Principle Photography Day 1 is in the can!!!

Well, I woke up at about 9am for the first day of shooting. I took a shower then made myself an awesome egg sandwich and off to the bus I went. I wanted to call my parents and let them know I was filming Hunter today. They are so proud of me and supportive, which makes all of this possible. But, wouldn’t you know it, then bus pulled up and drove straight through! I couldn’t believe. I had to meet my production team at a certain time and the bus passed me up. I guess it wasn’t working or something. The next one didn’t come for another 20 minutes…. Not cool.

So, I made it to the office just in time to let everyone in and start getting ready for this shoot. A good friend of mine let me borrow his jib. It was so awesome of him. I knew it would make life so much easier on us.

I went on an adventure with Tiffany, one of our producers and our make-up/wardrobe artist. We went shopping for wardrobe. That’s always fun. You really get to design a great set of characters and how they exist in this world. We got to select a great color scheme that already went along went with the great set dressing. It did take FOREVER though… But it was worth it in the end. Now, the characters look real!

When I got back to the office, our DP, Chris, had arrived with the camera gear. The wonderful Red Scarlet! I didn’t let him waste any time in setting that beast up with our Zeiss lenses. Oh, it looked like a real camera, haha. It was really fun to see that one major component come together so beautifully. But the, it was off to the set we went!

So, call time was 7pm. I was up at 9am. Others were up at 5am, 7am, etc… Needless to say a lot of us were exhausted before even arriving. But we were all there for one same goal, so we fought through it. It took us 2 hours to get the first shot off. Believe me when I say, it was worth it! It was perfect. It was as if it popped right out of my head and materialized in front of everyone. There were tons of compliments, which made me smile. But that was only the first shot. The next few shot rolled through a lot smoother. By lunch, we had 1/4 of our shots done…. We were a little behind, but who doesn’t run late on their first day shooting on an indie shoot? We really didn’t have enough hands for each department. No worries, people helped out where they could. Same goal and all that jazz.

I was so focused on filming a creepy, slow build style for this movie. While I was watching my actors through the monitor, I kept getting lost in the moment and felt like I was watching another Friday the 13th or Halloween movie. It was really incredible. The characters had come to life and they didn’t expect what was about to happen to them…. (insert devilishly creepy laugh here)

Speaking of my actors, they were damn near perfect. They seemed so natural on camera. They flowed pretty good with each other. I wish Ross could have seen it in action. He would have cried, like I did. I wish I could have this movie edited now. It’s creepy awesome so far. Perfect.

We finally wrapped, and first thing that needed to happen was the blood need to be cleaned up. I was so worried that the home owners would have been upset. Instead, they were totally happy with us. In fact, the guy wanted me and some others to sign a piece of a dried up, blood soaked cardboard. Might be worth money someday…. Or become another piece of trash… Either way, it ended on a light night. However I got insanely delirious. I went nuts due to lack of sleep and complete body exhaustion. Went I got home, I collapsed. But I woke up about an hour ago and I feel totally refreshed and ready to go. Call time is in a couple hours. Can’t wait!