IceBreaker Production, Day 4

Today (June 4th, 2006) we are filming at two locations. First in Bloomington at Chad's apartment which is doubling as Gary's apartment. Then we are moving over to Randy and Mary's house in St. Paul which is doubling as Kevin's (master thespian Justin Barnett) house for the BBQ scene.

Call time for Bloomington is 0700 hours. We are working with a new Boom Operator today, and he was right on time along with Brian, our Sound Engineer. Next to show up is Narayanan, our script supervisor. Our PA Sarah has been called into work so she is unable to help out today, which is cool because as the day progresses the apartment gets hotter and hotter and more crowded and crowded. We got everything setup and Ben our PM showed up and had to jet over to Eden Prairie to pick up the make-up from Nicole who was unable to attend the shoot. When he got back, Sasha arrived and we began blocking/dressing the scene. Eric Lee (playing...Eric) was also on hand for the shoot. The scene calls for Gary (Sasha) and Eric to be talking on the phone as Sasha walks around his apartment. In order for the timing to be spot on, we actually had Sasha and Eric call each other and play the scene out on the phone. At first we placed Eric outside in my car but the interference on the lav mic was too great. So we stuck Eric on the can in Chad's sweltering bathroom, with the door closed and a large quilt hung over the shower rod to act as a sound baffle. Eric got a little warm in there.

We gelled the lights with CTB and improvised a quick jib with two tripods and we were off shooting. Chad's apartment isn't tiny, but with 8 men, 3 lights (2000W combined), no AC and 90 degrees outside (not to mention all the other gear) it got hot...real hot...and quick. Between each take it was a mad dash to shut the lights off, flip the AC on and swing the patio door open. We shot there from 7 am until 2 pm (7 hours!!). Oh, I forgot to mention that my back was still fucked and I was walking with a cane.

After wrapping the apartment scene, we had planned on filming a quick scene with Gary driving around talking on his cell phone. With the call time of he BBQ scene being 2:00pm, and it already being 2:00 pm, we scrapped the plan and decided to pick it up at another time (Dam, we missed our first day). On the way over to Randy and Mary's we swung by Korte's Grocery Store (from the grocery store rejection!) to pick up some hotdogs and burgers for lunch and for the scene.

When we arrived to the location, Justin Barnett (Kevin) Joe Thompson (Joe), Andy Kraft (Roach), Keri Bunkers (Lyndsey and make-up for today), Sasha and Eric were all ready to go. The location was great, a nice spacious deck. We got setup and eveyone had a quick bite to eat. We quickly blocked and dressed the scene. We shot a master and some cutaways. When all was said and done, we were wrapped and packed at 7:00pm (so, about 5 hours at the location. 12 hours for the day). The stuff we got was great-very very funny stuff- it was just mild pain in the ass getting it. Don't get me wrong, it was still better than any day at my day job, just not as efficient as we could have been. After the shoot I headed over to my dad's house to pick up the dolly for the next day. I was home and in bed by 12:00am.

5 hours later my alarm clock started beeping and guess what? It's day 5 of the IceBreaker shoot!

IceBreaker Production, Day 5

Day 5 (June 5th, 2006) was shot at three locations, all at St Thomas in St Paul. Call time is 0800 and we will start with Sasha in the church singing with all the mom's, dad's, old folks, kids, etc. We were going to Dolly out on Sasha to reveal all of the people surrounding him, but by 0900 hours we had about 10 extras show up to fill the entire church. We had the extras get ready and practice the song with the organist and the cantor while we decided what to do. We were already having problems with the dolly (not enough track- Eric was PAing for us today so he was running around campus trying to gather wood for some extended track). We eventually scrapped the idea for the dolly shot and went with a static shot of Sasha surrounded by our extras. My mom and Chad's mom flanked him, with our dad's on either side of their resoectives wives. As a little bit of an in-joke, we placed Jane Hammil (playing Karen, Sam's mom) behind Sasha in the pew. I knew my mom would ham it up and she did, and Chad's mom was flirting with Sasha too. It was a great, hilarious shot. We got a few cutaways (the cross, windows, etc.) and we wrapped the church.

After a quick lunch on campus we moved over to the library for a rejection montage shot with Sasha and Chad's sister. It was a simple dolly shot and it went very smoothly. I think we did 4 takes, but we nailed it on the first try.

We then lugged all the equipment over to the gymnasium for Emily's (Sam) "Rebound" portion of her monologue. We set this up and did a few takes. Easy suff. Eric almost pegged Emily in the head, but no matter, we got the shot and it looked good. This was a wrap for the day.

We had a quick location scout at one of the campus housign buildings and we booked it for the end of August. We will be using it for Keith's apartment. All in all it was a great day, a little more efficient than the previous. Up next is Whiskey Junction on the 12th for the opening scene. See you in a week.