Mondo Beacho Update Feb 10, 2014

L-R: Erik Hammen and Steven Sterne,
on set for Mondo Beacho.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

It snowed last night in Seattle, so who's thinking about Mondo Beacho, a rock n' roll beach movie of the mind?

Hint: me

On Sunday, I finished up the gig scene and the post-gig codas, including a bit of cloudy day, and then started on to the next record store scene. (Over on the right is Steven Sterne, spinning the wax and that's a fact. )

It was a very busy half day of shooting at the record store. We were up before dawn and had to be out before 11:00 AM. In putting together the clips for this scene, I realized that we missed a shot. 

I went into the vault and reviewed all the footage from that day, and we got a lot done. The footage goes and goes and goes.

Not a lot of takes, though, and as time got tighter toward the end, we started consolidating shots. Instead of a master and two singles, it'd be a master only. But we definitely missed one shot all together. Welcome to the glamorous world of independent film.

However! I think I know how to solve the problem.

Maybe it'll even be better than the original idea.

That's why editing is fun.

L-R: Ahren Buhmann, Emily Purington,
Riley Neldam during production.
(photo by Mel Cafe)

Back to the gig scenes -- I gotta say those came out as good as I could've imagined. They're fun and entertaining, but seem "real" as well.

It was quite a puzzle though, getting it all to work together like it needed to. I mean, you'd think I'd have learned something from the other band scene, which I put together not that long ago.

But not really, no.

All I did was relearn my weekly mantra --  the hard way.

Speaking as the resident expert, in a Rock n' Roll Beach Movie of the Mind you gotta keep the "mind" part very present. So intellectual exercises, or "doing things the hard way" are an important part of the process.

Today's second photo was taken at the production house, during that vague period between Makeup and Shooting on the day of the gig shoot. Riley and Emily are waiting.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Mondo Beacho update Monday Jan 20

Ahren Buhmann and Sarah Winsor on set
photo by Mel Cafe

I'm working on the movie theater scene and accompanying bookends, hoping to finish them up tonight.

We originally shot a different version of the theater scene inside the mighty Grand Illusion, but unfortunately that didn't work out. We reshot one scene another day back in the theater, but ended up doing the rest outside further down the Ave.

At the time, I was wondering if we'd run into trouble with the the Rat and Raven, whose establishment abutted the creepy stairwell we were commandeering for the shoot. I'd done a drive-by of the location a day earlier and it looked like they were painting outside. We were working fairly early in the day, but the local reprobates were already queuing up outside the bar across the street. A few potential problems here, and kinda/sorta no backup plan, nor desire to figure out how to do it the official way at this point.  But,  bon chance!  It turned out the painters had been painting over the signage; the Rat n' Raven had gone belly-up. (The actual rats and ravens, however, remained on site.)

Drunk on good luck, we also tried running across the street to ask the vegan restaurant next to the bar if we maybe set up our camera on their their roof, to get a production-values-friendly aerial shot. But they were in the middle of brunch and didn't want to talk to us. We ended up parking Kat's truck in the middle of the street and shooting from the back. Worked just as well.

I also spent a lot of time last week editing the band practice scene.

That was a complicated one, because the scene needs to do several things at once: show the relationships between a bunch of new characters, be cool as a band practice, and also fit in with the look/feel of the rest of the film.

For most of the previous scenes, (including the movie theater scenes) I've just been eyeballing all the footage at once and assembling it intuitively. But the band practice scene just had too much going on for that to work.

(L-R) Kenna Kettrick, Amanda Keogh, Alyssa Kay,
Zach Sanders,and Brian Wolbert on set.
photo by Mel Cafe

I ended up going back to look at how I'd diagrammed it in the screenplay for the actual shoot (go figure), and pretty much started over, but it went well after that.

It was sorta like when you're trying to figure out a technical problem and you finally decide to look at the manual.

And continuing my practice of doing everything the hard way.

But -- with the accumulated knowledge from doing it the hard way!

"Hard: my calling card"

     -- Chuck D