Background Action

The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning.

2009-04-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Three and a half weeks until graduation. Two and a half weeks left in the semester. 6 more days of shooting.

The end is near.

We're going to finish. Can you believe it? I can't.

Pick ups will be grueling, but we are actually going to finish shooting BEFORE FINALS! How incredible is that?

Springing Ahead

2009-03-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

We ended the last day of shooting before Spring Break with the lovely tradition of Daylight Savings. Several of us were baffled all day, but we got through it nevertheless. Never was there a sweeter moment then arriving home after that full, productive weekend.

Then, a whole fabulous week to relax and think of nothing at all, especially TMC. Sadly, it is now over but I must say that it was certainly much needed and much enjoyed.

The weekly Progress Report has skipped a week, and will appear in the blog tomorrow! How Lovely!

-B.

Awesome Night

2009-03-07T23:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight was an amazing night. Though it was long and tiring, everything clicked just right and the results were phenomenal. Not only that, but we really bonded as a crew.

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, I'm still awake at 3:30am, with a crew call tomorrow morning at 10:30am, and I'm completely okay with it.

There's just too much to write about, that I can't even write anything else.

Reports and Gold Stars

2009-03-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

So I recently realized that all along, as we are strolling (okay, maybe that isn't an accurate description) through production, I have been failing to produce Daily Production Reports. If I weren't so valuable, I'd fire myself (Not really, cause I need these credits to graduate).

Anyway, I spent about 2 hours yesterday struggling to create some decent-looking tables on my brand spanking new homemade Production Report. I based it off of some samples that I got from Liam (MEP professor, he used to be an AD). I tailored it specifically to TMC, because we are working with all digital footage so the terminology can be slightly different.

My report includes all the basic production info (title, start date, day of shooting, director, estimated finish date), as well as a script record (how far much we've done, what we did on this particular day, and what's left to complete), a list of all the scenes and locations for that particular day, times throughout the day for crew call, first shot, meal, and wrap (that's for you, Zach), a running count of how many setups we shoot, and finally, a tally of the footage captured (in minutes & bytes). I also have a space for notes, such as "we dropped scene 14 today and will pick it up our next day at this location."

I wish I had been doing this from the beginning, but you live and you learn.

On another note, this weekend I finally made up my list of "gold stars." Often on set, if a crew member performs exceptionally or comes up an excellent time-saving solution, I will award them a gold star. Unfortunately, when I finally went shopping for actual stars, I couldn't find those awesome foil stars (you know what I'm talking about) anywhere and I had to settle for some cheap multi-colored stars that keep falling off the paper. Well, I made up my list and it caused quite a stir on Saturday when everyone realized that Kelly is outperforming everyone else. I tried to explain that it's not a competition, that you're only competing against yourself. To no avail. So, from then on it became the race of the stars to a free breakfast courtesy of Brianne. 20 stars gets you a free breakfast! I'm still waiting for the day that I don't have to tell Aaron (sound) to get connected once and can award him with the promised three stars.

In all seriousness, though, I am so proud of everyone to have contributed to making our way through HALF of production so far! Enjoy your weekend off next week!

-B.

Progress Report

2009-03-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

We have completed:

-38 5/8 (out of 103)

-16 shootings days (out of 35)

-86 scenes (out of 158)

A Somewhat Sad Post

2009-03-01T17:40:00.000-08:00

Every weekend, while 95% of the Quinnipiac student body is sitting on their futons eating take-out and watching a movie on a Sunday afternoon, we are out making one.

Every day that I am working on this movie (and that is really every day), I think about how proud I am of what we are all doing, and what we have done so far. But it is not without costs and sacrifices.

I've lost sleep, resulting in a faulty immune system. I barely have the time or energy to wash my face at night.

My health isn't the only thing that is deteriorating for this movie. I am starting to feel strain on my relationships (I know I'm not the only one). It seems like I'm always disappointing my friends, who have to make plans at least a week in advance.

My schoolwork is suffering slightly. I won't even get into my mental health.

Sometimes I get scared that if I choose to go down this road, my life will always be like this. Then I remember that unlike the professionals, we are shooting 10, 12, 15 hour days, while juggling classes, midterms, papers and projects. And then, once again, I am proud of how far we have come. Despite all of the difficulties and "opportunities" that we deal with every weekend, I would still rather be making a movie then just sitting around watching one.

Driving TMC

2009-02-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in my car on set right now as we are shooting the car/ driving scenes. There's not much for me to do since there is limited room in the car. These are pretty exciting scenes because we are using another one of our (very) expensive toys - a car mount. It straps onto the hood of the car, sprawled out like a spider. To be honest, I'm happier not watching; having our only camera sitting in top of a moving vehicle makes me nervous!

Here's what the mount looks like:
Wish us luck,
B.

Progress Report

2009-02-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

We have completed:

-14 days (out of 33) of shooting

-32 3/8 pages (out of 103) of the script

-76 scenes (out of 158)

We are 1/3 (33%) complete!

Efficient Weekend

2009-02-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

Last week, Zach (cinematographer), Cody (director) and I finally had our first weekly meeting. We planned out how long each scenes was going to take so that I was able to do a better job at keeping the production on schedule this weekend. I think it really helped having this planned, because days 12-14 were our most efficient weekends so far. Friday and Saturday we finished close to the schedule. Sunday was a completely different story because we ended with the intimate scenes between the two main characters. Those were tough - they had to be perfect because they are so important, so I tried to back off a little bit on rushing things. It's important as a 1st AD to know when to push things along and when to let everyone take their time.

Overall, a good weekend. We are really getting somewhere!

This week, I will be rearranging the schedule to make up for our disaster weekend. It will take a big chunk of time out of my week, but it's entirely necessary.

Also, this weekend we are shooting in a convenience store, which is kind of cool.

Title Change

2009-02-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

I've decided to change the title of my blog from "Quiet on the Set Please" to "Background Action" because it is a better description of what I do on The Mercury Cycle. Besides it being a call that I say sometimes on set, it describes how most of what I do is in the background. You don't always see it, but it's there, lingering behind.

Cheers,

Setbacks and Steps Forward

2009-02-18T09:07:00.001-08:00

This past week was, to put it delicately, a huge mess. We were extremely underprepared for the weekend of shooting and we saw the results of that lack of preparation very quickly. We were scheduled to shoot the scenes at the cult meeting house. First, we had problems getting the location. Then, the costumes for the cult members weren't ready. Two patterns, one new sewing machine, and several agonizing hours later, we had one solitary robe that was just enough to get through a section of the scheduled scenes.

Luckily we were able to do exterior scenes, which is good because once the trees start to look springy we will begin to have continuity problems with outside scenes.

That said, we are now about 2 days behind schedule. We did use those two days to hold a very productive open forum style crew meeting and to pick up scenes dropped previously. The meeting was effective I think because it allowed us to regroup, figure out where we went wrong and work on fixing the problems. A lot of the things we haven't been doing individually or as a crew have built up until we finally crashed last week. But that's what this whole experience is about - learning what works and what doesn't.

Progress Update

2009-02-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

So far, we have completed 11 days (out of 33) of shooting, bagged 22 7/8 pages (out of 103) of the script or 56 scenes (out of 158). We're about 1/5 of the way there!

Crew Meeting

2009-02-05T08:41:00.001-08:00

The crew meeting last night went really well, I think. It's extremely important for everyone to be open and communicative, especially since we are under such a strict time constraint; We don't have a whole lot of room for any big setbacks. Having everyone together to talk was good because the producers, Zach and I were able to express our concerns about how things were going, and the rest of the crew was able to respond to those and also to talk about their own concerns. Being on the same page is key. We are certainly growing as a team.

Right now we're getting ready to head out to New York for our last 3 days there. It will be our most strenuous weekend shoot, and I'm sure everyone will feel relieved after it's wrapped. I know I will.

Here we go!

Source

Days 4-5

2009-02-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

What an intense weekend! We shot about 15 hours yesterday and another 7 today. We've bagged about 15 script pages (out of 103) so far.

By my extremely rough calculations, we will have shot between 1/5 and 1/4 of the script after our trip to New York (for the main character's, David, house) this next coming weekend. Can you believe it?

I'm pretty anxious to have a crew meeting this week. Besides preparations for the NY shoot, we have a lot to talk about.

Original Picture Source

Progress

2009-01-31T07:36:00.000-08:00

I'm about to head out for Day 4 on set of The Mercury Cycle. I think that so far things have gone well considering all of the bumps we've hit. At this point, all I can ask is that we start to improve our set up times for each shot. The more efficient our setups, the more time we have for takes. I think things will go smoothly today because we had last weekend to work out kinks and we are starting to get into a groove.

Cheers,

Brianne

Scheduling

2009-01-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

Phew! Looks like the schedule is finally just about done. Unfortunately, there have been a ton of issues floating around that caused the schedule to go through countless drafts, but at this point I think we have worked out just about everything. We are going to have a total of 33 shooting days, ending on April 26th, if nothing goes horribly amiss. I really hope it doesn't because we seniors have to graduate and get real (paying) jobs shortly after then. I did schedule in several extras days for pick up shots and re-shoots, which I know we will need, so I am praying they will be enough.

This coming weekend we have a packed schedule - 12 scenes on Saturday and another 7 on Sunday. Not to mention that Sunday will be Jessica's (the actress who plays Lana, the female lead) first day on set! If we can all learn from what we've done so far and apply that knowledge to this weekend's shoot, we will be in pretty good shape.

-Brianne

Picture Source

Hi, I'm your 1st Assistant Director...

2009-01-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

...and my name is Brianne.

I am extremely excited to be working on The Mercucy Cycle! This is my first venture into feature film production, though I have worked on pre-production of a professional short film and production of a music video within the past year.

A little about me...

I am a senior now at Quinnipiac University, majoring in Media Production, of course, and minoring in Psychology. At QU, I am involved in clubs that center around my two passions, movies and music: WQAQ, the student-run radio station and QFS, the rapidly-growing film society. I also love photography and I make jewelry.

Why I am involved in The Mercury

Cycle...

Since the beginning of the Quinnipiac Film Society, it was obvious that we were a group of students that were eager to learn more and starving for something big and exciting to dig our teeth into. For me, The Mercury Cycle came at just the right time. I was about to trek through my final year at Quinnipiac and looking for something to do. Something that would make me stand out among all of the other new people in the business begging to work for very little money and for a chance to be a part of a great production. I think that TMC will be that thing, and I hope that in years to come we all look back and are proud to have been a part of something big.

My position as 1st AD...

As the First Assistant Director, I am the Director's right-hand (wo)man. I have a myriad of responsibilities from creating call sheets to calling "Quiet on the set!"

What I have been doing so far...

Beginning in November, I worked alongside our Production Manager Caitlin Goldberg to create the shooting schedule for TMC. This can be a difficult job on an independent film because the schedule must be made with consideration of a number of restraints such as actor's schedules, school holidays during which crew would be unavailable, and availability of locations. We are only able to shoot on weekends because most of the crew has class during the week and many cast members have full times jobs.

The schedule has gone through several versions since its original creation for many different reasons. Re-castings, locations problems, and almost any other change in the production affects the schedule.

Here is a sample of what the schedule looks like:

During production, one of my main responsibility is generating call sheets, which is a page of information that tells everyone on the cast and crew where and when they need to be each day of production. At the start of the shooting day, I distribute One Line Schedules, which includes information (including estimated times) about each scene that is to be shot that day, that the crew uses as a guideline throughout the day.

During a shoot, I am the one that gets a take started with my calls:

"Quiet on the set please!"

"Rehearsal for camera" OR "Shooting for picture"

"Roll sound" and "Roll camera"

...and so on.

And so...

I just want to say that I'm so excited to be a part of this journey and I'm glad that you are here to come along and experience this wonderful opportunity - because as our director Cody would say,

"There are no problems on set, only opportunities"

Brianne Richard

brianne.richard@quinnipiac.edu

1st Assistant Director

The Mercury Cycle

Please Donate!

2009-01-26T19:11:00.001-08:00

Hey Friends,

Below is the link to donate money for our film "The Mercury Cycle". It is hard to ask friends for their hard earned money, however I promise you that it WILL NOT GO TO WASTE! It is important for us to buy the equipment we need to make this film the best it can be, for us as well as for you. ANY AMOUNT IS GREATLY APPERCIATED!!! The sooner, the better. This is a full length feature film, with your generous contributions we can raise enough money to make this thing and hopefully enter it into festivals such as Sundance and Cannes.

Please see the description below, and press the pretty yellow button to donate!

-Brianne

What if you could learn from your past by actually seeing it?
Meet college student David Bushell. Dumped by his girlfriend, failing at school, and lacking any real friends, David spends every weekend at home taking care of his father, who struggles to trust anyone after the death of David’s mother. David’s life continues on a downward spiral until he follows his roommate to one of his secret late-night “meetings”.
There, David discovers a secret brotherhood that take pills enabling them to look at events in their lives, and learn from their past. The pills give David the power to look back at the good times and the bad. With the pills and the help of his new friend Lana, his life begins to improve. But the pills are a closely-held secret, and when the brothers find out David isn’t who they thought he was, it means danger for David and Lana.