Luckily, with an 18 hour day behind us, we had worked a day off into the schedule, because we knew we would be switching to nights for the rest of the shoot. So the 18 hour day helped people get on the new schedule, and I think everyone needed the day off.
DAY 5: ULTIMATE FIGHTING GYM-FULLERTON
This was a free location because of Mike O'Hearn, who called a friend and set it up. Aside from being ridiculously ripped, Mike is an awesome guy, who will hopefully be a huge star soon. No one deserves it more.
This was a huge gym...with a fighting cage on one side and a string of heavy bags and mats on the other. We tried to use as much of the space as possible, but it was difficult because of lighting. We weren't able to change out the flourescent bulbs because of time, and we didn't have plus green gel....so it became a day of "it is what it is" otherwise, we weren't going to have time to get through all of the shots. For the cage fight, we had two Source 4s to give some edge light, and 4 bank Kino-Flo’s for fill.
I can tell you something I learned about doing stunts....get a stuntman! We, of course, didn’t have money for that, but here's the thing...getting flipped and kicked, and falling down is really fun for the first 5 takes...but in a fight, you need a LOT of setups, and getting the right angles for each punch takes a while. I was so sore towards the end of the day that when they said they needed one more take of Mike flipping me across the cage, I wasn't sure my body was going to handle it. I do know that if I had to do one more after that...I probably couldn't have done it.
DAY 6: DOWNTOWN PARKING GARAGE/RIO STRIP CLUB
At night, when I arrived onset downtown, all I heard was the screeching of tires. I parked on the roof of the parking garage and looked down to see our hero car whipping around corners on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Our producers had arranged for a stunt driver to come and do the shots whipping through the garage, but when they arrived on set, they saw how abandoned the area was. With that in mind, they decided to go outside and do some guerilla filmmaking. The driving shots really add some production value to the show, and add to the fact that our characters are both reckless and skilled.
We also had a shot where we were going to run over a bystander in the garage. We had looked at several ways of doing this in post, using After Effects. But our stunt driver Paulie was also a stunt man, and volunteered to be the man we hit. He was so believable in the pieces that we shot, that we never had to do any of the After Effects work we thought we might need.
In several of the episodes we needed gunfire. You can do it in After Effects, but I am always a fan of getting as much in camera as you can. The problem is that guns require a gun master, a pyrotechnician, and special insurance. Too much money. Luckily, someone has come up with a low budget answer...there are prop guns called "non-guns." They are great gun replicas, and have a 9 volt battery inside that ignites small flash loads, like little fireworks. They aren't very loud, and you can get different size flashes. They were life savers for us!
This was our big company move day....heading to the strip club. What a place to finish the shoot! Let me tell you that finding a strip club to shoot in is HARD. We attempted to use every contact we had, offered money, it didn't matter. In the end, one of the creative execs from 60 Frames had a contact that came through. We had a limited amount of time there, so we had to work fast. At this point in the shoot the crew was so dialed in that we knew we could make it. In the end, we actually finished early, and managed to give a cameo to our production designer, Elvis Strange. He was so perfect for the DJ at the strip club!
PICK UP DAY: TOWNHOUSE-WOODLAND HILLS
With the idea of shooting an episode a day, the director decided to cut the opening to our second episode. In the end, the studio really wanted it. With our director off to the east coast shooting One Tree Hill, we had our good friend and producer Jeff Ketcham direct the scene. We shot it at my house, since I had some equipment, and it just made it easier. Our DP volunteered to come so the look could be maintained, and our crew was...our friends. It was a fun night.
