Shooting Nutmeg & Mistletoe Day #1 of 18

We started our 18-day shoot of our Christmas comedy called "Nutmeg and Mistletoe."

I decided I would just hit the record button, usually at the end of each day, with my thoughts what was happening that day? What I learned, and generally what being on set for 12 hours a day is like.

It is quite unfiltered and unedited (with the occasional beep) - hope you enjoy being backstage!

In this episode: Food, level 1 and level 2 Christmas, Katey optimizing, scene repetition, the grind of film vs games, how much do actors need to memorize?, video village and transmitters, comedy over years of script development, grievances, first time directing!, 1st unit always take priority, fish line on mailbox, Jasper's garage is a garage IRL, the Martini shot and the Abby Singer, right person in every position.

Questions or thoughts? => charlie@abyssal.co

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hey there, this is Charlie. I've been wanting to update this podcast a lot more often, but a lot of stuff happened over the summer and I got busy. So here we are shooting Nutmeg and Mistletoe, our Christmas comedy, which is kind of like a modern day elf. And I thought, why don't I just record my thoughts after every day on set? I've got this long drive home. I've got some time. I could just dump my thoughts into my voice recorder. And that's what the next, I think, 18 episodes will be. Now the dates that you're listening to will not line up exactly to the release date, but they are all sequential. I hope you enjoy it. It's gonna be raw and unfiltered, and I hope uh I hope it's helpful. I hope you learned something about movie making. Hey. Today is January 21st. It's a Wednesday morning. Driving over to the second day on set for Nutmegan Mistletoe. And I just wanted to capture my thoughts from the first day because it seems important. Um yeah, yesterday was the first day I've ever been on set, which was pretty cool. Definitely had to get up super early. I think I got up at four, left the house by five, got to Santa Clarita by six, and everyone was milling about um eating, basically. We had a whole kitchen crew out there making breakfast burritos and omelets, and there's a whole spread. It's a giant truck full of coffee, basically. Um yeah, I guess films are made on coffee. And uh had a giant breakfast burrito from Gennato, which was super delicious. Eggs, potatoes, bacon, you name it. I've been counting my calories for a few weeks now, and I definitely blew through my budget yesterday. Definitely films are made on coffee and snacks. Yes. So yeah, got to see everyone. The extras had their own little area, which is really cool inside the studio. There's like a room full of extras. People had brought their own clothes, some people got some clothes so they could look slightly Christmassy, but not too much. So we have the whole idea around the town having two different levels of Christmas spirit. So there's level one, which is at the beginning of the movie, and it's pretty downtrodden and sad. I mean, it's not like desolate, but it's definitely people are kind of ignoring each other and not looking at each other, disconnected on their phones, and we definitely didn't want too much Christmas, too many Christmas decorations or anything too colorful or beautiful for that's that part. And then level two is as the elves are doing their work and their magic, Christmas spirit is starting to come back. So that's where the town starts to look a bit more vibrant, and dark decorations are being put up and people are talking more and they're off their phones. So all of our scenes, we just want to make sure any any outdoor scene, especially, we want to make sure is it level one or level two? I guess we're calling it phase one and phase two. Um so yeah. Uh today or yesterday was phase one, all the outdoor scenes. We definitely, I think all I think everything is front loaded for phase one, so we don't have to decorate the town and then undecorate it. Thank you, Katie, for that detail. She's our associate. Um, she's our first AD. So she kind of takes care of all the planning for that kind of stuff, which is a huge puzzle to solve. And she seemingly gets really excited when she does find little optimizations or fixes here and there to kind of cram everything Tetra style into the schedule. So um, yeah, our first scenes were over in Angela's cafe. The first scene was Nutmeg coming into the cafe looking for a job. So she's she's been told that she cannot to fit in in humankind, uh, she needs to uh look for a job, and she needs to tell she doesn't really know what to say, so she says, What's her line? Um I'm looking for a job, and oh, I love coffee, and oh how my back hurts. Yeah, rewinding on that, someone tells her that uh Alma tells her, oh, you know, humans, you know, adults, they're they're always they're always drinking coffee, they need to work, and and they'll they all have back pain, they'll complain about their back. So she tries to fit in with that. It's a cute little joke. Uh recorded that one probably, I don't know, eight, eight to twenty times. It was a lot. That was probably the first first thing I noticed is how much repetition there is. I guess I knew there'd be repetition on set doing the same scene over and over. I was just surprised how many times we did each one. And even after some really good takes, it seemed like we had everything we needed, but I was surprised that we would go on and do like six or eight more takes. Also surprised that the actors don't mind doing it. In fact, it makes perfect sense, but the grind for them is doing the scene after scene after scene in the same one, doing it in slightly different ways, trying to get the timing just right, or dial something in. And I think if you want to be an actor, you really need to enjoy that aspect of it. You need to enjoy that, was not someone hockey at me. I've got my Tesla driving me. So you need to enjoy that grind. And I think of it like in games. You know, if you're programming and making art and checking it in, there's often bugs associated with it and fixing the bugs, making builds, releasing the builds, playing them, getting feedback from them, and then starting the whole thing again. And that's the grind in games, and it can take years. And if you don't like that, you probably don't like making games. And I have a feeling if the repetition gets to you, you probably don't want to make films. So the actors were definitely having fun and very pro and uh able to turn it on and turn it off. And I just that astounds me. I don't know how someone can do that. I'm sure it's even crazier when you get to the dramatic scenes, if there's tears involved, turning that on and off. That would totally drain me. And in any sense, even just being chipper, you know, like 20 times in a row for two minutes. Oh my gosh, I could not do that. I mean, I maybe I could if I worked on it hard enough, but that is not my skill. Whew, I don't know how they do it. It's amazing. Even remembering the lines over and over and over, my I think my head would get scrambled after a little while. So that was another takeaway. Speaking of rem remembering their lines, I guess it's easy to think that actors have to memorize their entire the entire script and spend weeks going through it. But actually, they just really need to memorize the scenes for the day. And uh that's pretty awesome because you just uh you know, I think maybe our actors had just a few pages to read per day. Maybe maybe eight total, sorry, max, at least for yesterday. So they really just need to know those lines. And of course, they can improve improvise some of those. It doesn't have to be perfect. And you could see them loosening up and and trying out other variations as time went on, especially for a comedy. And when you have comedic actors who have great comedic timing, their input is invaluable. So that was kind of cool. They they really didn't have to recognize um memorize that much. So after we did, let's see, anything else at the Angeles Girl uh Angeles Cafe. Uh there's a scene where uh we recorded with Nutmeg uh drinking coffee during her pseudo job interview. And it's the first time she has ever had coffee, but she tries to cover it up by saying that, oh no, it's the first time I've had fresh coffee. Oh, okay. And as she's drinking coffee throughout the scene, she's getting more and more wired, and uh, she's speaking faster and faster. And our actor for Nutmeg just completely killed it. She's so funny, and I don't know how she can speak so quickly and just nail every word, but she absolutely did. And she added a whole bunch of fun extras, like uh tapping on the coffee canister and talking about the magic can. And um, it was funny, funny to hear her little ad libs in there. So that went super well. We we were, I didn't I didn't know about the whole video village thing. I know people talked about it, but I didn't really know what that meant. So behind the scene, in this case, behind the cafe was um all the array of monitors and computers and things like that, and we were all watching each take. So all the producers had their little headphones on and their uh their radio transmitters or the receivers, so you can get the audio live. And you can, that's always transmitting, whether they're recording or not. So I could even walk around and even go charge my phone in my car, which is quite a ways away, and I could just listen in on everything, every take, everything in between the takes. Obviously, you're not going to get every single thing because there's so many people involved. But um, I got most of it. That was really great to hear all that. It just felt like you were connected to whatever was happening, even if you couldn't watch the scene. Although I did sit there and watch most of the scenes, most of the takes, that was just hours and hours of sitting in one of those little cloth director chairs, the which I'm guessing they use because they're foldable and you can move them. And uh yeah, just listening to and watching every single take. I recorded a whole bunch of them. I was really happy to be laughing out loud on many of the takes. I've been a little bit worried about the comedy for a while. I should say a little bit more than a little worried, not super worried, but for a comedy, this is this is our bread and butter, and you really just don't know how these jokes are gonna play. You know, they sound funny the first time you read them on script, and then you read it over and over again for a year, year and a half, you keep changing them and tweaking them, and they just cease to be funny. And even the first time you chuckle, you don't really laugh out loud. But when the actors are reading them, so many of them were we were laughing out loud. Just a good feeling. Stacy had mentioned that that she had worked on Austin Powers number two, and she said the vibe was the humor level on set was very similar to that one, which I really hope that's true because that movie was hilarious. All the Austin Powers were amazing, I think, all the ones I remember. So that would be really nice. Just felt a lot better after hearing the actors reading that stuff. And it just, it was just like a really warm, warm, fuzzy feeling the whole day. So just I think partly because the, you know, because we're making a comedy, so it just tends to be more feel-good, but also the whole team was getting along super well. I saw one snafu, which someone got yelled at, which they really shouldn't have. But besides that, people were just glowing and they just it seemed like a well-oiled machine. And I kept hearing from various people. One person said, This is like a dream, and they were they were an experienced person. Um, and then we, you know, we even had our sag rep come on stage or on set, and I I'm assuming they when they show up, it can be tense because you're wondering if you're gonna get an infraction or someone's gonna get written up. When you get written up, and you know, I've heard the word grievance being thrown around before yesterday. And it sounds like a grievance is when you break a rule and it goes on your record, kind of like points if you're speeding or something. So it anyways, it could have been a contentious visit, but it was super nice, and he just said, Wow, this this set is not normal, you know, this crew and everything, the energy. He just said, We're not gonna have any problems, which is amazing. He even said, Oh, you know, I like to let people know before I show up. He said, you know, I think he has a more holistic view of these infractions, which is if there's something going wrong, he's gonna find out about it before he even gets to the set. So that was really nice. Even our Sagreb was happy. Um, what else? Um, so then our we did our second big scene. Actually, our it wasn't really a scene, but it was a lot of the external coverage. It was outside of the toy shop and the bakery. We had some extras walking around, and we wanted it to show the everything being a little bit desolate. So there's a plastic bag, which is blowing around, kind of American beauty style. And uh that plastic bag makes an appearance later in the movie, but it just kind of showing that people aren't even picking up the bag, and people are walking around and kind of ignoring each other, and it's not a particularly pretty set at that moment. It's just kind of plain. And so I'm gonna be doing the second unit on this film, and there isn't much of it, unfortunately. Or maybe that's fortunate actually, because it's just more work. We've all we have so much work to do already. But I I was waiting around hoping to do some second unit, although I didn't think it was gonna happen this week, or I at least not until Friday at minimum when I got my third camera, camera C. But suddenly camera B opened up because we have two cameras for most of this most of the primary, and suddenly one of those cameras was not needed, and Stacy called me over and said, Hey, you can, you know, you can direct this this shot real quick. And I just ran over there. You know, I've been wanting to do some kind of direction that's been an interest of mine for a while, and suddenly I'm in it and just doing it, which was I I really didn't do anything, but uh it was a thrill anyways. I mean, I had like a couple notes, but it was just a shot of some people walking down the street in front of the post office. So kind of an establishing shot. And it was a you know, older couple walking, not really older, but mid, you know, 50s or something. Um not old to me. Um and then the other direction, someone's on their phone and they kind of both walk towards each other and kind of collide and kind of annoying. They're both annoyed and they walk around each other. Again, just to show you know that the feeling of the town before the elves worked their magic. And it was uh shot from below, looking up, kind of as at an angle up at the post office. And there's a couple American flags blowing in the wind. And I actually would have done something quite different. I would have uh so I I told our the camera operator, um, I said, Hey, I'd like to shoot all the all this establishing stuff in level in phase one tinsel town with a faraway lens and just basically don't see anyone's face. So just trying to make it almost inhuman. We don't see faces, we don't have people reacting positively to each other. They don't have to be negative, but they just need to be apathetic and basically ignoring each other. And so it took him a I think I really didn't explain that very well. And we we didn't have time to incorporate it into that shot. But at by the end of the shot, he got it, and he was he just I could see him in getting it and enrolling in the idea. So even though we didn't really do it in that particular shot, I think going forward he's got it, and he even said so. So that was a nice feeling. Felt like that's probably what directing is is having it having a vision, keeping the vision and describing it to people so they can, they're empowered to actually take, you know, uh bring it to life. Because Lord knows he knows a lot more about cameras than I do. I know almost nothing. So um then we start to set up the second shot where we're gonna do um kind of like a faraway shot of the front of the toy shop as people walk by. And I there was a bike leaning up against a post, and I wanted to move the bike and make it look like someone had just kind of thrown it against the post. It was perfectly, it just looked too perfect. It was like a white bike on a beige post, and it was, it just looked picturesque, like in front of a French cafe or something. So I just said we should, you know, make that bike like lean more heavily leaning against the post, have the wheel kind of like angled down, like somebody just kind of casually tossed it there, and then even put the whole thing out of like uh asymmetrically framed. The way they had framed it, it was just perfect. And I thought, well, let's have the back of the bike wheel in in the frame only, or just the just a tilted front and have the whole thing be off-center, just to kind of make it feel like things are not quite right around here. We were starting to set that up, and then the camera got whisked away from us. And I guess they needed it for the main, uh, the bag stuff blowing down the street. So that was kind of a bummer, but I realized that's just how it works. You know, you get the camera for a moment, you try to sneak in some extra footage, and then maybe something high priority shows up, and that's completely fine. It was fun watching the bag getting blown down the street. There was a guy uh from our practical effects house who had a an air a uh leaf blower, and he was strategically hiding behind the columns. And I don't know how he stayed out of frame, how he knew how to stay out of frame, but he was just basically blowing the bag down the street as people were walking. Pretty amazing. Uh, I don't know how he did that, but then I guess it was right before that shot we did the shot with the post office box, the mailbox. So that's the scene where the letter is kind of like fighting its way out of the box and it flies out, flies out the the front. So we had some fishing line hooked up. The whole thing was like not locked down to the ground so it could rock a little bit. And the same uh practical effects guy was below the camera view and was rocking the post box, post office box back and forth with some fish line, and he was like tugging the the door so it could kind of jitter open and closed, and then finally pull it down fast so the letter can be, you know, with CG, can fly out of the mailbox. That was fun. Um fun to see a practical. That was like my first practical practical effect scene I've ever seen. That was fun. And I talked to Neil Impy, the guy, apparently he did the effects on Deadpool with Tim Miller, which is pretty amazing. Um, he said it's actually trivial to paint out the fishing line. They actually still paint it frame by frame. They realized they could probably use AI, but it's so straightforward and fast to do it even frame by frame, almost like a flood fill for Photoshop kind of thing. Um, and because it was a low frequency background, just a blue post office box or mailbox with uh just a very simple wall behind it, it made it even easier to paint it out. So, um, anyways, that's how they're gonna do that. Then we broke for lunch, had a giant lunch. Again, filmmaking is a lot of drinking coffee, waiting around and repeating things and eating. That's my that's my hot take for today. Um yeah, after lunch, we did, let's see, I think we moved over to Jasper's garage. Yeah, that's what we did next. That's fun because the the garage we're using is actually our practical effects guy's actual office. So it's like a it's a garage, basically. It's a workshop filled with motorcycles and welders and all sorts of things that move heavy things and stuff that blows up. And it's basically it's basically an auto garage with like lifts and everything. And he has that on set here at Santa Clarita Studios. So he was excited because this is the first time he's shot here. And he normally he'd have to bring all this equipment, plan ahead, think about you know what he has to pack into his giant van and bring it all on set. So if he needs something that he forgot, it's right there in the van. Or, you know, not if he forgot, but if he needs extra stuff. So he's got to do a lot of planning. Here, he said, Oh, if I need anything, I just walk back over to my my actual workshop, grab it, and bring it back to where we're filming. So he's actually really excited about that. And the good thing for us is we didn't have to do too much set dressing. I probably shouldn't say that because I didn't do it. There's probably a lot of stuff that changed, but the core garage scene was already done. We swapped a motorcycle that was up on a lift and put in a big uh, I think a van or something like that up there. And definitely some stuff on the desk where Alma is sitting. She sat there for probably five hours with her cute little top hat on. She's uh from she was totally adorable and just a delight. And you can see why she is a star already, just in her own little happy zone drawing in between takes, smiling all the time, engaging with everyone, just so. Easygoing and happy and wonderful. I got to talk a lot with her mom, who was sitting with us over in the video village watching. She's also lovely. Got to hear lots of cool little tidbits from how they filmed. And uh yeah, and that was the first shot we had of as mistletoe. And boy, does she inhabit the character perfectly. Just gosh, she's amazing. 10 out of 10, amazing. Um, just she is mistletoe. And she looked like Madeline Kahn or Marilyn Monroe on set yesterday. Just we were all blown away. So cute, so funny, nailed her lines, consistent, but trying new things all the time, and physically jumping around on one foot. There's a really great scene where she's, you know, basically she's looking for a job and she goes to Jasper's garage, she meets there, or you know, Alma, the little girl, Jasper's uh kind of adopted daughter, and the phone rings and she answers it. She does this hilarious gig where she's, you know, Alma is not allowed to answer the phones, but um, but mistletoe can, or really, she's an adult, so she does, and she's already starting to work. She just kind of seamlessly finds a job for herself, and she addresses Jen on this on the phone and gives her all sorts of compliments. And uh yeah, it was super cute. Even after watching that probably 20 times, it still gave me a chuckle. So A plus plus. So yeah, that was pretty much four or five hours just that scene. I believe that was it. And am I forgetting anything? I think that was everything. We did do that take multiple or did that scene multiple angles. Uh Jasper comes in, he doesn't have a lot of lines, but Uncle Jasper's all dressed up as the mechanic. He shows up and basically says, What the hell is going on here? And then uh gives uh mistletoe a job. And uh he was great as the the gruff kind of and father figure. And what else am I forgetting? Oh, then we had the rap. You know, like the the final shot is kind of fun. They call it the uh what was it called? Not the Manhattan, but the martini. Is that what it's called? Totally butchering that. Martini shot, I think is what they call it. Obviously from back in the day where people would go have a martini afterwards. I guess they're probably not doing that now for whatever reason, but because we're all antisocial. Um, and then the second to last shot is called the Abbey Singer, which is less used, but I guess that's after a famous um first AD who would say that it was the um the martini shot, and then add another shot, anyways, pretty regularly. So they just called called it the Abbey Martini, and then the last one's now the Abbey Singer, and then called the last one the Martini. And then um Ari, our script supervisor, said there's actually a third to last shot, some people will call, which is called the Marsha, and it's after Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. That's three. I don't know if there's more to it than that, but that's what we said. Sounded cute. There's also somebody else had mentioned, I think Brooke had mentioned our she's um Brooke said something about the JFK, which is the shot you don't see coming. I didn't quite understand what that was, but I think it's somewhere between an Abbey Singer and uh Martini. And there's yeah, I don't know. It's funny, all these little traditions. So yeah, then we wrapped. It was, you know, we got there when it was dark. We left there when it was dark, and it went from freezing cold in the morning, you know, LA LA style or LA standards, freezing cold, you know, probably like 58 or something. Um, and then it got really hot during the day and then cold and dark again when we left. So it felt really good to be on set. It was really cool to see everything coming to life. I I kept hearing from the other producers and people like how this is the best part of making a film, which kind of surprised me because it is very repetitive and it's long days. I wouldn't have thought it would be super fun. I have to say I did enjoy it. The day didn't whiz by too fast, but I I enjoyed every moment of it. I don't know if I'm gonna enjoy 12 hours a day for 18 days. Like, I don't I don't know how anyone does that. But those those days are behind me, I thought. But you know, I didn't have time to get to the gym or make any calls or really even have dinner. It's more like by the time I got home, it's more like take a bath and go to bed. That's pretty much what I had time for. Watch watch a little um pretty woman, because I've not seen that movie. It's been on my list. So I watched like half an hour of that. But it doesn't leave a lot of time for anything. So I definitely neglected my health and my email and my social life yesterday. Not sure I want to keep doing that, but hey, we're good. Today's a new day. We'll see how it how it goes. But I guess my main takeaway. Oh, I will say we also um, Stacy, uh, Julia and Peter and I, we all kind of did some high fives at the end. We probably we were chattering for half an hour afterwards, just excited about how how so many of these things are working out. What a great vibe it is on set. We had to make a couple tough decisions on this, you know, last-minute changes and um yeah, it's been it's been a lot in the past couple weeks, and not all of it easy, but I think we're feeling super good that I mean my my stance is we have the right person in every position now, and that feels fantastic. They always say when you're running a business, if you at any moment, if someone who's the wrong person is in a position of like a powerful or important position, you need to drop everything and fix that before you do anything else. And I think that's really true. That's not something I've always followed, not advice I've always followed. I really wish I had. But now that I think of it that in that lens, I think it's super smart. And I do think we have the right person in every job, um, right, right position. So that feels super good. And I think the results are already showing for it, show it, showing for itself. I took a whole bunch of extra uh video footage of many of the shots. I've been sharing it with the writers and people who can't be here. So that's been really fun. Posted a couple, uh, posted a movie and some other stuff on Instagram. That's exciting. I'm happy to be sharing with the world, though I just can't share anything with the actors' faces in it, at least not yet. I don't know what bridge we have to cross there, but super fun to be sharing that stuff. I look forward to doing more of it today. And I look forward to our two mega scenes today. One, I actually don't know what I forgot what they are. Um, I don't have the call sheet in front of me, but looking forward to it. I'll keep you updated and overall feeling really happy about this film and glad that we are making this movie together. I'm glad that I decided to pull the trigger on it. Um yeah, it may be it may be a financial disaster, but I have a feeling it's not going to. Looking forward to talking to you soon. Bye.