in real life.  There were many escapes with burning wieners, falling wieners, wieners that didn’t cooperate, and wieners that seemed to be attracted to a certain part of Brittany during one difficult-to-shoot comedic bit.

However, the most memorable part of filming that scene was when we got smoked out of the tipi.   At one point I added a log to the fire that we figured out later was a little damp, and slowly the tipi started filling up with smoke.  We opened the door to try to air it out, but the direction of the wind just blew everything into the actors’ faces.  They were starting to cough and getting a little hoarse and the camera was having focus problems, so we stopped filming and went outside for a break.

It wasn’t until we were sitting in the screened-in porch-area that we realized just how toasty the tipi had gotten.  The actors huddled in their coats and read over the rest of the scene.

 Syndi and I watched the smoke billow from out the top.  By the time it had cleared out enough to go back in, Brittany and Bryan had the rest of the script completely memorized.

We finished filming the scene pretty quickly, then hung out for a while roasting hotdogs and making s’mores, since only the actors had gotten to eat lunch.  When everyone was ready to go, we packed up, doused the fire and made sure it was out, then headed in to town to Bryan’s house to film the opening scene. 

After the actors changed clothes and went over the scenes a few more times, then we went outside to film.  Because the scene is a little more than a page and they had it completely memorized, the filming when surprisingly quickly – even with multiple takes from multiple angles. We were also rushing the sunset, so it helped that it went so fast.

The final scene to be filmed was the last one.  In the script it ends with Jack and Bethany going Go Kart racing, but there wasn’t one in the area so everyone brainstormed a new place to end it, and considering the script and our gutter-trapped minds that afternoon we came up with the perfect one.  I think it was Brittany who first suggested it, but everyone readily agreed it would be perfect, all things considered. 

After that we ended the day with dinner at El Toro, where everyone got to warm up (I remember Syndi was especially cold), kick back and relax.  We parted ways with Bryan after dinner, then Brittany, Syndi, and I headed back to base camp (ie my parents place) to watch footage and crash for the night.  Both Syndi and Brittany ended up feeling somewhat ill – probably from too much smoke, too little sleep, and a diet largely consisting of marshmallows that day.  They both went to bed early, which was just as well since I had yet to write the script we were filming the next day.

Many thanks to Brittany, Bryan, and Syndi – without them this movie would obviously not have been possible.  It was a really fun day and I will always remember it fondly.

And the movie is finally edited and online!  Yay!