“We need to shoot a narrative!” That’s what Ash has been running around the studio saying for the last few months. But how? Not like there’s a budget for anything like that now, is there? But hey, you only live once, so budget or not, lets make it happen.
DISCLAIMER: We don’t suggest you go with this approach yourself but these kleenslate folks live life on the edge, I guess.
The camera was out on a rental way tf in CT, so the homie, Arnold from Cine Engine Rentals spared us a Mini. He even came out to AC for Ash and brought all his new cool SmallHD monitors for us to use. To top it off, he offered us a set of Summicrons but since we were SUPPOSED to have a set of Super Baltars we didn’t need them…. HUGE MISTAKE!
Now, we have some equipment but there were a few things Ash really needed to pull off this “look” he was going for. That took us to Hand Held the day before, where we grabbed, an M40, joker 800, joker 400 and some Lustr 2 Source 4s.
But what about crew? We offered a trade. One Alexa mini rental for 2 days of G&E work. We found two cool suburban cats, Sawyer and Brock… And now we’re set! But what about sound?
Day 1
Shoot day, The night before, Ash realized he forgot to pick up the lenses that were scheduled the week before. Bright and early, Ash raced to Du-All camera, arrives, they tell him, lenses are gone. SHIT!
So now we have no lenses…. Call Arnold…. He’s half way to NY from Philly, he can’t go back.
PLAN B: There’s a backup order for a set of Cooke Panchros at Hand Held. Ash goes there, races up the steps to holla at Justin…. BOOM, they rented them out, no longer available. WTF!
Well, it could be worse, it’s not like we don’t have a set of cp.3’s we can use (PLAN C). UGH!
Ash gets back (the kleenstate studio) and finds out he Arnold is about 3 hours away. With the Camera…. But… in the midst of all that, Jelani came through to hold it down with Ash, as always. We even had a guest visitor, Ash’s man from way back, Rich King. 3 Hours later, Arnold pulls up, builds camera, just to realize Ash’s cp.3s are all EF Mount and the EF-Mount for the Mini is on the rental in CT. Oh boy!
We were blessed these days to have people showing love and lending a hand. Our man Willy sacrificed a lot to be with us, working on the. set dress, painting walls and stuff likethst. What a guy! But what about sound?
PLAN D: The canon Zoom. It was either use that or don’t shoot. Well, canon zoom it was. Let me be the one to tell you, if there was a look I personally know Ash was NOT going for… it was the canon zoom look. Well, whatever, fix it in post, right….? 😱😖🥴
ACTION!
Come to find out, ooour lead actor, Tyler (Ash’s 6 year old son) is camera shy. And keeps freezing up, digging in his nose and ears. This is not the way we practiced this. He always says he wants to be in movies like the other kids and his friend Emporor… Tyler this is your chance and you’re BLOWING it!
Okay, take 532, I don’t know if it’s going to get any better so Ash just needs to move on to the next scene. But what about sound?
After the 2nd scene, we’ve come to realize, we’re out of time and can’t shoot the other 3 scenes we had scheduled for the day. There’s always tomorrow.
Day 2
We’re one man down, Rich had too dip, Willy is off somewhere with CiEsta getting crafty and today is the day we try our gimbal down the stair landings rig. We knew it was going to take a while to get it together but not as long as it did. Our call time was 1pm and got our first shot off at 4:30… Yikes. Oh and the zoom lens wasn’t wide enough. Not at all. WOMP! WOMP!
We keep going. We shoot another scene until about 2am. Tyler was soo sleepy he couldn’t stand up, poor fella.
Day 3
No crew, Ash rigs up the 4K himself for an exterior shot, builds a frame, Mo from 3rd eye productions pops up to lend a hand and we’re lit. The problem is… the lighting took all day. As soon as Ash setup to roll cameras it was night. And doing proper night for exteriors is damn near impossible.
Day 4
Let’s try this ext scene again.
Ash rigs up 4K in a new position (apt building close by), overheads are already up and we get to work. Don randomly popped up and Ci put him to work. He did his thing helping with that 4k. We didn’t know he had it in him. Willy came back too. Remember that actor problem I was telling you about? The kids still couldn’t get it together. But the shots look great though.
But what happened to sound? I think Willy said he might do it?
530 takes later, we lost the sun and we got to do this again. Let’s put this day on the “hard to shoot” scenes list and take another stab at it later.
We’ve come to the firm conclusion we’re going to be shooting this project for a while. Clearly not a weekend shoot, right?
So we’re doing the bedroom scene. Characters go to sleep during the day and wakes up at night. We’re shooting day first (Day for night), then into the night scene. But our lead actor still had stage fright, we were only able to get through the day portion of the scene.
Excuse the colors on the pictures above, they aren’t graded and currently a little whacky. Shot on RED, Y’all. Arnold couldn’t give us another loaner.
Day 5
Jelani’s back, whoopty doo! We’re attacking the night portion of the scene… Tyler is doing a little better but… Our other principal actor, Jodey (Ash’s 3 year old son) can’t understand the idea of acting sleep. So every time he’s still, he has to jump up and flare an arm or something. Ugh!!! 5 hours later… we can try this again another day
Day 6
I DON’T KNOW WHAT happened to Tyler, I don’t know if he was blessed by the acting Gods or what. But he’s different, he’s killing this shit. We got through a few setups and everything looked great. Before I speak too much, he hasn’t had any lines. But for the MOS stuff, he killed it. And we got our Super Baltars… We’re crushing it! But dig this. It’s Tyler’s first day, really doing his acting thing. And we’re loving it, Ash is on one. But everytime we move on to a different scene, Tyler keeps asking to see playback…. I hope he doesn’t turn into one of those actors.
Did I mention, once again, we had no crew and Ash had to light everything himself including rigging up and tying in for the m40. Ash started the Pre-light at 8pm, finished at 6am. Woke up to start shooting at 8am, wrapped at 6am.
No problem, we planned for this. And shit was definitely looking beautiful. The homie Jelani Paul came through and gave us some much needed help.
Day 7
Tyler is still kicking butt, shots are amazing. Jelani got Ash’s back. We started shooting at 6pm and wrapped at 4am. Not too shabby. We only got one scene but again, Ash was lighting and everything by himself and the night before had him in a comatose kind of state. But Ash got some additional help from dope ass DP, Sam Hicks.
Stay tuned for an update on the next shooting days. Which actually start tomorrow.