Production Journal: Days 3 & 4

by | Jul 1, 2018

Day Three

This day on the schedule almost didn’t happen, for a couple reasons. First, we had to reschedule to a cover set because the rain really started pouring. And we originally had exterior shots scheduled. So now we had to go inside if we wanted to keep moving. We decided to do the music club scene, which was originally scheduled for much later in the schedule. I think in the last week.

That presented the second problem. We had to have a real band booked to play a song or two on stage at the Skylark Lounge in Austin. Luckily, we had been searching for candidates during pre-production. In fact, the very previous Friday, the last day of prep, one of our candidates was playing at a club in downtown Austin. So, we hurried over there that night, and saw Jeremy Nail and his band play. After watching and listening them play several songs, I thought they were perfect for what we were looking for. Now we just had to get them set up and brought in, pronto. Which of course, we did.
There were some minor problems to contend with, mainly the fact the ceiling of the club had leaked from all rain and had to cleaned up. But we forged forward, after a fairly long set-up and getting all the extras in place, we shot a long pivotal dialog scene between Dylan and Mariah, played by Don and Jennifer, with all the ambiance of a live music Texas club/bar. Thanks Jeremy, the music was cooking!
Next, we had to get over to where we had our production offices at the Austin School of Film. One of their classrooms was available to shoot a couple of our final scenes for the day. Religious brother Dan was putting together a congregation and we got to see Tom, the actor playing him, rev the folks up quite a bit. Lots of energy here!  And yes, between these three scenes, we certainly did need a lot of extras that day. And they came through for us!

Day Four

Today demanded that we travel on the highway, as we had several car shots, which we staged back near Lockhart. These are usually challenges, but we alleviated some of these challenges by simplifying the shots. Sometimes ‘simplifying’ might mean compromising, which can happen on indie films. But Layton, our DP, had some ideas of how we could still maintain any story integrity and not go crazy trying to get these shots. We would save that for later, the bigger car shots.
We started with the interior shots, with Layton and myself in the back seat, and the actors of course in the front, father and son, Dylan and Mason (played by Charlie). We had issues with cloud cover moving in and out, making one part of the scene sunny and another dark and cloudy. So, that demanded a number of takes to get the consistency we needed. There also had been some minor issues about getting the proper picture car for these scenes, but that got all worked out.
But once we got to the required exteriors, it seemed everything went smoother and the pace picked up. It didn’t take too long before we were moving to the next location, a static location, Mariah’s house. That meant heading back to Lockhart.
Getting this location had almost turned into a last minute issue. We had another good location picked out, but that fell through and we had to scramble around for another. Luckily, we wound up using a part of a location we were using for another completely unrelated scene. Yup, just another day on an indie film.
For the last scene of the day we moved to a cemetery, again in Lockhart. And we were fighting the light of day. It was getting near sunset and we really needed to get this scene today, or our whole schedule would have been thrown for a loop. There appeared to be some mis-communication about getting all the actors on set in time, but we got that handled in the nick of time … as the last take of the last set-up was shot … just as the final light of the sun set for the day. And we thought today was tough … wait until tomorrow.
Jerry Alden Deal

Jerry Alden Deal

Writer - Director - Producer

Over the past thirty-five years Jerry has been hired numerous times to develop and write screenplays for other production companies. During that same period several of his spec scripts were also optioned. In 2007 ‘Dreams Awake,’ shot in the Mt. Shasta area, was Jerry’s feature directorial debut. He currently has several other projects in various stages of development. One of which, ‘The Inner Sonic Key,’ a documentary, is in the post-production queue, while another, ‘One Hand Clapping,’ wrapped production in Austin, TX in April of last year (2018) and is currently in post-production. Two other projects are also on the horizon; ‘Patterns of Creation,’ an animated sci-fi adventure going through an extensive script rewrite, and ‘The God Dilemma’, an unorthodox courtroom drama, whose story is being fleshed out.

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