On Greeting a Stranger on the Street...

The Sleeping Eye

Exciting weekend. Last tuesday, I believe, Collin said "we're totally making a Noir movie this weekend." With doubt, I said "Okay," obviously hoping it would come to fruition. Thursday, he informed me of the details. TheForce.net's amateur film division was holding a 72 hour film contest. It started at 6 pm. central Friday and went through 6 pm. Monday. This was obviously a rush - all of our other (incomplete) films had taken place over several weeks. So we got right to it.

Thursday evening, I contacted Nandi about playing the lead female in the movie (we had no idea of the plot then, but we knew a good Noir movie has a female lead). After school, I went to the dungeon and got a bunch of hats, trenchcoats, and shoes for the male characters. We would improvise the rest later on. Collin and Corey were there and helped pick out costumes and such. We called Sara to see if she wanted to be another female in the movie (we had though that we probably needed a femme fatal, too). She agreed. Collin had to go home and then get a tape for the camera (he had checked it out from school earlier in the morning - his brother's camera doesn't have a plug-in for his [expensive] shotgun microphone), so Corey and I stayed around. I had to go to Titus at 4:30, and after that he and I were able to leave. We met everyone at Revelations eventually after picking up a few Noir movies and a book at the library. Andrew had to run and get gas such, so Corey and I stayed behind and looked at the mystery novels section for inspiration.

Eventually, we found a book - not sure of the title at this point - which had the description on the back as something similar to "A woman is shot and goes into a coma for 8 years [months?] and wakes up..." Corey and I read that and agreed that the coma angle was a great one, but then read on, "but is shot and dies." We didn't like that so much. So took the coma angle and came up with our own plot with some ideas we had come up with earlier, and wrote the treatment on the back of the library recipt. When Collin got back, we showed it to him and he liked it, so we had to finish up casting on it. We tried to think of who would play the detective. We came up with 4 major candidates; Corey, Davey, Collin, or Myself. We thought about it for a while, and were probably ready to pick Corey, when Andrew walked in. We all had a general consensus that he would totally rule as the detective - so we had him try on a trenchcoat and hat - and it was perfect. He agreed to be in the part, and after a while, Corey, Collin, and I ended up at my house to write the script.


Andrew, as Detective Miles Stone

When we got there, there were 4 people - 2 of which I knew slightly, and 2 whom i'd never seen before - staying at our house that night. I told my mom that Corey and Collin and I were planning on writing a script late into the night, and I wanted to clear it with her beforehand - my usual bedtime is around 1 or 2. She said she would be staying at her boyfriend's, so we could be up till whenever we wanted. We started writing the script at 11. Quinn, Gemma, Jenny, etc, etc, etc showed up and we were distracted for about an hour, but everyone left around 12 and we got back to screenwriting. Andrew was the only one who stayed longer, and he pretty much layed around and talked to the people who were staying the night.

Although I'm not sure about all these times, I'm either an hour off one way or another. Around 1, we found out we were hungry and went out to Hy-Vee to pick up some pizzas. When we got there, we thought we would park as far from Hy-Vee as possible and then walk in with trenchcoats and hats. We did just that. We got some great looks and comments and such, and felt like total badasses in the process. We got back, put in the pizzas, and got back to witing. We wrote a 17 page script until about 6 am, then went to sleep. Collin and Corey both had to leave in the morning, but we met up later around 1. We had Andrew, Nandi, Quinn, and Davey there for a cast reading. Sara couldn't make it due to schedule conflicts, so we just ran through with all of them. We had Quinn and Davey read for the two parts uncasted, and eventually cast them. The readthrough went well, and eventually, we were off.

We headed to Mary's house - our first location. Corey couldn't make it to the filming, but.. oh well. It involved a bar scene, and she has a wet bar in her basement. We got there and got costumes on. We set up shots, props, and the set. Andrew got makeup for a black eye, and we set up lighting and such. We shot a ton of takes from different angles and such - something I wish we had the time to do in later scenes. The acting turned out pretty good, and the look was great.


Nandi, as Martha Dubuque

Things went well, and we went back into town. We made our way to Revelations and eventually all went to Nandi's house and watched the Maltese Falcon. Quinn, Jenny, and Davey all fell asleep at various times, but everyone else enjoyed it. Sara showed up, and we gave her a script to read through.

Collin and I made our way back to his house and were going to film one more scene before everyone went home. It was going to be a scene where the detective has a secret meeting with a policeman. It was about 12 am, and when I had walked by Collin's earlier in the night, I had seen a streetlight that looked pretty good. It had no buildings behind it - just forest sort of stuff, and it wasnt on a busy street, so I figured we would shoot there. Well anyway, we were out there at 12 and had gone through lines and blocking and such, and we were just about to start filming when a policecar drove by on broadway. I thought to myself, "it would be great if we could have had that in the background." Well low and behold, the policecar made it's way to about 40 feet away from us. They knocked on the door and started talking to ther person inside.


Quinn, as Officer Joe Smith

We saw this as the perfect opportunity. We shot the scene with the policecar in the background and the lights swishing around everywhere. It looked great. Eventually, everyone made their way to their respective homes. Collin and I went in and started writing up a shooting schedule for the next day - as we had a lot to shoot. We wrote it up, then went to sleep. The next day, Evan was having a party that night which we were all hoping to go to. We had wanted to get up to check out a possible location for the warehouse scene, so we got up at 11 or earlier, made pancakes, and.. ended up not being able to visit.

Nandi wasn't able to shoot anything until after 3:30 - she had mime and family stuff, so we shot some minor stuff with Andrew then. We rounded up Quinn and Davey, and went to shoot another scene with Quinn. On the way, we found Collin's mom and got the key to the warehouse scene we'd be shooting in a warehouse [co]owned by her. Collin had forgotten the wind protector for the mic at Mary's house, so we ended up filming the scene in an alleyway. It turned out good (especially Davey's "NO HABLA ENGLAIS!!" and "SENIOR!"). Quinn was working really well for the part, and Andrew was too.

Corey called us up and brought his gun prop. It was a pellet gun that's modelled to look like a real pistol. It felt, looked, and worked just like one. It was great. We pocketed that, and went on. We went to pick up Nandi and Sara from Mime, and had to drop Collin off. We went to Austin's Pad at Evan's house to film inside scenes for the Detective's apartment. I didn't know the equiptment well, and one of the shots was a 1 shot thing, and we were hurried, tons of people were there and talking around us (most used phrase of the day - "Quiet on the set!" or "Shut up!!"), and so I had to wade my way through filming without Collin. The scene ended up looking fine - though a few small problems. Everything was going great. And then...


Davey, as Frankie the Snitch

BAM! Sara situation. She was told that she had to go to dinner with her family, then had to babysit her brother while her parents were at a movie. She had told her parents that she wanted to be free that night for Evan's party, but they went to Big Fish and were having her babysit and then not letting her go out afterwards. Then Collin called. He was free. We picked him up, ran to the warehouse, and quickly filmed Sara and Nandi's scene. But it wasn't enough. We had to rush, as her dad was in mediation and couldn't get the message that he shouldn't pick her up at Evan's house - where he thought she would be, so we had about half an hour to set up, find locations, film, etc, etc. OH BOY.

Well she had to leave, and Collin and I had asked Gemma if she would take Sara's part if it came to that - and it looked like it would. She agreed (THANK YOU! WE LOVE YOU GEMMA!!), got her dress from home, and when she was about to come back... Sara called. She convinced her parents to let he come back, reluctantly, and so everything was back on track. By this time, it was 7:00, so Quinn and I had to run to Titus for about an hour. We did so, and then when we got back, Collin had almost finished filming the office scenes. When I got there, he finished office stuff, and was about to shoot Quinn/Andrew/Davey scenes. We did those, then finally we got back to the extremely patient girls (we love you Sara and Nandi! thank you so much for being wonderful!). We filmed the Andrew/Sara scene which took a while due to the extremely wordy dialogue and the fact that we wanted most of the shot continuous. Finally, we were about to leave, and I suggested that we quickly refilm the Nandi/Sara scene, just to make sure we have a good quality shot. We were about to start filming when someone came upstairs and told us that the police were there.

I was half expecting this from the beginning - as I had noticed and pointed out the "Protected by [blah] alarm systems" when Collin was checking to see if the doors were open earlier in the day. Well, the policeman said that the alarm had gone off about 2 minutes previously. We apologized and told him that we had permission from the owner of the warehouse and Collin showed the key. We thanked the man and he went on his way. We finished filming Sara/Nandi scene, then were about leave when I noticed that there was a nice kitchen table setup we could use for one of the scenes (it is a furniture warehouse, after all - we used the same principal to film the office scenes - actually shot in a bathroom with a blank wall and door). Gemma brought us cookies as we were about to leave, then we let everyone go off to Evan's party who wanted to except Sara, Andrew, Collin, Corey, and myself. We filmed living room scenes as fast as we could at Andrew's house - Sara had to be home by 11, and we finished filming at 10:50. Her brother was angry about having to wait outside for about 10 minutes.


Sara, as Elizabeth Stark

The footage of that turned out fine, if a little bit rushed (a small continuity error due to clothing was made, though), and we finally picked up Davey from Evan's party at around 11. We were about to film the last scene - probably the coolest scene, in my opinion. It's the secret meeting between the Snitch and the Detective in an alleyway. We filmed the scene using Corey's car headlights (with one covered up so there wasn't a double shadow), and made the scene take place purely with shadows. We finished up around 1 and then started editing. I worked on the poster and such until about 4, while Collin edited. I went to bed, and woke up around 12. The time limit was extended till 9 that night, and the rules stated that it had to start uploading by 9:00. Collin edited. Collin started uploading at 8:58. Everything was going well until... upload fails.

The copy that we were uploading was the "contest version." We are still currently editing the final version (for a most likely dvd/vcd relase to cast/crew), but found out that we will not be able to enter the contest after all. Collin and I are not disapointed, as the contest simply served as motivation to finish a movie. The contest was an extra. We finished the movie, and are pleased (enough) with the final product, so the weekend was successful.

I just want to thank everybody involved in the production. You helped us so much, gave us your time and energy, and we hope you had fun. Thank you.