Terrortory 2 - The Main Story Day 1

I think I mentioned that Terrortory 2 differs from the first film, and from most anthologies in general. Those have a main story/through story/wrap around story that exists to tie together or give reason for the segment stories to be told.

Terrortory 2 has a main story that will be fleshed out with the anthology stories. The through-story is the reason the movie exists, not the segments.

We shot it all last week. One of the hardest weeks I've EVER experienced, and I'm counting the week I had to watch the Nightmare on Elm Street remake.

Here's the diary I kept:

Thursday July 13th. DAY ONE

I head down to Arnold and meet Joe, Zig and Cutting at the 7-11. We grab some supplies, and head to the woods. As soon as we get to the location, thunder starts. I'm thinking--there was a small thunderstorm that was supposed to be in the area for a REAL short time. Figured it would miss us, or would just rain a little and the canopy would keep us dry.

A DELUGE of rain hits us. Tons of water. Cutting was smart and had pre-bought a tarp, so they all huddle underneath it while I try to actually hang it on trees. I am soaked in about 2 seconds. I mean, as if I just jumped into a pool. (Note: Joe has video of some of this, and I'll post it when he sends it to
me)

It didn't last long--maybe 15 minutes, but all the wood in the forest is soaked and we have to start a fire. I'm completely drenched from my shoes and socks to my shirt and pants. The equipment is a bit muddy, and even after all that it's still fucking humid as shit.

(My brother later tells me he saw the doppler radar and it was this super-intense, super-TINY storm that ran right over pretty much just US.)

I find out VERY fast that I've completely forgotten the lapel mics I use on my shoots now. I have no idea how that could be. My backup(which I run all the time anyway) is the separate shotgun mic that I've used on every movie since Hunting Humans, and a full size Zoom recorder with XLR inputs. It's usually a backup, but now it's my only mic and I didn't bring a boom pole. (I usually put the whole setup in the scene somewhere hidden so I can get other sounds/dialog that I may use)

We try to light the fire and--shocker--soaking wet wood is hard to light. With persistence, and more time than I wanted to waste on it, we get it lit.

We try some drone shots, but the drone's acting funky. When we started the scene it wasn't dark, just dark-ish. I tried to make it look dark, but as it actually GETS dark and we put out the lights behind them, I'm wondering how well it will match what we shot.

We have some more problems in general, but we finish the scene.

We move all the equipment up a STEEP trail. My arms were done from bringing all the shit in at the beginning. Now I'm wiped, and I gotta hold a camera for how many more hours? It's tough.

I'm feeling the trenchfoot--soggy shoes and socks the entire time. The humidity is INSANE, and we get a call from Mark that Fred, The Midnight Clown, is having a problem with his makeup running. (They airbrush it on outside) They end up running to my parents house nearby to airbrush him in the cool basement. (My mom keeps the house arctic, and my brother used to airbrush in the basement all the time, so no big deal)
NOTE: Turns out that they just airbrushed him in the kitchen--my mom told me the basement was a mess. I tell her, nobody would have cared.

This puts us even farther behind though.

I should note--Zig has been sick from pretty much the get go. Something's wrong with his stomach. He throws up more than once on this shoot, I can tell you that.

 He's not talking much, which is how you can normally tell something's up.

I gotta run to the car to get the Midnight Clown's costume, and I mention I'm going to sit in my car for 5 minutes while we're waiting for the clown to show up. I'm gonna blast my AC and try to get cool. Zig quickly volunteers to come with me. In the car the AC is, as expected, the best thing in the entire world. We both agree we could just go to sleep right then.

We don't even get our 5 minutes though, as Mike pulls up with Fred and O'Brocki, who's playing Wade. We gotta carry some shit back into the woods--FX stuff and drinks. I volunteer, for some stupid reason, to carry the most heavy stuff. I think I'm just an idiot. I have to stop a few times to set the container down and take a break.

Fast forward--we're at the new base camp, about to shoot. I've decided to shoot all of Fred's closeups first since the longer it goes, the meltier he's gonna get.

BLOCKING

I'll admit that this is one of the harder elements of filmmaking for me. Blocking consists of how you run the scene--where people say certain lines, or do certain actions. In a perfect world, you get time to just run through the entire scene and see the blocking, and then adjust your shots accordingly. For me, even if I had the time, it really interferes with the shooting script I've run, especially if there's significant variation from the way I pictured it.

I'm a big pre-vis guy, in that I have seen this movie in my head over and over, so when we go out there and things don't start to line up the way they did in my head...that's where I run into trouble. I'm working on ways to get better at this, but it's still not fun.

We try to block out the scene, and lighting is, of course, a problem. It's pitch black. I have four big lights, but now that we're not shooting in the order of my shot list--which was broken down so we only have to move the lights once for each direction we're shooting in--we gotta run around putting lights here and there, and it's a hassle.

Also, I'm cheating a lot of positioning because of the way the area we're shooting in differs from what I wrote.

Headlamps on the head make reading your shooting script easy. 

Plus, they're EXCELLENT for attracting bugs right to your face.

We shoot.

And shoot.

And keep shooting.

Because Mark's not there, my brother Mike has to attempt the blood effects, which is a blood cannon, basically. My brother is struggling, because he's been working outside all day in the heat, since like 9am, and now he's out in the woods with barely a break at 3am. For those who can't do math, that's 18 hours of hard work outside in the heat and humidity with only a lunch and dinner break.

We shoot the effect, and I have no idea whether it's going to look good or not. It would be more impressive if it was during the day, that's for sure.

We were scheduled to be out of there at 4am, but we didn't actually walk out until 5:45. The light was coming up by the time we got to our cars.

Carrying all that shit back pretty much broke me. Had to stop four times. Joe carried the heaviest one item--this insane bag full of I-have-no-idea--but I had both light kits, which ain't small and they ain't light.

We're scheduled to be off Friday, but I'd mentioned that maybe we'd go shoot Tuesday's one scene if there's no wind(I can't shoot it unless there's no wind). The weather's calling for a thunderstorm, and we all feel like garbage, so I say screw it. Day off is back in effect.

Either way, I get home about 6:30am, dump footage, take a long shower, and am in bed by 7:30am.