Shooting Nutmeg & Mistletoe Day #4 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: Coffee bar, planning C-Cam, logistics of transitioning sets while filming, filmmaking is logistics, planning my first shot (long pan down), non-materialism, showing time passed with props, heaviest scenes, brick by brick, teaching room on set.

Questions or thoughts? => charlie@abyssal.co

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

All right. Day four. January, what is this? Twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth? Twenty-third. Oh my gosh. Twenty-third. Nine fifteen p.m. late night. Friday. We had our call time was a bit later because of all the 12-hour stuff. You can't start uh unless it's 12 hours later than when you leave. So I guess these productions tend to get later and later. We started at 8. We ended up by having to do a little bit of overtime to get some of Jasper's coverage for his uh his last scene here in this garage. So, anyways, got got done a bit late. Feeling super good. Got to hang out with she's lovely. She was watching her daughter do a whole bunch of takes. She's super sweet. Um let's see. I ran the coffee bar today. We had this idea that we could save a little money by me running a coffee bar for everyone instead of hiring a coffee bar. So I brought in my little espresso machine and made about 40 lattes, maybe 50. I don't know. Oat milk is very big, and so is matcha. So many people were not wanting coffee. It's interesting. Um then I burned my my fingers at the very end. Um I poured scalding water all over them when I was trying to make a hot chocolate for someone. But so I spent the rest of the day with my fingers in a cup of ice. But um, and that was after yesterday. I almost burned myself by one of the space eaters because my my bodgy kind of synthetic jacket, I guess, was starting to smoke and melt a little bit, but that could have been a lot scarier. Let's see, what did we do today? Um got re got ready for coffee in the morning. That was like a lot of logistics. Uh, I did some ripcord for an hour or two, had breakfast, then did coffee, had lunch, did more coffee, then really kind of uh got into the uh CCAM stuff. We've got stuff to plan. Well, we had stuff to plan for Monday. So finally we have a couple shots that I can actually go direct, which will be really fun as part of the second unit. Planned out the shots, pretty happy with those, actually. That was fun. Looked at, I think it's shot deck and looked at a whole bunch of inspirational images and talked a lot with Julia, had a meeting with Brooke to kind of figure out who our cameramen were gonna be and what they're gonna, what kind of equipment they're gonna come to town with. There's so many logistics to film, even just a couple scenes. It's all about understanding where they are, where everyone else is in the schedule. So, you know, we had this idea that Tinsel Town has two levels, level one, level two, phase one, phase two. Uh, and the beginning, the phase one is where things are a little sadder and more commercial, and people are kind of disconnected and a little bit hopeless, and it's a little down and out. And then after the elves do their magic and the people start working together and getting motivated to fix Christmas, get their Christmas spirit back, things start coming to life. So people are looking at each other, there's less garbage around, there's some decorations up, you might even hear some music every once in a while. So the whole, all the sets have that concept of whether they're at level one or level two, and that all plays into the schedule. Obviously, you don't want to make a transition, you don't want to have the art department change between those things often. So everything has to be planned. That's a long way of saying Monday, all my shots are the outdoor shots, are level one, but that day is the day that they're transitioning everything to level two. So in the middle of doing that, there are going to be people out there sprucing things up. So we just have to make sure we schedule it just right. Um, it's kind of like today when I was running my coffee bar, and the place we were trying to find a location for me to go that people would actually notice, but actually wouldn't be in the way of shooting. And the place we chose was in this alleyway, which turned out to be uh, I guess, within earshot of filming. So whenever I hit my steam wand while they were doing a take, I was probably ruining it. Certainly, certainly needed to stop steaming. So that was kind of a mess. We had to move the whole thing. But logistics. Filmmaking is logistics. Just like winemaking is cleaning. I I think that's how maybe filmmaking is planning. I don't know. Um, so did all that C unit stuff. The sun had already gone down by the time we really got out and scouting the areas, but found a really cool um, but we know, we know where the one of the shots is um where basically Santa's sleigh is messed up because the misfits destroy it by accident. And Santa is kind of flying around in the sky and unable to deliver any presents. And then we cut to this like little kid in Peru who's sitting by his Christmas tree with a WTF kind of expression on his face because there's no presence under his tree. So that's how it was written. And they they had like a shot description for it, which I think is good, but thought we could do a little better. So what we're going to start on Santa, show him in the in the sky, and then basically pan the camera down. So from in front of the full moon, go down into blackness or cloud cover, maybe, then actually do some stock footage of a town and then pan that down. And then now we basically have a little more blackness, which is just the roof. And now we're suddenly at the tip of a Christmas tree in someone's living room. Camera slows down and it continues panning down. You see all see some nice handmade ornaments all the way down to a kid who's sitting cross-legged on the floor staring you right in the face at the bottom of that pan, I guess, uh tilt, and he's pissed. Cut to a wide shot, and you see him gesture as he, you know, he looks underneath the tree and sees that there's nothing there. It's just a it's a small difference, but I think we'll I think it'll play a lot better. It's a lot smoother, and it connects the it connects the little kid's disappointment and the funny moment with the fact that the sleigh isn't working. So I thought that would be nice. And we have another shot in there, which is the the same kid at the end of the movie. The same kid has has presents now, so we're wondering exactly how to do that. I thought it might be nice not to have the kid open up a present, even though the presents are there, just because if he opens it up, it's uh he's he's excited about the actual thing, and the whole movie is has a decidedly non-materialistic bent or message. So I thought it might be nice to try doing that without him opening it up. Instead, he's just jumping around so excited that Santa came and just focus on the joy of basically somebody, you know, giving you a gift, especially Santa. I do think we'll probably end up by shooting him opening a gift, anyways, at least once, because it might fall flat. We might really need that. So in general, that I mean, that shot it will be a credit sequence, probably right at the beginning of the credits. So it will not have sound, and I think it'll just be a wide shot and it'll show the Christmas tree. It'll have, we're gonna add like another stocking. We have we're gonna add three stockings to the first version of it, and then a fourth and this one just to help show that time is passed. The tree will be mostly in the same place, but there'll be golden tinsel on it now. The furniture will be moved around a little bit just to show that it's not the same Christmas. And then the kid runs in from off-screen and he starts prancing around because he sees the gifts. He runs over to his stocking, opens it up, looks inside again, just thrilled and running around. So that'll be a really cute ending shot while the credits are rolling, just to show all the things that are better now. So what else? Um just finished up Jasper's pretty heavy scenes where he's talking about Alma's mom, which is Jasper's sister. He's basically describing why he wants to leave the town, um, why his memories of this, why he needs to make new memories. And he just he mentions, you know, Alma's mother died on Christmas Eve, and that's why he doesn't want to remember, doesn't want to think about the past, certainly doesn't want anyone bringing out his ornaments, and he doesn't want to reenact the stage, the stage play with his tow truck. That's why he sold it, and also to pay for her medical bills. So it's actually a pretty heavy scene. I mean, it's within a comedy movie, so it's not that heavy, but he definitely had to bust out some acting chops, which he did very effectively. There was one take in particular that um I know Peter myself just said that was the one. It was so great. And kudos to him for doing a really long scene like that repeatedly. It's probably I don't know, at least four minutes. Um you know, all lots of dialogue and lots of different emotions. Very impressed. I mean, the whole cast is amazing, but rocked it. Um feeling really good about the acting in general. I would say it just feels like it's happening. Like you watch you watch them do the takes and it's funny, and you can see their great acting and their great expressions, and the chemistry is wonderful. It just feels like magic. Magic is coming to life on screen. And it also feels like we're building the whole thing brick by brick because it's so methodical and so slow, but at the same time, you know, every day that passes, we have another what 10 minutes, eight minutes done, essentially. I mean, it doesn't work quite that perfectly, but you know, we have 25 minutes of the movie done, something like that, 20 minutes, four days in. Wait, does that work? 18 days, 20, 12, 60, 6 minutes a day. Yeah. Okay. So we get yeah, 24 minutes, roughly. It might be 20. Um so that feels really great. Lots of high fives, lots of hugs. Um I just heard from a lot of people that this feels special. So I hope they're right. And I think they're right. It certainly feels that way to me. Anyways, looking forward to having some time to myself this weekend, but overall feeling super good. Lots of warm, warm feelings. Um what else am I missing? Um did a tour of hair and makeup. That was fun. Did a tour of the teaching room, which is where all the kids learn. If if kids are on set, they have to learn. Little little details like that. But um, that's about all I got for today. See you on Monday.