08 Jun Louisiana Film Two Roads: Day 1 of Filming

General Thoughts

For me, the first day of filming Two Roads in Louisiana is usually the most difficult day. Though everyone comes in with fresh energy and a shared vision, for a producer/director, there is always the inevitable first day learning curve.

What is the first-day learning curve you ask? It is the first day everyone essentially relearns how a set is run. This may sound silly (because I run sets almost weekly and the crew is usually on various other sets throughout the year), but every set especially an indie film set is very different. Every set always involves the following changing factors: crew, cast, resources (equipment/props/food/stuff), and the uncontrollable/unpredictable factors of the universe.

All of these differences affect the speed, efficiency, and well-being of the set as a whole. How your first day starts also affects the pacing for the rest of the production. You never want to start off already behind schedule, for example, but sometimes that happens and it is very frustrating.

Here are a few of the trials and tribulations that we dealt with on our first day of shooting Two Roads.

Louisiana Film Two Roads

Waking up too early

Waking up to be on set at 6 AM is painful, but there are only so many hours of daylight in the day and so many camera setups to do. Not everyone is a morning person. I am most definitely NOT a morning person, and my co-director, is especially NOT a morning person. This means a lot of caffeine mixed in with the inevitable morning crankiness.

It also does not help that my brain refuses to go to sleep the entire week before a major production so I’m already surviving on 3 hours of quality sleep. I literally wake up several times during the night because I thought I forgot to do something for the set.

The Gel-ing Process

The first day of filming is learning how we all function as a team. The crew has to familiarize themselves with the set, where everything is, and learn/re-learn how we all work together. Though on the set of “Two Roads, the majority of the crew had already worked together in some capacity on other sets, it had been scattered and inconsistent through the year. We pretty much all have to figure out what it is like to function as a unit and reconcile and deal with all of our different personalities and quirks again. It is very much like a marriage. In filmmaking, I call it the gel-ling process. Though the geling process time decreases the more you work with the same people, the process never goes away no matter how many times you’ve worked with each other.

This year, we originally planned to have the same 5- person “A Bird’s Nest” crew and add two additional crew members, but when schedules solidified, we quickly lost one of the new crew members and our beloved “A Bird’s Nest” crew member, Roxy McDanel (makeup artist. Though we tried to add another replacement crew member, that also fell through. We still ended up with a 5-person crew, with our new member being seasoned crew member, Kellie Penna.

In addition, Adam Duncan, the co-producer and lead actor from “A Bird’s Nest,” and I decided to co-direct this year. Again, yet another change in the crew dynamics… long story short, there was a lot for us to learn from each other in a short period of time.

Building Trust with the Cast

The first day is also about building trust with the talent. Though we had the same lead actor, Adam Duncan, for this film… Adam plays a much more complex and difficult role in “Two Roads.”

We also had two new talent, Georgia Rose Bell and Mike Martindale joined the team. Working with new talent is always a learning experience. Again, the director really has to get to know each individual talent — how everyone works, how each person prefers direction, how often they need or like direction in order to feel comfortable as their character.

Though dealing with child actors is similar to an adult actor, really paying attention to who they are is extremely crucial. In the end kids are still kids, they want to have fun and are temperamental. On the set of “Two Roads,” I really needed to understand how to make our child actress, Georgia Rose feel as comfortable as possible in uncomfortable situations.

During a scene outdoors, for example, a giant hornet landed on our little actress’s dress without our realization since we were filming Adam’s closeup, and to our dismay, we heard (then saw) a very traumatized little lady running around in the background. We quickly realized that Georgia HATED bugs with an absolute passion. This little detail helped us all be very sensitive to keeping away anything resembling a bug around Georgia.

I also discovered that taking the time to occasionally introduce Georgia to the farm animals on set, playing a game before a shot, or allowing multiple breaks really helped her maintain focus, energy, and positive spirits.

In the end, if you take anything away from this anecdote, it is this… every actor has his or her quirks. Some need to be alone, some want to socialize; some need time with kitties, and more. This set more than any other set I have directed really taught me that the more I can spend the time to know and understand an actor, the easier it is to help them feel safe and deliver the best performance.

Louisiana Film Two Roads

Solving first day problems

The first day is also the day when you discover many of the problems you were unable to plan for or didn’t prepare well enough for. For example, realizing that the 2nd crew car forgot to bring the tops of the c-stands because the car was already way too full to accommodate the entire crew and more equipment was a problem neither Adam nor I could foresee happening, but it did. As a result at the last minute, both of us had to make multiple phone calls to grip houses looking for c-stands, with zero success.

One of the problems of shooting in an unfamiliar territory is the lack of connections. Usually in Austin, I would have several people I could call for an emergency such as this, but in Shreveport the only person I could think of was the electrician at the grip house we went to get our light fixed, who happened to not be answering our phone calls. So we just had to make do.

The other issue we ran into already on the first day was the ever-threatening bad weather. A lot of flexibility had to be made. I believe I made 2-3 contingency call sheet plans per shooting day. And even those call sheets were ripped to shreds and re-done again on the day of shoot. With an indie set due to the limited resources, you really are at the mercy of your surroundings. With a larger budget set, you have the luxury to delay and reschedule or bring in a giant silk to block the sun, or provide multiple rain tents. On a small set, you just have to be creative.

Louisiana Film Two Roads

Feedback

Finally to get through the day and make sure the next day runs smoothly requires constant feedback. Even when everyone is tired and exhausted and just want to go to bed, spending a good 20 minutes to talk about the day of activities with crew always ensures that similar problems do not occur the next day. It helps get frustrations out so that they do not fester into bigger problems and helps us maintain trust and communication with each other.

In the wise words of Tenacious D… “That’s F-in’ Team Work!!!!”

Unfortunately, after the 1st day learning curve and various obstacles, we were already 3-4 scenes behind our schedule… more juicy stories to come.