Finally something in the can!

We finally have something in the can!

After all these months of moaning about preproduction and rewriting, we actually went out with camcorder and director in hand and shot stuff.

This past Saturday (May 12), Mullet and I were joined by Andrew Currie, esteemed grad of the Second City mainstage company, one half of the Devil's Advocates, blogger extraordinaire, and producer of the late Second Cine video show which played a couple of videos we did. AC is also a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre, so he actually knows what he's doing.
This was our first experience with a pro, and it was a good learning experience for us.

We shot it on location on a side street one block north of Queen West, between Spadina and University. Behind the Rivoli, really. In fact, we used their garbage cans for a few shots, much to the dismay of some tired-looking cooks and a bemused manager. The street had these great alleys and laneways, strewn with garbage, brilliant and mundane graffiti, and that big city grunge that can't be craeted by art directors (unless they have a lot of money or use the real thing...).

AC wanted to work chronologically as he was basically editing in camera with minimal coverage. He didn't need the slate as he'll be editing it himself, but I did grey-card the first tape just to make sure I can get colour-balance done later on. I brought along my usual continuity log sheets, but they weren't needed, either. This was one difference between how AC shoots and how we did it, but with a 5-page script, I guess the usual slate/log stuff is probably borderline overkill. We have shot stuff without logging it or slating it, like our Aristocrats DVD contest entry which was 5 takes of the same story with 2 cameras, so I only changed the take number on the slate to mark the start and end of each take.

We did a number of takes for each set up until he got one good one and one safety in the can. This is basically what we do, so this was nothing new --though he did apologize when making us do another take when hunched over or fumbling through garbage (not necessary --we've made ourselves do a lot worse for a lot more takes...). With the lines being minimal and me not having to do more than perform, I was more focussed on the performing than I usually am, so I believe I sucked less than usual.

Mullet was good, too,