Archive for October 2007

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Trick or Treat

Well our trick is having an amazing cover set to shoot in the dreary rain.     Our  treat is a wonderful art department who raced to have the hundreds of candles ready and Amy Smart who put in yet another rough and tumble night of hard work on this Halloween night. One of our investors Lell Barnes and his wife Judy spent the last two nights with us reviewing footage and spending a couple of hours on set.  Lell is a very accomplished architect who has been living and working in Shanghai for the last 12 years.  Lell chuckled as he realized we have unwittingly incorporated all the key elements of Feng Shui into our movie.  Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practice of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment.  Feng Shui literally translates as "wind-water."  Space, weather, astronomy, and geomagnetism are basic components of Feng Shui. Proponents claim that Feng Shui has an effect on health, wealth, and personal relationships.  Lell noted that we have included all three key elements earth, water, and tonight fire! After rain hit us yesterday evening we scrambled to reorganize the schedule to shoot in the house.  It meant extensive art department work and moving up our largest day of extras.  We have over 40 people in this candle séance that we shoot tonight.  Below is a snap of the relieved Matt Compton, one of our producers, who 24 hours earlier lead the charge.  All in all it made for an appropriately spooky Halloween.

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In a hole

Our blood splattered car is wedged firmly in a ditch surrounded by towering weeds and drooping trees.  It’s one o’clock in the morning.  “Let’s go…let’s go” yells Ed.  We’re behind.  For the first time on the film the elements have beaten us.  Rain.  First in a relentless down pour and then a torturous drizzle.  “That’s filmmaking” I chirp to the two investors who have been patiently waiting on the set hoping to catch the pale figures in action pounding the car.  “I think we should come back tomorrow and see them then – it looks like the rain is getting harder”.  “We’re not shooting pale figure tomorrow – tomorrow night candle house” growls Four – the first assistant director.  The schedule has been shuffled.  The Candle House is mostly interiors; a better bet as it looks like the rain will be with us again.  Matt Compton, the third producer who is mostly in charge of logistics, and Tasman our unit production manager, go into overdrive shifting people and equipment into the contingency plan.  Matt has a tough night as well. Hong Kong is notorious for its rain.  We are however out of the rainy season and so far this is the first rain we have encountered.  We originally planned for 5 rain days with a number of cover sets.  With us ahead of schedule we have some flexibility but as Gregg says – it really throws off the rhythm on set.  For the first time, we did not make our day.  We shot a lot: the actors climbing into the trunk, the man being slammed into the window, and some of the pale figure work.  These, as they say, are the times that try men’s souls!  Part of any production plan is predicting the worst and being prepared.  Fortunately we were able to build a rain tarp and shoot inside a large version of the car trunk.  Because the trunk is so tight it would have been really difficult to get the shots if we had tried to shoot everything in the real car trunk.  It is amazing how the illusion plays on camera.  Kudos also goes to the art department for having the candle house ready as the cover set.  Gregg and Ed are going to head out early today to make sure  it is ready.  Still the intensity holds on set.  Amy and Tim are pro’s and despite the long hard day we managed to get good material.  We’ll be back in the ditch on Friday sans rain (knock on wood) and finally the pale figures will get to pound some glass and metal.  Tonight?  Many, many candles and more stunts.

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END OF WEEK 3 - Half-way there!

15 days left! We kicked major ass last week. Really heavy week with the biggest fight scene of the film and we knocked out four days of work in two+ days. And got into some stuff from later in the film, including a car stunt, which went very nicely, I might add. Three short nights, too. I love those. Finished the damn barn fight scene. It was crazy because the set was built in the middle of a field and the dust was really fine and kept getting kicked up into the air with the slightest movement. I tried to stay away from wearing a freaking mask but after getting home and cleaning the darkest snot I've ever seen out of my nose, I figured that this shit getting into my lungs was not a good thing. The Hong Kong crew is kind of funny, though. 90% of them smoke like chimneys but they cover their noses at the slightest smoke or exhaust in the air, so they donned the masks immediately. But I had to join them in the mask-ness after my charcoal booger experience. Moved two scenes to the barn location, too. We were supposed to shoot these last week but decided to shoot them in sequence after the barn fight. I'm glad we waited. There's no way we could've guessed the continuity of their clothes. They were a lot dirtier than we thought they were going to be. Especially Tim, who got dragged around for a whole day or so. The actors were great, though. So were the stunt doubles. Ada (Amy's double) hurt her shoulder so we stopped after a few takes near the end, but other than that and Tiger's knee (old injury), the fight scene went off without too much pain. But I wasn't the one in there getting my ass kicked, either. Amy took an elbow to the neck which sounded bad, but she went right back into it and made it work. Started off with a few takes on the doubles and then moved into the actors. Tiger is a stunt man so it worked out really well that we didn't have to double him in any way. He had more work than anyone but it was fantastic to be able to always go to him in the shots even with the doubles. Saw that scene today after Johnny did a rough cut on it and it looks really nice. The hits are hard and the action is tight, and that's after just one quick pass. He worked all weekend to finish this pretty difficult scene so that we could give the orders for the barn set to be torn down. I think we have everything so they'll begin removing that sucker tomorrow. Shame, though, it's a nice little storage building for sure. But like Art Director Gloria said, we didn't really have permission to build it there so it's probably a good idea to tear it down. Almost 4 am on Monday morning. Just got back from playing WII with the boys. I'm bedding down soon. Big week this week. All the Pale Figures attacking the car stuff, which are the craziest scenes for sure. I've been dreading these scenes for weeks now but they don't seem to overwhelming to me now. We may even have a few short nights in there. My plan is to shoot Tim and Amy and get them out of there as quickly as possible and then concentrate on the Pale Figures. Should be fun. I think I have the Pale Figure thing figured out now, how to show enough but still keep it looking mysterious. They're looking terrific. So WEEK 4 begins! Check out the FLICKR for new photos I added tonight. No time for new YOUTUBE stuff, but I've added Tim Chiou's FLICKR page below and to SEVENTHMOON.COM. He has some great stuff of life in Hong Kong and on the set shit. Peace and wish us luck as we get over the hump of the mid-way point. It's all downhill from here, boys and girls! -ed HAXAN YOUTUBE DIRECTOR'S FLICKR PRODUCER'S FLICKR ACTOR'S FLICKR

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Dirt, stunts, and grunts

The original script did not have this scene and it has ended up being one of my favorite.  I won’t give any spoilers but let’s just say this country shed starts as a hiding place and ends as a hell hole.  The last 2 days have certainly been challenging. The art department built this set for us next to the abandoned ghost village.  It’s isolated, rusty, home to potentially dangerous farm bric-a-brac, and filled with dirt.  So much dirt that the crew and cast had to wear these masks inside and around the shed.  Amazingly Amy made even these masks look sexy! The fight sequence is fairly grueling work.  Ed starts with the stunt doubles and the stunt coordinator Mr. Hon Chun.  Mr. Chun has done quite a bit of work with Hong Kong filmmakers like Jackie Chan and surprisingly that was one of the first things Ed had to sort out regarding the creative approach to the fight.  They are so used to blocking kung fu fight sequences that to get a natural feel to the fight with 3 people frantically using everything they have to survive took a little time.  But the first night worked very quickly.  Shooting 3 cameras was again a saving grace and Ed was well prepared.  Tim gets his butt kicked the most and consequently spent most of the night spitting dirt. The second day in the shed saw a continuation of the fight and then our favorite friends the pale figures arrived on the scene.  All in all we moved quickly and were able to get ahead again on schedule.  It looks like it will be a fairly light night on Friday.  We’re about half way thru now and it’ll be good for everyone to catch their breath as we move into the third act of the film.  The true pain bearers of the last couple of nights have been  Ada and Roderik our doubles.  They literally took it on the chin.  Special thanks to them.

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Dog Days

Ed sums it all up in his post below.  I just wanted to add a few pics.

Us around our bloody dog....

Making bloody footprints.

A puppeteer coming our of his hole.

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WEEK THREE BEGINS - Emotional roller-coaster PART II

It's almost 2am here in Hong Kong and I've been home almost two hours already. Pretty short night tonight, even though we shot three full pages with five actors and a fake dog. I like the short nights. 19 more shooting days to go! I'm doing the countdown thing now, man. Just one day at a time or else it starts to overwhelm me. Still so many complicated scenes to go! But we have 48 pages to go, so we're almost at the half-way point. I just have to keep reminding myself of the little victories here and there, because I've been feeling a bit on the downside lately. Stef and the kids are a great help, but I've been feeling so freaking sorry for myself about having to shoot this damn movie. Last week was a great week and we shot some fantastic footage but I'm still feeling like a piece of shit most of the time on the set, looking forward so much to that van ride back to the apartment at the end of the night. The ALTERED ghosts are haunting the crap out of me. And then I sit down with Johnny and see some of the roughed in scenes and it makes me feel a lot better. The film so far is coming out nicely. Johnny edited together a little trailer for the last few investors Rob is trying to entice and he has a few shots of the Pale Figures (the bad guys in this film) that even scared me when they came on. And I shot the damn thing! Looking really nice. So tonight was better, and even though tomorrow and the next few days are going to be difficult, there's a good chance that we may wrap one day early and give ourselves a three-day weekend. Wouldn't that be marvelous! Anyway, so that's how it's been for me lately, an emotional roller-caoster. I feel euphoric sometimes and then I feel like my whole world is crumbling down on my and I never want to direct another film as long as I live. Seriously. I need meds or something. But the footage is good and I have great partners looking out for me so things will be all right. Stef and the kids are a big help and she's decided to stay and leave with me at the end of November so I couldn't be happier about that. Coming home to an empty apartment after a hard night was not something I was looking forward to. So anyway, to re-cap last week, it was a fine week, with a few short days, some Pale Figure work and some car problems. We finally moved into the car in the field location and it was just not a good few nights for us. First off, the car wasn't painted when we got there. Somebody dropped the ball because we were supposed to have gotten a look at it days before but it shows up fifteen minutes before shooting is to begin and it's not right. So Gregg blew a gasket and ended up painting a lot of the car himself. The art department on this film has been superb so I guess one screw-up is understandable. But the Pale Figure work that day was awesome. It's the first time they attack the car and we got some really scary crap of them on the hood and through the windows and stuff. The first shot of the face of one of these things is going to scare the hell out of people. It shocked me when it came up in Johnny's trailer and that wasn't even on a big screen or anything. Amy's scream is great, too. She should've been doing horror films years ago. Then the next night was another story. Car in field. Hong Kong. Not an easy combo. The field we found to look like the middle of nowhere is full of holes so people were tripping all night long. Plus, the path that the car makes through the field was a mess, too many people trampling the grass down to make it work well. Then the windows start fogging. And keep fogging. We have to stop mid-take because we can't see inside! I fall down the spiral of despair! Four comes up with the answer. Soap on the windows. Cuts the fogging up right away and we come back after lunch and nail a very nice scene between Amy and Tim. Probably there most tender moments together. They are great. So it was a tough week but we made all our days, so we're on schedule still. Three week is off to a nice start. Today was a scene we call GO AWAY HOUSE where our travelers find a house and the inhabitants tell them to, well, go away. Nice work with Tim, Amy and Tiger, who plays the MAN that they pick up on the road. We also shot the hell out of the dying dog that SPECTRAL MOTION built for us. We bloodied it up real good and shot some terrific stuff. It took two people to operate it. They were under the dog in this little bunker that they built last week. It looked fantastic. They started out slow but then Handsome, our second AD, started directing them through the radio and got that dog doing all kinds of twitches and shit. It honestly looked real for seconds at a time up above, and we shot it with three cameras, so I'm pretty positive we got a ton of good stuff. Great stuff, actually. Tomorrow we start the big fight scene in a barn building we built from scratch. We went to see it on Saturday and it's a nice-sized building that they built for us. We also met with the stunt coordinator and they were going to disguise some pads in the ground for the fight. It should be cool because the place is so cluttered. We'll have no problems making Amy's double look like her. Getting sleep now. It's almost 3 am but I've done some good work. Put some new photos up on FLICKR and YOUTUBE. And I'm feeling much better now, actually. The whole countdown and taking it one day at a time thing is working out for me. I'm going my darndest to wrap us a day early to get a three-day weekend for everyone so we'll see. Should be a short Friday, at least. So that's it from Hong Kong. Peace to everyone. -ed