Bouncing Beer Bottles, A Drunken Haymaker, and A Mighty Roar!

Our fourth Saturday of shooting was packed full of action, drama, comedy, romance, and a totally boss superhero move from one of our stars!

Cece and Nate between takes.

On the production side of things, we knew the day was going to be tough to make. We had four of the actors call at 10am. In order to speed up the process a bit, we decided to send them to makeup in a particular order and then as each one came out of makeup we put them to work shooting various coverage shots we needed to get. The strategy worked out great. We made productive use of our time rather than wait for everyone to be ready to go for the master shot.

Dana and Quinton telling totally gross stories...er...running lines.

Lindsay and Cece taking in the terrible tales.

Nate and Dana getting ready for a take.

Several of the scenes were single shot masters with a great deal of movement and interplay between the characters. We blocked out each scene first. Then we rehearsed all of the choreographed action and camera movement several times. Once we thought we were close, we went for a take. All of the actors did a fantastic job and we got through each of those scenes in a quick and efficient manner.

Nate about to get his lip bit off as his character goes in for an unexpected kiss.

Cece, Nate, Dana, and Quinton just about ready to give the scene a go.

The cast working through the action for the first shot.

We spent most of the day getting all of the group kitchen scenes shot. After a dozen or so full bottles of Milepost 42 Lager had hit the floor, and Allison delivered a superb drunken haymaker punch / fall to the floor, darkness had fallen and it was time to move outside. But we suddenly had a problem...

Cece stands by as makeup artist Yuma checks the actors look before a take.

The location stands right next to a large public park. The day had been relatively quiet making it far easier to capture good audio. As soon as we took everything outside to do the exterior front porch scenes, Ozzie Osbourne's Crazy Train blared out of a set of speakers from a baseball field not fifty yards from where we were shooting. This was followed by several other songs. It looked like we were not going to be able to record audio. I wanted to get the shots anyway. We are on an extremely tight schedule so I figured we'd handle it with ADR if necessary in post.

Quinton and Nate get wired up for sound by our sound guy Riley as the unwelcome music thunders just outside the front door.

But then Dana came to the rescue of the production! She marched over to the wall that separates the location property from the ball fields and the park. As soon as one of the songs ended, she belted out at the top of her lungs, "Hey! Keep it down!"

The echo of her powerful voice boomed throughout the neighborhood and every corner of the enormous park. And not another peep came over the wall. We had our silence for the rest of the night!

It's a go on the front porch after Dana silences the booming music.

Quinton, Lindsay, and Cece waiting for another take.

The night finished a half-hour early. We got everything we wanted to get for the day. The remarkable cast was energetic and in great spirits throughout the long twelve hours of shooting.

We've got another busy Saturday coming up this week. Stay tuned...we're almost half-way there!