Principle Photography Completed!

We have finally reach the end of principle photography! Sorry I haven't been updating the blog as much as I have been (this one and my personal one). After the Lancaster shoot, schedules have been wonky and I was trying to scramble to get things we didn't shoot in Lancaster.

For our last day of shooting we went over to the apartment of a friend/mentor of mine named Damian Gonzalez. We shot the motel fight scene between our two female characters, which I really wanted to shoot in Lancaster because I had complete control of that location. For Damian's house, however, there were certain things we needed to be cautious about (namely breaking things). The fight scene went well enough for the first few takes and I had almost gotten all the coverage I would need for a set of the fight but on one the takes, Resa (Carmen), who was being pushed by Courtney (Jade) into a wall, bent his towel holder. If that wasn't bad enough, Resa's leather jacket left a lot of black marks on the walls and toilet seat. When we broke for dinner I told Damian what happened and he wasn't as angry as I thought he'd be. In fact, it was his girlfriend's wrath I would have to feel later on that night. Well, it was foolish for me to think the end of the night would end without a hitch. I guess I should have expected as much after this dibacle.

I think the fight scene turned out alright. I won't know until I capture the footage and start editing. I just really hope we don't have to do a single pick up for anything in that bathroom because we already intruded into their hospitality too far. When I shoot action it's pretty sporadic and sometimes I feel like I may forget certain things or I won't have good edit points. Usually, though, it turns out alright. I just like to worry a lot.

After dinner we did an interrogation scene, which was fun, but went on way too long due to lighting. Because it went too long I didn't have time to get the scene like I wanted in terms of the way I wanted it shot and the way some of the performances came off. I felt I did extremely terrible with directing the actors today and I would like to apologize to them for that but I was trying to get out of there before it became a shoot wrapping at 3 AM. If I had complete control of the location I'm sure I would want to do pick-ups for the interrogation scene.

After another short break we did another scene in the bathroom regarding a phone conversation which I enjoyed a lot, mostly because of the way I shot it and Courtney's performance. Because of the lightening issue I had to shoot it all at one angle because doing any reverse on Resa would mean taking ten minutes to relight her. So what I did was shoot everything at one angle through the bathroom's mirror so that you see Courtney, her back and Resa all in the same shot at a slight dutch angle. Then I just got tighter on Courtney, then to Resa and then an insert. I actually like doing this better than doing it as a generic "shot-reverse" setup. The mirrors were a drag to work with in that bathroom but I made it work for me in that scene. I'm proud of myself for that. Plus, Courtney really got into Jade's character in this scene. It felt less like she was "acting". I was watching the Kill Bill Vol. 2 Behind-the-Scenes the other week and Quentin Taratino had mentioned how, in the last scene they shot, Uma Thurman really nailed "The Bride" by the end of production. That piece of commentary reminded me of Courtney who I felt exactly the same way about. She really knew how to just step into the skin of Jade and step right back out.

Wrapping was cool. There was a huge group hug session but then we overcleaned Damian's house to make up for the broken towel holder and dirty walls (which were also cleaned). It was a very laid back shoot. Most of the crew had nothing to do until the dialogue stuff came up. At a point I was come over with fatigue but I came through that somehow. Can't wait for Thursday and Friday. We have two pre-screenings at Hamilton and Reseda High School. We'll be showing them full rough cuts of the film and then we'll have a focus group set up and we'll discuss what they enjoyed/disliked about the film, favorite scenes, improvements that could have been made, etc. I'll definitely blog about those experiences.

***A Devil's Company Blog Exclusive***

Courtesy of Alex Bleyer's Blackberry

Now onto Post-Prodcution! My favorite part of the filmmaking process! :-D

- Antoine Bandele (Director)