" . . . Where all the lights are bright!"

Yesterday Ashley Talbert, Chris Bucheit, and I braved the streets of San Antonio as we were shooting some B roll footage for the documentary. As we entered downtown San An, we sang "Downtown, where all the lights are bright . . ." but those were the only words we knew of the song, so needless to say the singing fizzled out quickly. We took some beautiful shots of the riverwalk, the Alamo, Hemisfair Park, and the Alamodome, each which plays a role in the story we're trying to tell. Not too much else to tell except there was alot of walking around involved and carrying around a camera and/or tripod around San An can get pretty tiring. We finished the night with a dinner with Ashley's family which consisted of some amazing brisket . . . . . . mmmmm.

. . . a summer's day?

Yesterday we filmed Sonnet #18 starring Lindsey Rendon. Lindsey starred as the dead wife in my last film "Countdown" and she was so fun to work with that I asked her to come back for a sonnet, we had discussed it briefly awhile ago and she had picked out Sonnet #18, which I later found out is one of the more famous ones . . . so no pressure on us. On Wednesday we had scouted out a really cool park right next to Lindsey's house, and it provided everything we needed for the shoot, like a tree swing, flowers, big open fields, and little coves where teenagers smoke pot . . . uhh, we didn't need that, this is a drug-free film . . . just say no and take a bite out of crime. Anyway, I was really excited to film until that morning when I was driving to work the heavens dumped all its rage onto Austin, and I was depressed because its summer and its raining and we would have to delay the filming. However, a blessing came and when it was time to shoot at 12:30, it was blue skies . . . that was mostly cloudy. I think Shakespeare probably imagined a very different day than that one when comparing his muse to "a summer's day", one that had less mosquitoes and more . . . summery. The important thing though, was that it had stopped raining. We went out on the field and I had Lindsey walk around not having the slightest clue what she was doing taking directions from me who was just pretending to know what he was doing. We also had Chris Bucheit star as the guy. He had come the day before for a photo shoot which was necessary for this film, and he was there for a short time during the filming, but when he was there I was cracking up the whole time, just cause I can't direct any kind of romantic scenes (why then am I making films of sonnets? . . . . I ask myself that a lot, and I still don't have an answer) what was supposed to be romantic first turned out to be awkward (sums up my dating life, except, its always awkward). But we eventually got it down. Kyle Dorwart, who is always and ever-ready crew member manned the boom mic and Dan Jones returned again as the behind the scenes documenter. After about an hour and a half Lindsey had to go to work so Dan and Kyle and I took some more shots and came up with a stellar idea for a pilot webisode called "Joe Striker" I can't reveal too much, but think Dan Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . with a mullet. Need I say more?
We continued filming later that evening when Lindsey was done with work. William Jackson (who is one of my heroes by the way) was the crew and we shot the dark room scenes and finished up with Lindsey in the field walking around for 20 minutes taking fake pictures of nothing while I filmed, but it will look cool in the end. Peace out for now

. . . Nothing like the Sun

On Thursday I started filming my "Series of Sonnets", a project that I actually came up with in high school and am just now picking up where I left off. I had talked with Jesse Ormsby about it weeks ago, and he came back to me with Sonnet #130. Jesse was the first one I thought of when starting this project, he's helped me with scripts in the past, and well, c'mon, if anyone would portray Shakespeare, it would be Jesse. I have since read #130 over and over again, and love it, I'm not Shakespeare scholar myself, but to me its a celebration of the quirks in people, its the imperfections that you love the most, its what makes you you. Now if any young lady were to celebrate my imperfections, I have plenty . . . I'll celebrate all your imperfections too . . . any takers? . . . nobody? But for the purpose of the film, I decided to change the tone to a "make-up" story--the guy and girl get in a huge fight but then make-up, what did you think I was talking about, Loreal? no I don't wear that stuff, only occasionally . . . every other weekend . . . okay every weekend--yes it does throw in more drama, and well, I'm not a fan of drama, I enjoy laughing much more . . . or explosions . . . caused by giant robot aliens . . . that disguise themselves as 18 wheelers. But I took this direction because it gave the sonnet the power of telling a story.
It was pretty cloudy through the whole day, but thankfully it never rained on us and we still got plenty of light. The "muse" or "beloved" of this sonnet turned out to be Tara Barborka, and she was awesome. I approached like 3 girls before I got to Tara, and, Tara, does that mean you're the 4th round draft pick? Absolutely not, it means that you were meant to be in it. I thought I had settled on one girl, but the day before filming she tells me that she can't make it, so I panic and scramble, and call up Tara, and she says "of course". Tara to the rescue? Absolutely. I think Tara's biggest challenge were the scenes of her fighting with Jesse, she had trouble getting mad . . . and she started to feel awkward around the improvised discussion between the two which veered toward the topic of making-out . . . I think the phrase "lightsaber in my mouth" was actually uttered . . . just don't ask. However, Tara's high-point came at a scene where she had to look like she had been sobbing in front of the bathroom mirror. We had to come up with a way to evoke that emotion, and thinking "my dog is dead" just wouldn't cut it. So super crew member Kyle Dorwart suggested to play some emo Death Cab songs (they are the best by the way), Tara said that country music makes her cry, country music makes me cry too, not cause its emotional, just cause its bad, and I was kidding about crying. Well, to pull off the look Tara stuck handsoap in her eyes to give them the swelled up, teary look, now that's what I call dedication! She looked great, well the "I look like a wreck" sort of great. A sonnet isn't that long of a poem so the shoot only lasted about 3 1/2 hours, which is nothing, and everything went pretty smoothly overall, we'll see if editing will be as agreeable. Props to Kyle Dorwart on crew and car and Dan Jones on behind-the-scenes documenter.

Trip #2 down to San An--checking out some sites

Last Sunday, July 15 was our second time down to San Antonio on the San Antonio Project, one week after our successful interview with the Norman's. We were just doing location shooting so it was just Rodd, Mark, and myself. It was a little more laid back because we weren't interviewing anyone, we didn't need to be anywhere at a certain time or look presentable in front of anybody, we just went to some buildings and checked them out. The first stop we went to was the Bailey Street chapel. I learned from Mark that Harold B. Lee dedicated it and that Sis. Norman was the first baby blessed in it. It is found in the middle of a suburb, surrounded by a chain-link fence and all boarded up. It was a very dilapidated building. There was a walkway through the fence so we were able to walk around and get a closer look, it was almost kind of sad, this building plays a prominent part of the story we are trying to tell, it was a very significant mark in the history of the church in that area, but now it just sits there lost and forgotten. As we were taking some panning exterior shots there was a neighbor who just had a look of a gangster, was he? Probably not, but we decided to humor ourselves and think it was, anyway he was lookin tough and spewed out a signal whistle to his homies letting them know that some guys with cameras were invading their turf. That's my theory anyway, to make it more exciting. Our next stop was the Thomas Jefferson High School, which the early church met for stake conference in that area. It was a really cool high school, it had a very old, archaic, almost colonial (Thomas Jefferson?) structure to it. It also had a firescape in the form of a metal slide. Awesome? Yes. Our last stop was the St. Cloud Chapel which was the first stake center built in the area and is still in use today. I got some marvelous shots with the evening sun glistening behind the trees and steeple. Anyway, the accompanying video diary to this blog is Video Diary #2, so check it out!

Car Trouble

Well, we left today at about 4 o’clock heading toward San Antonio for the Ann Roberts interview. We were pretty relaxed and just expected another day of shooting much like the Norman interview which went smoothly overall, so we were enjoying a Sunday afternoon trip in Rodd’s car. A new member of the crew today was Chris Bucheit, who has a bachelor’s from UT in film, so he was a welcome addition. Things started to get stressful when we got within the San An city limits, we were already running late and we ended up getting extremely lost. We have now determined that Mark Sanderson will not be charge of directions. We went around in circles and when we finally got our bearings straight we found out that we were only a few blocks away from the Norman’s house where we were two weeks ago! We also decided that we want Ashley to come down with us as often as she can. She didn’t come down with us today, and we ended up missing her; we get lost in so many ways without our production manager! We eventually arrived at the Roberts’ home and met Ann Roberts, who was the first person baptized in the bailey st chapel, and her son Larry Roberts, who tricked a general authority in eating a jalapeno. Bro. Roberts wasn’t feeling up to an interview, so we interviewed Ann Roberts, who is an incredibly charming woman in her 70’s with a bright personality and a good memory. It took awhile for us to get the lighting right, our original set up had to be changed several times with us moving the lights and switching the gels, and after about 45 minutes we finally settled on a good lighting set up. The interview went well, it was very informative and the spirit was there. We packed up and were heading home, and I was wrapping up on the video diary, but I ended up speaking to soon, as Rodd noticed some warning signs on his car and had to pull over. It ended up that his radiator was completely dry! We stopped at a service station and got two big bottles of fluid, but that still wasn’t enough, so we went over to HEB and got some cheap gallons of water, and finished filling it up. So, what we expected just to be another interview ended up being something very different, when life throws curve balls, you still gotta hit it.

San Antonio Project-A Look at the first day

July 8, 2007 This is the first production blog for what I call "The San Antonio Project". This project is headed by my friend Mark Sanderson, and we are making a documentary about the history of the LDS Church in the San Antonio area. So after church ended in Austin, Mark, Tony Lewis, and myself met at Rodd Simonsens house. After eating Rodd's homemade tator-tot casserole (the tots were still cold, and the hamburger wasn't cooked all the way, but we still ate it cause we were hungry). We were running a little late because Rodd had to make one last minute trip to RadioShack to pick up another lavalier mic. The ride down to San An was fairly uneventful except for the part where this guy preceded to flip us off multiple times, always driving up to the side of us, flipped the bird, fell back, speed up to the side of us, repeat . . . oh wait, again . . . I found it rather humorous, I tried to get it on my camcorder put it turned out to be in vain. We got to San An, and one restaurant that we have already made plans to eat at was "Henry's Puffy Taco" Why, you may ask, because its a restaurant called "Henry's Puffy Taco"!!!
The people we were interviewing were Sis. Norman, and her sister Sis. Thompson, who were daughters of the first stake president of San Antonio. Set up took about 45 minutes, we had worked the setup and experimented with lighting the day before, having to make trips to Wal-Mart and Home Depot. We came up with a good set up but we didn't know how it would look in the Norman's home. Lighting consisted of a few reading lamps from Wal-Mart clipped on mic stands with gels and diffusion paper taped onto them. The miracle about it was that I checked the monitor after we set it up and the lighting looked beautiful! I was pleasantly surprised . . .
The interview went really well, I manned the camera, Rodd monitored the audio, Tony took photographs when he could, Ashley supervised as production manager, and Mark interviewed. The interview went really well, and at the end the two sisters bore their testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. The Spirit was very strong in the home, and we stayed after we took everything down and hung out with the family for a little bit. We ate sandwiches at Rodd's brother's house and then we headed back for Austin after a triumphant day of filming . . .