The Reader's Digest Version...
I'm going to give you the wrap-up really quickly...
Pappy is AMAZING! Seriously, I (along with the rest of the cast and crew) have adopted him as a new grandparent. And his wife is hilarious! They were telling us stories of all the mischeivious things they did in college together-- it was down right scandelous; I loved it! Shooting in the Lexington Legand's stadium was really exciting. How many people can say they've danced around second base barefoot? I can! (I have to keep myself entertained between takes somehow...) The flashback scenes where fun to shoot because we got to all wear period costumes. However, it DID feel a bit weird sitting on bright green plastic chairs in my fur-trimmed coat and cute little hat...[shurgs] oh well! The April premiere went smashingly! It was so much fun to get back together with everyone that you worked with and finally enjoy the fruits of our labor. We were also able to finally meet
Rob Potorff, who composed the original score for the movie, which was a long-awaited treat.
Stolen Moments has been pressed to DVD and sent to several film festivals, so hopefully we'll hear some good things back about it in the near future. Speeking of the future,
Jeff is already talking about the movie for the spring, and possibly doing a feature this coming summer! Hopefully, I'll be updating you on one or both of those as well... ;)
Yay! Pictures!
Ok, I know I haven't made good on the IOU yet...so I'm going to try to appease you with some production photos, provided by our awesome PR guy Stephen James!
Our 1st AC, AJ Stich.
Jeff directing Carl (Pappy) and Jeremy (Jacob)
Jeremy and Becca (me) and our boom guy, Justin.
"a coupon good for one free post"
Again, I have FAILED my adoring public by not posting promptly! My deepest apologies. And since I am without the time to properly post this evening, I am leaving you with an electronic IOU which I will replace with a genuine entry tomorrow. Here’s a teaser to keep you waiting with baited breath:
*meeting Pappy
*shooting some interior nursing home shots, accidentally breaking into a snack machine, and losing Sarah Seaton the First Assistant Director’s eyeliner...(oops!)
*two rehearsals in one day, one for the Hamlet scene and one for the Grille scene
*shooting the Grille scene
*another outdoors Saturday shoot–this one at the Lexington Legends’ stadium!
As you can see, we’ve done a lot this week! I have so much to fill you in on, and hopefully I can twist Jeremy’s arm until he agrees to send me something to post. (I don’t mean literally, of course. Or do I?....*ha*ha*) It would be GREAT to get a fresh perspective on things, and I know you’re all sick of hearing me tell my tales, eh? *wink*
First Day-Long Shoot
Sorry I’ve gotten a little behind in the updates! Last week they filmed just
Jacob and
Pappy scenes, which means I had a little time off of shooting. Unfortunately, that also means that I don’t have any exciting stories to share with you. HOWEVER, I have asked
Jeremy to e-mail me a post or two, so you may be getting some cool stories from him
via me.
My vacation from filming ended abruptly this past weekend, when we shot the Big Wheel Regalia– perhaps one of the coolest scenes of the movie– all day Saturday. "All day" meaning awake at six (in the
morning!), meet at six thirty, on location and running through the first shot by seven thirty, and wrapping at four thirty. It was long and ridiculously fun...well, when I wasn’t freezing cold or half asleep! I have some sweet-candy bruises from wiping out on my big wheel– "war wounds," if you will. I’m rather proud of them. I also got a little color on my face and some chapped lips, from both the sun and the wind. Needless to say, many chapstick and/or Napoleon Dynamite references were made towards the end of the day... "But my lips hurt real bad!" *smile*
The camaraderie within the cast is really beginning to evidence itself, even though Saturday was the first time we were together in one scene. What was REALLY funny was that it was the first time
Lucas Bentley (who plays
Jacob’s suitmate
Mario) met
Holly Hatlo, who is playing this girlfriend
Joan!
That made for some good jokes throughout the day... But anyways, we had so much fun bonding and getting to know each other’s quirks. There’s this crazy scene before the race where we’re pumping up the drivers, and we huddled up and it just flowed. We were joking around and cracking each other up between takes–
Jeff found it hard to quiet us down sometimes! I am definitely looking forward to working with them more and building the relationships between us.
The results are in and...
(Drum roll, please) A pair of Stolent Moment's actors (Erin Shumaker and Robert Harris) made it to the Irene Ryan semi-finals last week in FL! Great job Erin, Bob, and everyone else who went; we couldn't be prouder of you all.
Jeff and my friends are BACK! Filming resumes tomorrow! *does a happy dance--uh--choreographed movement* ; )
And So It Begins
This online diary is for everyone who has ever wondered what it was like to be involved in the production process of a movie! During the filming of Stolen Moments, written and directed by Jeffrey Day, I will keep you all up-to-date on our progress and set-backs. You'll even get some editorial comments from me, one of the actors.
I should start by introducing myself, shouldn't I? Right. Well, my name is Rebecca Harvey, and I play Janie in Stolen Moments. I adore playing Janie; she’s a theater major and she's fun, passionate, daring, and full of life. She is also the girlfriend of Jacob Preston, a 21-year-old college student (played by the amazing Jeremy White) and the film's main character. Jacob is much more cautious than Janie and the rest of his fun-loving friends. He's more of a sit-on-the-sidelines kind of guy; he'll watch from the stands but it takes a lot to get him to participate. He faithfully visits his grandfather, Pappy Bailey, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home. I'll let you in on some more of the story later on, but right now I want to catch you up on the production so far....
We began filming last week. The first evening of filming we shot the classroom scene, which was basically Jacob, Professor Jennings, and a bunch of extras. There were some very complicated camera moves, but Vanessa our camerawoman did an amazing job! It took a bit of practice, however, and the shoot ran later than any of us had expected; the dialogue between Jacob and the professor had to be pushed back to a make-up-shooting day. Did I mention that we can only shoot on evenings and weekends? You see, the cast is mainly comprised of students that attend Asbury College here in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the director is a professor here. Needless to say, this creates some scheduling issues! But it’s a challenge I think we are all quite excited to take on. Speaking of challenges, Day 2 of shooting made me realize how un-glamorous the film-making process can be. There seemed to be one problem after another! The shot that Jeff wanted was a difficult one– he wanted the whole exterior scene in one steadicam shot. What that meant to me and Jeremy as the actors was that we HAD to nail our lines, our movements, everything; if we screwed up it was "back to one!" And by the way, it was 19 degrees outside...yeah so, we definitely wanted to get this shot right as quickly as we could. Apparently that just wasn’t to be. As we were running through the shot Jeff noticed that the lighting was wrong. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any way that Matt, our lighting director, could fix it. So we ran inside to warm up and get some hot chocolate while Jeff and our producer, Don, tried to figure out what to do next. A change of location was in order, so we packed it up and moved to another part of campus. Jeremy and I did 20 frigid takes and, four hours after our call time, we all piled around the stinking awesome HD flatscreen we have to watch the footage on. What we saw was less than encouraging. It seems that the wireless transmitter from the boom mic to the camera had run out of battery, so Jeremy and I sounded like we were robots in a bad sci-fi flick! On top of that, the lighting was somehow messed-up, and from time to time we appeared to be a pale green color! Jeff and Don saw the frustration and disappointment on everyone’s faces and did their best to cheer us up. Yes, we had spent an entire evening out in the freezing cold and had absolutely nothing to show for it, but they were still proud of everyone’s hard work and reminded us this was just part of the filming process. That did make me feel a little better, but I would be lying if I said it made everything ok. One more make-up-shooting day for the calender! On Saturday, our third day of shooting was cancelled altogether due to an ice storm (darn these outside sequences!), and although that meant I was able to sleep in and watch the extended version of Return of the King with my friends, I was still bummed. This week Jeff is in Florida watching some of Asbury’s incredible thespians compete for the Irene Ryan Award (including five of Stolen Moment’s own actors!), so shooting will begin again next week.
*sigh* A week without shooting is like a week without sunshine...and we have both! : (
