The past few weeks have been some of the shittiest weeks since I moved to California. People fighting with other people, missing my family, missing my friends, missing my boyfriend, and being busy ALL THE TIME! But.... Per usual... Life will go on.
Hoever (this is my new word. It's like "however" but more slutty.... Lets make this a thing guys), this weekend is very, very, VERY special.
Me and a group of friends have enlisted in the 48-hour-film festival where you write, cast, film, and edit an entire five-minute film in 48-hours. To those of you not in any film classes : five-minutes never feels like five-minutes.... To those of you who are in film classes: Yeah... I ALREADY want to sleep for the rest of my life.
So anyways. My day started off like this:
7:00 Woke up and set my clock back ten minutes.
7:10 Woke up and ventured onto the internet for a bit.
7:15 Finally got up and got in the shower.
8:17 Headed down to meet my group and leave for the school.
8:48 Arrived at school.
9:00 Presentation!
So at the presentation we were told that we would have to add this line of dialouge: "What do you want from me?!", this action: A slap, and this object: A lipstick tube. Fun stuff... Right? Then we got all of our equipment and stuffed it into Mary's car.
The definition of fun by the way, if you didn't know.
Then Ryan and Julie (the editors) and I all went up to an editing suite. They found creepy music for the shoot while I fixed up the script... This was all very convinient because the first line of dialouge was already "What do you want?!" So we just added... Well you know.
We made one of the murderers slap the other one in defense.
And then we pulled a lipstick tube out of the pocket of my "dead" neighbor Calvin, covered it in blood and handed it to Scarlett.
10:00 - Group goes to IHOP.
None of us had eaten. Hence why we went there. But we couldn't shoot at that time anyways, the script takes place at night so... Daylight was a no-no.
Anyways. I'm not going to talk about IHOP... I thought I should just give a breif synopsis of the film. So... Here it goes. It will be up on youtube after the film festival.
So. The film starts with Rita, a twenty-something pretty girl, is dragged into an alley way by a mysterious man. The man has a knife to her throat when another man appears. It is another murderer, Phil. These two murderers proceed to argue who's alley way it is and who gets to murder Rita.
It's a REALLY dark comedy... But.... It's also "cute" cause I write cute stuff. The idea was thought up when my friend Julie and I were talking about a competeing murderer and rapist fighting over a girl in an alley way. We changed the rapist to a murderer so we wouldn't offend anyone. But... Phil's a necrophiliac so....... Similar.
One of the characters is based completely off of one of our friends here. Sam. He's great. He's SOOOOO funny and he's from Vermont and he's just so sweet. His character walks in murders a guy then walks up to the original two murderers and Rita and talks to them all politly.
Sam's great.
But everything else in the script was baisically me, sitting in front of my computer, cracking myself up.
10:30 - went back to dorms and gathered all of the things that we needed (though we still forgot the flashlight).
11:30 - We left for the location (an alleyway).
12:00 - Arrived at the alley way.
We blocked and talked and dillydalied for about six hours until the sun went down/ our actors came. It was AWFUL.
2:35 - Scarlett (our lead actress) calls and tells me she'll have to be late.
3:40 - Actors arrive....
Yeah... That was fun. We got all the actors there super early to rehearse then Scarlett had to leave and couldn't return until six. So we worked with the guys. The two guys bickering read through lines and stuff. Sam and Calvin (my neighbor) got to practice their "fight" scene. Where Sam kills Calvin.
That lasted till....
5:40 - Everything is set up and now we wait for Scarlett.
There was this one adult from Singapore that WOULD NOT LEAVE US ALONE I almost tore his face off. I finally told him to leave. It took much argument but he left. I mean, the guy was like, I'm a director, I've done this before, I'm making a feature.... ARG SO ANNOYING!
6:00 - Filming starts.
The first section of filming went perfect. The only problem was a few lines and continuity stuff. After that, anything that went badly was a combination of competitiveness, annoyance, and exhaustion. Half of our camera work looks like a five year old did it and whenever I yelled at people they were all hurt about it. I'm small, I have to yell.
Shit... I'm so tired I can't even see straight.
Anyways....
11:18 - Filming ends.
We were all pretty much dead. I hadn't sat for six hours at tha point and I had needed to pee since seven but hadn't. We planned to leave at midnight but.... We left early.... It as nice :) So.... We left...
11:35 - We all head home.
No all that is left to do is editing and seeing if we need to go back and get another shot. Yeah... The other shot thing might happen.
12:00 - Home, tired.
1:00 ish - started writing this blog.
Now I'm trying to think of a way to phrase my happiness and excitement towards this project. There are so many great things about it. I mean... I wrote the script and directed it but....... Those aren't the ONLY reasons it's great. I'm really excited about the project because I'm 99% sure I am quitting the production company afterwards :D
What I have learned from this shoot is that you can't always get what you want... You have to deal... Cause if you don't.... Someone might poison your muffins. You never, ever know.
For me, this experience has broght me back to what I said waaaaay back in October..... THIS is where I want to be and WHAT I WANT to do.... I'm happy being on the verge of total exhaustion. It takes me away from all the pain I have been feeling for like ever and brings me into the creation of something new.
Anyways.... I can't see straight... So I guess I will talk to you all in a few week.
- Berlyn
P.S. I reference three murderers in the script. The green river killer was one of them and half of the people had no idea who he was lol. Yep. I am from Auburn, WA totally.
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