Hey, it’s been a good weekend for the movie!

BLOOD!

On Friday night, I met two of my actors at the house of Bubs. His eldest daughter (Dystopia) is handling makeup for the movie. Two of the characters are going to get head wounds, and I wanted to do a test where I could get a sense as to what is possible.

Head wound for “Casey”

Head wound for “Ray”

The Casey character has a cut on his forehead, while Ray will have a wound on his scalp.

I really liked how things looked, but after the actors left I had mentioned to Dystopia that I would like Casey’s wound to be messier. She played around with some different things. She took some greasepaint and mixed it up with some of her fake blood to create a dirty-looking, clumpy mixture, which I think will be absolutely great to surround the wound. Here’s the mixture on her arm:

VOMIT!

I have four main actors in the movie. I was able to wrangle time in which all would be available, on Saturday the 19th. The actors are all located in Chicago. Some have their own car, some don’t. We had a small two-hour window to rehearse, so I thought it would be better for me to drive into Chicago to meet them.

Since the movie takes place outside, I thought it would be fine if we rehearsed in a park — I picked Portage Park, for no particular reason. Another reason for rehearsing in a park was that I didn’t really *have* a place inside to rehearse in Chicago.

Well, as Saturday approached, I kept a close eye on the weather forecast — about six days before Saturday there was a prediction for a 60% chance of thunderstorms. I started scrambling for an indoor place to have the rehearsal. I called several park districts but was unsuccessful in reserving a room.

I sent an email to my actors a couple days before the rehearsal, confirming times, etc., and asked if they had any ideas should weather become a problem.

One of the actors recommended Welles Park, which was in a neighborhood where I used to live. In the time I have moved away they have installed a large gazebo. I was happy and relieved when he told me about this, and we switched the rehearsal to Welles.

If you weren’t in Chicago on Saturday, let me assure you it was a thoroughly rainy and shitty day. It rained for hours without letting up. I had directed the actors to meet me on the corner of Lincoln and Montrose (the southeast corner of the park). I got there early, so was sitting in my car for a bit. I popped out of my car briefly to see if anyone had arrived. A man in a white minivan pulled up and rolled down his window. He yelled at me (in a friendly way): “The PLAYOFFs are CANCELED!”

“Huh?” I replied.

“The PLAYOFFs are CANCELED!”

“Thank you,” I said.

I looked behind me and saw a woman, and a kid dressed in a Cubs uniform.

The playoffs I speak of are also referenced by Johnny Yen here. Mr. Yen, in case you weren’t aware, the PLAYOFFs are CANCELED.

So anyways, all the actors eventually arrive and we head toward the gazebo. The gazebo was quite lovely and spacious, and perfect for the rehearsal. The one minor drawback to the space was a large chunky brown streak of vomit in the gazebo’s center. I think we all finished the rehearsal with only a little bit of vomit on our shoes. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the vomit.

MISCELLANEOUS!

After the rehearsal, I still had some very important business to deal with. There’s a very large furniture store in the main location of the movie. We are actually going to be shooting on a street where the side of its building will be very visible.

I wanted to make sure I asked their permission to shoot there. I drove down and spoke with the manager. After I explained the details of the shoot, he was perfectly fine with us being there, as long as we didn’t obstruct the store from doing business. I asked him if it would be possible to use his bathroom and a couple power outlets as well (seeing as we aren’t going to have a generator or a portable toilet with us) and he was fine with that, too.

A lot of my stress melted away when I found out they were fine with us being down there.

*******

Last night, I met with my cinematographer friend Lance, and we hashed out a lot of storyboard ideas for the film. Lance had a couple really neat ideas which I’m really looking forward to doing.

Okay, that should be enough updates for anybody who has the faintest interest in this moviemaking process.

So, in my movie, there is a crashed car. I’m renting the car-to-be-crashed (a convertible) for the duration of the shoot.

I am not planning on *really* crashing the car. I don’t need to show lots of damage on it, but I would like it to have a cracked windshield. Okay, so how do I accomplish this?

On Wednesday after work, I drove to an auto glass place in Naperville. Here’s a friendly tip — don’t drive to Naperville from downtown during rush hour. Ever.

I had called the place earlier and said I wanted to get a cracked windshield, and they said they had no problem giving me one for free.

I rolled into their parking lot just as they were getting ready to close. They pointed me to a dumpster out back that had several broken windshields sticking out of it.

I put down the back seats in my car and carefully laid down one of the cracked windshields. The windshield I obtained wasn’t for the car I’m going to be getting (hopefully, a Ford Mustang). My thought was to try and lay the windshield over the existing windshield of the car, and see how it looks.

I spoke with an employee of the shop for a while before I headed out. He gave me a couple warnings. 1) Be careful handling the windshield, because it might have some sharp edges (it is broken glass, after all) and 2) Be very careful when putting the windshield on the other car, because it wouldn’t be too hard to break or scratch the real windshield with the broken one.

I haven’t tested laying the broken windshield on a car yet. Maybe I’ll get to it this weekend.

Another option for faking a broken windshield may be to purchase some window film (a very thin layer of plastic), affixing it to the windshield, then somehow drawing cracks on the film to give the appearance of cracks. I would need to figure out what to use to draw the cracks — I wouldn’t want it to look cheesy.

I’ll keep you informed, probably post some pictures if I get a solution that doesn’t look too half-assed.