This year, I am attending Compass College of Cinematic Arts, a small faith based film school in Grand Rapids, MI. Through the year, I have been learning about film, the process of making them, and how to make good stories. This last third term, there are 5 final thesis films to be made. I was chosen as one of the 5 producers, which has been an incredible honor. It's nice to know that the people around me see me as responsible enough to lead a group through the making of one of those final films. We created the teams that would do the work and were sent on our way. I chose a script, later entitled 'Timeless', about a man who is accused of murdering his wife and is sent to prison. While in prison, he creates a time machine to go back to try to save her. I chose Bri Brincat as the director. She had never directed before, and she is only the second female to direct a thesis project at Compass. She has done a magnificent job and I am so very proud of the job that she did over this last weekend of shooting!
We went into last week struggling a bit on a couple locations, but we ended up finding our last two locations the day before shooting began. We also were struggling to put together the last of the set art and props.
June 22 and 23, Day 1 and 2-
Our first 2 days took place at Ann Benoit's house, who was our Location Manager. We met at Compass in the morning and carpooled out to location. Travis Babbitt, who was my Line Producer, and I ran over to Gorilla Pictures to pick up some extra batteries for the RED Camera, which was the camera that the movie was filmed on. When we got to the location, people were ready to go. We staged all of the equipment in the garage. Travis and I set up the crafty (food) table, and everyone else set up for the jobs they were to do. Our teacher, Tom Greenberg, stayed around all day the first day to make sure that everything with the camera department and RED Camera was good, as it's a totally new piece of equipment to our school. For the most part, Travis and I were able to relax those first 2 days. Every once in a while, we needed to go get something from the store and such, but otherwise our crew and set was a well oiled machine that I'm proud to say that was so easy to manage on set! Our crafty was put together by the lovely Donna Sawyer, who made the best on set food I've had so far this year by far! We blasted through those 2 days, and though we were tired, we were all very happy to be on that set.
June 24, Day 3-
Our third day took place at Gaslight Village in East Grand Rapids. From the very first time I visited that location on the scout, I knew that I wanted our set to be there. I was ecstatic when we found out that we could shoot on their streets and store fronts. So when we got there, we set up in the parking garage. Because we were always so spread out as a crew all the time, I am so thankful that we had a walkie talkie system going. Because of the good naturedness of the crew, we were able to use code names over the radios. The 1st Assistant Director Mike Campbell went as 'Chicken Noodle', Chad Ice went as 'Iceman', Travis went as 'Papa Bear', I went as 'Mama Bear', and so on and so forth. I know that those code names will probably be brought up in the stories we tell for years to come! That location gave our film such a great feel. I'm still so happy that we got to use it!
June 25, Day 4-
Those first 3 days went so very well! We only had minor hiccups that we were quickly able to fix on the spot. Then the 4th day hit us. In fact, it hit us square in the face. It was the day where we were to use the 2 locations that we had locked last minute. The first part of the day, we used the basement of the Grand Rapids Civic Theater for the jail cell scenes. There was a lot of miscommunications on both our part and the theaters, making for a rough morning. On top of that, there was a lot of tention among the crew, making some tempers flare. But we kept up our professionalism and got through the shots we needed. We were able to get out a little later than we wanted, but we still got out. We all moved back to Compass for crafty. We had a hard time getting ahold of the actors scheduled for the afternoon because we had gotten out late. Ann and I went over to the other location and they told us that they didn't know who we were and that we weren't scheduled. So for an extremely stressful hour, we tried to get ahold of the head guy at the location. We finally did and he came over. Because of the mix up, our scheduled 3 hours of shooting had to turn into an hour and a half shoot. So we quickly had to get what we needed. We finally got out and wrapped up the film.
Obviously this blog is condensing 4 ten hour days into a short post about the experience. What I have written is only the tip of what we all experienced and went through. This crew was by far the best crew I have ever been a part of. It's so cool to work with most of the same people I was with on our first shoot during the first term of Compass. These men and women have grown so much! And it was a pleasure to work with and become friends with new people as well. I have been ready to leave Michigan for a while now, but this shoot makes me sad that I am leaving these people soon.
Thank you all so much once again for making this shoot so awesome! I am so excited to see the finished product! You all rock face!!!
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