- DAY 4: March 30, 2013
Good Friday weekend. Short day today. Down at our Board of Trade offices shooting a bunch of Mayfair Cams scenes. Today’s work is primarily in the Mary Rose (Caitlin Collins) arc—starting with Mary Rose’s entrance in the Chat model business, following her as Orphan Annie (Marielle de Serra Rocca) teaches her the ropes. The 4 A.M. start time is cruel and unusual punishment, but a necessity due to the Easter weekend schedule.
There are upsides to being the Writer-On-Set. One of these is being to roll in at 9:30a.m. for a half-day of shooting without a single person missing you. The sleep deprived crew rolls in pre- 4 A.M., the Art Department works from scratch to put together Mary Rose’s chat room. Far more basic than the veritable dungeon of Orphan Annie, the plan is to use black light on this space tomorrow. This character reads the French Poets to her Mayfair Cams clients, using her English Lit education to elucidate the classics like a digital Anais Nin.
The other scene which stands out today, a harrowing moment, is the recreating of a piece of film that Falcon (Rush Pearson) sees in a movie theater. Without revealing too much (check out the movie!) I’ll just say it was one of those small scenes you don’t expect much from, which turnedout scary good. Our DP (Fred Miller) and his crew set up a nightmarish red-gel effect for the whipping, the actress (Gabi Mayorga) nailing it complete with tears, just hard hard hard to watch. Three cheers for the bravery, Gabi!
12 hours come and go. At least it’s daylight this time. Stumble home, do it all again tomorrow, 4 a.m.
- DAY 5: March 31, 2013
Hello, 4 A.M! Constantly amazed by the dedication of the crew to schlep out of their beds at 3 a.m. and stumble down to the Board Of Trade location. I join them at 9:30 again, feeling guilty…for about two minutes.
Every day brings some sort of quasi-emergency and today is no different. The plan is to shoot Mary Rose’s chat room HEAVILY in black-light, only…when they take a camera test of Mary Rose’s face (Caitlin Collins), they discover the black-light impacting her very fair skin tones in ways better suited for a horror flick. Why the hell is the black-light doing that to her skin? How do we fix it? Every gaze pretty much moves to answer-man DP (Fred Miller). It can be fixed, riiiiiiight Fred? Not sure what magic bag Fred reaches down into but Caitlin films about a dozen scenes in there, and the playbacks look good. Fred, how the hell do you do that? Buy that man as many Starbucks frappucinos as he desires!
Speaking of Caitlin…the day was dedicated to all things Mary Rose. The scenes filmed today are a smorgasbord for her character, from her first interactions with Falcon (Rush Pearson), all the way to the end of their relationship. The scene where he buys her a birthday cake and she sings to him via webcam is a killer.
Another small scene stood out today. The actress playing Barbie (Ashley Lobo) mentioned she had hula-hoop skills during the audition. We had wanted a brief moment for transitions with a Hula-Hoop model and so she’s doubling in that role. We put her into the black lit Mary Rose room, put some orange glow paint on her face and body, two LED hoops around her waist and a glow stick in either hand, some Massive Attack on the box(not using it in the movie because the cost would probably equal our total budget!)… Now call action! She’s an orange vision and the LED hoop-effect should provide some most interesting blurs! Very cool indeed.
We also get a look for the first time at Orphan Annie in her catsuit and all her nasty BDSM accessories. Debate on the poster will be saved for another day but our noble director Boris sees Orphan Annie silhouetted in gel light and thinks this might be a good place to start. Menacing as she places the dog collar upon kinky Mayfair Cams owner Geoffrey. What happens in Vegas might stay in Vegas, but here Vegas is right down that hallway, Annie leading Geoffrey by the dog collar until they disappear behind the bathroom door. And what happens inside there?
Check the movie to find out!
- · Day 6: April 6, 2013
8 A.M. sez the call sheet–sans yours truly. The body of this Writer-On-Set rebels. It’s more than my inability to drag my ass down to our downtown Board Of Trade location (for the 3rd straight weekend). I now have the rhythm down for how things are coming together on this shoot. So much so that when I arrive at 10:30a.m. they are finishing up the last lighting touch on the Conference Room and are ready for a first take of the day. I have it timed down to within two minutes!
We were incredibly lucky to bag this location in the first place. Connections, connections….a relationship with one of our crew allowing us to film here. And if we had to pay for digs like this? You don’t have to be a whiz to figure out that this single location has saved us about $20,000 dollars.
When we first considered this location Boris and I realized instantly that scenes written for Syd’s office would have to be moved to the Conference Room. Incredible room. It’s more than just classy or cool. The point is it goes against. Want a Lynchian feel? Something other than sleeze? Set design here is a slick, professional, classical Chicago monied board room. The making of millions is actually discussed through these glass doorways. We are re-purposing that for the movie. Millions of dollars pour through our CHAT doors too. Not by investing in oil futures…but through Mayfair Cams serving up the illusion of sex.
The CHAT landscape that appears sexual is actually completely asexual. And the first taste of that guarded world is today’s scene where Falcon arrives at Mayfair Cams for the first time.
Like with so many of these scenes, we actually film two scenes in one. The first in the objective “real world” look; the second in Falcon’s POV. Boris and Fred film both objective and “mirror” scenes from one side of the room, favoring a single character, then turn to grab the other character. With both come the push ins for CU’s, also inserts of a hand hitting a phone button, or delievering a DVD to Falcon. As Rush Pearson plays Falcon, the approaches to the two scenes are subtly different. We want a surreal feel but we don’t want to push Rush’s performance out into grotesquery. Lynch, not Terry Gilliam. Rush, Joe, and Rick Peeples nail the scene.
Boris then splits the crew. 2nd Unit will shoot both Rick and Rush in separate elevator shots while Fred and the rest of the crew start lighting Syd’s office for one of the biggest dialogue scenes we’ve attempted yet—where Geoffrey confronts Syd about the business, giving him an deadly ultimatum. Without getting into details, there’s basically no movie without this scene. I’m loving what Sara and her Art Department have done here. Syd is a lowlife who has given about 10 seconds of thought to office décor—and his room looks like it. Cheesy Mayfair Cams posters, barcart with Scotch, and his “security” screen where no less than nine of his chat models are being “monitored” 24/7. Fred lights the scene with an apple box propping open blinds which allows a distant red gel light to appear, giving real distance and depth. Without giving away the scene, Joe and Rick nail it, Rick uttering a line I’ve been waiting months to hear (and no, it won’t make sense to you until you see the damn movie)—“FUCK TURKEY!”
It might become our “Argo Fuck Yourself!”
The great feeling from today is checked a bit when I discover that tomorrow we’re shooting about half our Exterior shots. Good Reader, I am telling you, keep the exteriors to a minimum. I did so, but sometimes you just gotta have those EXT’s, and Boris rightfully scheduled them to be shot on a single day.
Only one little problem: When he did so he neglected to look at the City Events calender.
Tomorrow is the Shamrock Shuffle. Tens of thousands of people will be partying downtown. The Trot scheduled to end just as we’re scheduled for the first of our exterior shots! Wonderful!
Considering that we’re shooting in shadow of the Sears Tower, with multiple Extras scenes scheduled, a crowd-control force you could number on one hand, a handful of critical shots to be shot, and hundreds of post-party folk making their way toward Union Station and the exact moment we’re scheduled to shot—tomorrow should be interesting indeed!
- · Day 7: April 7, 2013
The approach to our Board Of Trade location speaks immediately to today’s shooting schedule. No one is sure how the City’s Shamrock Shuffle will play out in terms of numbers of people on the street; whether there will be a manageable situation with our limited crowd control capabilities, of if we’d be overwhelmed with thousands of Irish-inspired joggers heading home via Union Station. Rumor has it hours before a potential suicide case closed down the original race route. Thousands of people diverted right below our location! But that was at 9am. It’s 12 noon now and we’re looking at dozens—not thousands—of green-clad happy feet folk. Boris says let’s go for it and we push through with schedule as planned, into the street we go.
There aren’t many exteriors in the script but four of the scenes will be shot today. They include Falcon dropping Annie off at work, Syd confronting Falcon, and Falcon finding the chat offices for the first time. Only one of these are dialogue scenes and it’s damn good thing, the noises coming from downtown Chicago make for quite the urban symphony. The Brown Line El passes every five minute a half block from us, forcing us to stop shooting every time. The Short Line tourist buses originate half a block in the other direction and utterly obliterate sound as they pass. Normal traffic flow is never-ending, as are the passing Sunday afternoon Chicagoans who stand with curiosity and watch the making of our little micro-budget as if it were some Hollywood affair—What movie is this? When’s it coming out? Who’s in it? Then there are the smaller but very distinctive sounds; people coming and going from the pizza joint fifteen feet away via a severely creaky door. Or the sax guy half a block away that we had to pay off yesterday to move him a block away. His awful Sweet Home Chicago caterwauling in the canyons of Loop office towers. We’ll not be paying him off today. Today’s dialogue scene will be looped, ADR voices to match the footage, so play away Clarence! 
Four hours later we pack up out of the never-ending cold April wind up to our comfy offices on the second floor. Today’s interiors include a big fight scene between Syd and Annie. Before that, without giving the plot away, we’ve got a corpse to shoot…
We lose light and Fred has to backlight to give the illusion of daytime of morning light coming through the blinds. Great makeup and costuming give this a neo-noir look and Fred is over top the body, twisting and turning while Boris directs from the other room via monitor. A visiting production design class led by Rick Paul from the Art Institute watches as we get gory and damn– that looks like a dead body!
It won’t be the last time we get gory. Next week, gun play! Stay tuned…
