Shooting Nutmeg & Mistletoe Day #5 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: Call with Peter in the am, first day of directing, running through all the shots and inserts, Peter reigns me in a bit, time is of the essence, then day 5 end. What would James Cameron do? 2nd Unit Directing, capturing the sadness of the town, stunt coordinator Tim for screeching tires, cars on set, directing kid Elias, 2nd unit is 2nd fiddle, whispering during takes, canceling and pivoting constantly, credit shots vs. other shots, our key grip.

Questions or thoughts? => charlie@abyssal.co

Get daily work updates on Instagram 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Well it wasn't a good Hey, good morning, Peter. Hey, good.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Good. Ten minutes before my day starts, but I'm getting Okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I figured you were on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Now you're being attacked. Not yet. I get um Good morning. Good morning. Yeah. Got it. That's a big one.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Um EPK and the B-roll, you know, C CAM. So but uh looking forward to it. And I just wanted to get a really fast um brain dump on anything extra that you wanted in the C CAM. I've got my little device recording so I can just go back and listen to it later. Is there, you know, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, Julia actually has the entire list. Oh, um okay, great. Yeah, yeah. I built a list with her over the weekend. Great, okay. Um so I don't know off the top of my head everything on the list, but there's a good amount. Oh yeah. And no setup should take more than an hour. Okay. Uh like meaning I saw Julia's in something, the Peruvian living room. Yeah. Um just want to make sure we're on the same page. That's supposed to be a a two-second flashback in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

So I saw like six shots in there, and I was like, whoa, this is like one of those big flashback moments where it's like two seconds. So it should be a wide establishing and a close-up reaction shot, and that's it. Oh man. Um, would you be? It looked like a whole little short film. I was like, this is not it's way too big. It's way too big. Well, because it's going over VO and there's only two Y.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I saw that, but I just thought that it could be I just what thought it'd be fun to connect it to the sleigh. So it could and it would give a little bit of outside.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Like it gets, you know, I know you're talking about it it being I worry that it's gonna make a it's making uh a mountain out of a mobile type of thing. Yeah, I just worry that it's not a beat we're trying to land of a story. Yeah, it's the real beat was them screwing up the sleigh. Yep.

unknown 2:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Not getting the gifts isn't the the huge payoff, it's more just uh, you know, what is owed after the sleigh fails. But I do agree, yeah. I just worry, I just would hate for you to do all that work, and then it just never ends up in the edit. I think if you don't mind, I'd rather just try it, and then if it if you throw it away, we throw it away. It's fine. You know. The issue is it's not that I don't mind, it's that I've given you about 20 things to shoot today. Oh my gosh. Okay. And that are like desperately needed to make the movie. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

And so if we spend all our time there, I worry we lose what we act what we're actually gonna use. Got it, got it. And like like a hundred percent that will be what I mean. And so like I don't mind you doing that. I just worry that it's air. Yep. It jeopardizes like these emergency things that I gave to Leo. Got it. I need a tire screech, and I need the man, the old man reacting to to the lady saying, Well, we're mule tide, sir, and then he's upset. Right. So just cool little inserts like that that I know will make it got it. And then of course, if you have time, a hundred percent. I mean, like Yep. That sounds good. I just get worried that if we're in there for three hours, it aren't gonna get money.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Yep. Do you have any idea how long you know, if I just shot all those extra shots that weren't the living room stuff, the two scenes, is that like a full day right there, do you think? That is I'm sorry, what was the question again? Like the all the extra so I haven't seen any of the extra stuff. You know, this is the first I know about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

It's like um an extreme close-up of the tire. Um it's like an extreme uh close-up of um the mayhem and stuff like that. I don't think there's anything that's gonna be really confusing to you. Yeah. Who knows exactly what I'm looking for? Yep. So I think you'll be fine with what we need to shoot.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

I guess what I'm wondering is I mean it doesn't give it sounds like there's not a lot of flexibility in how it's shot, it's pretty much just go shoot it like this.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, because we've already uh established a look for the booty. Okay. So I feel like if the problem is if we get too artsy with it, we get off filters. Yep. Got it. It just won't match. Okay. Um I know.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So my Yeah, it's fine. My my only question is all the extra stuff that you that you guys worked on that's in the shot list, that's not the living room. So this the what I know is two shots in the living room plus whatever I could fill it, whatever extra I could find, and now it's do everything else extra, and just and then plus the two shots in the living room in a very specific way. So I question it.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, the thing about there is some like there is some freedom in like I just said shooting people in the the bedroom in uh I have a meeting I'm really late too, sorry. Uh but I I shooting people in the in the in the um Angeles bakery and um just have them drinking coffee and having them talk to each other, not out loud, but just you know, just talking with each other and all those kind of things. I haven't actually added what I need, I just said I need it's like to open up the first time we get into Angelus Cafe. Yep. Then you're gonna owe an insert where you're actually gonna shoot going to be there. Uh huh. And you're gonna shoot just an over of her fixing the espresso machine because we never got a close-up of that. Got it.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

So I guess my question isn't is all that stuff, do you think that's already threatening to not get done in the day besides the living room stuff?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

No, because I've labeled what's the most important and the murder of importance.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Okay. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

I don't think it should take too long. Like I would look at it as like the way I would I would wrap your mind around it is like Atlas is like a punch out type of thing. Like you go in, you get it maybe twice, you move on to the next thing. Yeah. That way you're not feeling like you have to sit there for hours making it perfect. Yeah, these are like the things I'm looking for are like two-second inserts, right? Okay. So then once you say finish all that, you probably will have time at the end of the day because level two things will start going up. Yep, yep. And then once level two is up, you can go back, you know, and start shooting all that people. Um and you'll have background at your disposal for the whole day to kind of just shoot whatever you want. Um, because all the stuff I need is level one. So that's gonna change over really quick. Yep. So honestly, it if you guys just go in, get, you know, two minutes here, two minutes there, all those, even though I have like I don't think it's 20 shots, but it's like 15 shots, it should be okay. Uh it should be pretty quick. Yeah. Um, just for those things. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

So I guess I don't know what the order is, but I'll figure out the order because I think Yeah, once you talk to once you talk to um is it Julia, I think you'll have a whole idea of what's going on. Yeah. Okay. And then we just go from there. Sounds good. I won't take up any more time. Thanks, Peter. No, no, no, I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah. No worries.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Got a lot today. Got it. It's handled. Don't worry about it.

unknown 8:18

All right.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Got it. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye. Hey, hey. Day five complete. It's just before eight o'clock. I don't even know what today is. The 26th. Monday the 26th. Started at 7, ended at just after 7, and then ended up staying late a little later for uh some conversations with Peter and Stacy and people. Um, today was a big day for me because I, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to make this movie was to get some experience on set. And because I lived my life, like, you know, asking what James Cameron would do in all things in life, maybe not all things, but all things work in life. Not even all those, because I heard he's kind of a dick. Um, but I thought if he was involved on a movie like this, what would he ask for? He was always always asking for a lot, a lot of responsibility. And so I asked for the second unit directing. And second unit is basically all the extra shots that usually don't require either actors or certainly not the main actors. A lot of it is establishing shots. Um, I think of it like environmental storytelling. So in our in our movie, it's like the town showing you know different storefronts, how desolate the town is, things like that. So they're they tend to be less important, but you still need to use like, you know, really nice video cameras, you still need a small crew to help you, and you're still looking for some kind of either message or feel, uh, or the feels in each shot. So it is, I guess it is truly directing. It just happens to be a lot easier than the primary unit, which is what Peter is doing. So we ended up only having three days out of the 18 scheduled for what we call, I guess it's the C Cam. A cam and B Cam are the two main cameras that we're using for the main unit, and then C is for the secondary unit. So we, you know, we have a limited budget. So, I mean, not that limited, but I, you know, when it all comes down to it, the the B-roll, the C Cam footage was only three days, and it was just about getting as much of that footage in there as possible. There was one actual hero scene that I did, which was pretty cool. Um, there's a scene where Santa's Santa's sleigh is messed up, and so that year he missed delivering presents to South South America. So we have a scene where there's a kid in a Peruvian living room, always known as Peruvian living room scene, um, and he is like so sad that he missed his presence. He's actually a little more mad than sad. He just is glaring at the camera like, what the hell? Where are my presents? That was really fun. We got to work with this cute little kid, cute four-year-old named Elias. So, anyways, um, I had a whole list of shots to cover today, most of them very simple and straightforward, um, showing the kind of desolation of the town because the town has lost its Christmas spirit. So, yeah, we had a scene of like the flags hanging above the post office, but because it's a little sad, we made sure one of the flags was wrapped around the pole in kind of an awkward way. I got an establishing shot outside of Angelus Cafe where people are kind of sitting out and having coffee, but they're not really animated and talking. They don't even look like they're happy to be there. Their chairs are kind of out of, you know, off kilter. They're not quite looking at each other. They're a little bit hunched over. There's a guy inside reading the paper, really with like no energy. There's a couple inside having a conversation barely. It looks like they're about to get divorced, that kind of thing. There's like an elf in the room. So that was fun. A lot of fun making things sad. Knocking over a bicycle and filming that in a fun angle. Um, we had we did have one scene where it wasn't a sad scene. It was more like um Nutmeg and Mistletoe when they arrive in Tinsletown. They uh I think it's Nutmeg. I forget, no, mistletoe wants to see a sushi restaurant. She's all excited about sushi and she sees one, she goes running across the street, and a car almost hits her. So we did a quick insert showing the car, a car screeching to a stop. We actually had a stunt coordinator around, which we probably didn't need, but we're doing things by the book as much as we can, at least. So he was there. Uh, Tim, thanks, Tim. And we had somebody else driving the car. It's funny, on a bigger production, I think there's actually a transportation person that sources cars and then has them parked in various places and then gets them moved as necessary. But at our level, we just had random people parking their cars, and we kind of knew where they were parked for certain scenes and made sure that they were kept there for continuity whenever they were seen again. And then every once in a while, somebody has to drive someone's car. So we'd leave the keys like you know, on the hood under the hood, uh, just out of shot, so it couldn't be seen on camera, and somebody would move a car. A lot of car moving around today. Uh, what other scenes do we get? Yeah, the Provian Living Room was fun. I actually got a chance to do a whole bunch of shots of that one. I've never directed an actor, and I certainly have never directed a kid. Um, so that was fun trying to figure out how to communicate on his level. Luckily, I've spent a lot of time with kids and four-year-olds included. Four-year-olds, five-year-olds, and six-year-olds. I spent a lot of time doing that as an adolescent and as a young man in Vermont. My summer jobs, I would always I did uh totlot and daycamp. Tot lot was four, five, and six-year-olds. Daycamp was seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. So I spent quite a few summers doing that and babysitting. So hopefully that helped me a little bit. It was a lot of getting down on his level, sitting with him, making him feel comfortable, um engaging him on the Christmas tree. He was all excited about showing me every single ornament on the tree and kind of letting him do that. And there was a lot of downtime while we were waiting for the director of photography Tom to become available. He would have to check, check off on, you know, sign off on shots. I mean, one of the things that was so crazy today is the C CAM, the B unit, ended up by we would always be second fiddle. We were always second priority to the first unit. So if there's ever any conflict at all, first unit always wins. Which if you are a very sensitive person, that would be extremely frustrating. I actually am somewhat sensitive, but I just knew I had to get over it immediately, and that was completely fine. But you're in the middle of setting up a shot and then suddenly your camera gets taken away from you. Or you're trying to trying to coach an actor on the shot, or tell someone something about the shot, and you're told to shut your mouth and whisper because right next door a unit is recording. So you have to whisper. Spend your whole time setting up the shot and whispering. Or uh you're just sitting around waiting for 15 minutes because you can't get the first AD to come over and do something for you because she's busy on the first unit. And then so we we were like moving our shots around. I swear we canceled as many shots and and pivoted as many as we took. I think our car screeching shot, I think we pivoted three times and then waited 20 minutes before we could take that shot. I think we wasted a full hour and a half just sitting there unable to shoot it. But you just have to just have to roll with the punches and remember the first unit is the most important for a reason. I wouldn't want second unit to come through with their shots at the expense of first unit. That is not how you would make a good movie. So that is not how we would try to run the second unit. Ergo, no attitude. Just roll with it. So, yeah, we actually had set up the Peruvian living room and we'd finally gotten it lit. We'd gotten it signed off on. Elias was waiting around. He was finally, we were finally ready to shoot it, and suddenly the camera got taken away from us. So we had to break for lunch and do other things, then we had to come back and do it after lunch. So that kind of stuff happened a lot. Then the other fun thing um with the Peruvian living room, there were two shots. One is when Elias is sad that Santa missed Christmas this year. The second is the follow-up kind of solving the problem at the end of the film. We had a cute little credit scene where Santa does come the next year. So we wanted to make the living room look a little bit different to make it clear it's the next room. Instead of three stockings on the on the wall, we had four. So maybe they had a new child in the family. We covered the tree with gold tinsel. We rearranged some furniture and put presents on the under the tree. Hopefully that read well. Um, and then I really, really wanted him to just like run around and like jump up and down, squirming and screaming. And what's so funny is in the first shot, when I needed him to be really still, he was vibrating. He was just like rocking back and forth, squirming around, little wiggly worm, because he's four. And then in the second shot, I was trying to get him to jump around and express himself. And it was so hard to get him to jump out to come out of his shell. So he kept and he kept looking at me. So he would like look at the tree and then he look at me, and I'm next to the camera, but not right behind it. Even if I was behind it, I think it would look like he wasn't looking at the camera, or he just shouldn't have been looking at the camera at that stage, at that phase, any time, anyways. So so much of that footage was just not working. I kept having him try to be jubilant and joyful, and I just couldn't really get him to do it. So there was no single shot where he did all the things, but he we did take quite a few shots where he did one thing that might work. So I have a feeling what we're gonna do is we're gonna just show time passing, just do a bunch of cuts. So he'll run in and kind of grab a present, and then he kind of he sits down in front of the tree, cut. Then another cut where he runs over or walks over to the stocking, shakes one of them and tries to pull it down, cut. Then he's over by the milk and cookies and he's inspecting them. Oh, Santa actually ate them, cut. And then now he's under the tree ripping open a present, cut. So I think I think that'll work, especially for a credit sequence. It's not the most important shot in the film. It's just gonna be a little feel-good. Peter said, actually, for a credit shot, you can even do bloopers, which I thought was a good idea. So you certainly have enough bloopers in to be recorded with him today. We got it'll work. It'll be fine. That was my job today, pretty much, which is try to get something shot really quickly. If it looks pretty darn good, done. Move on. And that's how we just knocked off all the shots that we needed to knock off pretty much in record time. Can't overthink it. Um, but I had a couple of moments I was really happy with. Like one moment, like I I rearranged some garbage on the some flowers, I think worked pretty well. You we didn't want it to be too obvious or look like the garbage was like too clearly just set out on top of the flowers. There was like a candy wrapper, and it was just like too obvious. Um, so I rearranged some of that. There was a scene, some of those scenes, there was like we needed some wind. So I got, or someone got me a light panel, I forgot what they're called, and waved it back and forth and actually helped quite a bit. Um couple little moments like that, I feel like I added something. So I was happy with that. But I definitely enjoyed being in that role. It was fun kind of having everyone move all the cameras around, and I can just give feedback on the shot and just really think about how the shot was going to be used in the film and what the emotion is and what the purpose of the shot is. We have a few shots that I didn't know the purpose of, and we just had to go generic on it, and that's fine. But um got a couple really nice, nice other shots that I think will actually be used. So my role is just to make sure there's plenty of extra footage that we can flesh out some scenes, flesh out the environment, tell the story of Tinseltown being sad, and I think we did that. So I feel really good about that. What else happened today? Oh, I met she showed up on set, she's lovely, she doesn't look a day over 40 and super fun, really enjoyed being around her. Um, saw her do her hair and makeup. She was a pro, pretty much doing her own makeup, it looked like. Uh, what else? What else happened? I feel like there's a bunch of other fun things that happened. Um I don't really know, but we ended up by it was a full day. Feel really good about it. Oh, we did EPK electronic press kit. That was the other thing. So because we didn't have, because we're limited on budget for the cameras, um, we needed to do our electronic press kit, which is basically behind the scenes actor interviews. We wanted to do them on the same day we had this camera, which means, hey Charlie, go do the second unit. And while you're doing all those shots, sneak off and go do a bunch of other interviews with people using the same camera. Luckily, Julia covered for me. She did that stuff. I I could have done it, but I actually had time. I was just so freezing cold. The where we were shooting it was just like the shaded alley, and the wind had picked up, and I was just freezing. So Julia had already done one or two of them when I was busy with something else, and she covered all those, which was super helpful. She's done that stuff before, so that's great. I'll probably do a couple more next time we have the chance, whenever we get that C camera back, two more days. It's just a little strange to be cramming that in on the days that we have all the second unit work. But I understand why. There's a lot of those constraints I've noticed, and that's just part of it. If you want to embrace being as efficient as possible and try not to be a perfectionist, that's the way to do it. Just remain nimble, remain flexible. Like the moment that the uh we had just signed off on the shot in the Peruvian living room, and suddenly main unit needed the tree skirt, the red tree skirt under our Christmas tree. They needed ours. And like we didn't have another one, at least I didn't think we did, but instead of moaning about it, we just let them take it, even though it's a big part of the shot. It's all about the empty, emptiness under the tree. We managed to find another one, and I think it's as good, maybe better, than the red one. It's a white one. And I think I don't know, it just to me it feels like red might be a more typical color in North America. So I think the fact that it's white kind of made me feel like, oh, well, maybe it's not North America. So I thought that was a fine trade-off. And it would have been really easy to get grumpy about that. And no one would have benefited. So what else? I learned about key grips today, and I think I got that right. Key grips and I guess it's electric. I forgot what the real name is. So uh Willie is our main elect uh main electrical lighting guy. He set up basically a fake sun outside the window for the Peruvian living room. And then we had the key grip, Ellis, who is all about the mechanical aspects of the light, not the electronic. And he's doing all the fans and blinders, basically blocking off light so it doesn't reflect in like off a off a place it doesn't, you don't want it to, making an area fall into shadow by blocking off the light, focusing the light, that kind of thing. So that was cool. I didn't quite understand the difference there. I don't think I did get the name of the the of Willie's role. Key, key grip, what do you call it? Key, not key grip, key, I don't know. I did forget what that was. But whatever, I'll learn that. It was also fun telling everyone, hey, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So what do you think? How does this work? What would you do here? And I got a lot of feedback from people, and it was really great. And then when I did learn a little bit, I could just have an opinion and say it quickly and uh authoritarily with authority. And um, I think people appreciated that you need to make decisions very quickly in that kind of environment, and things were shifting constantly. That's about it. It was a really fun day. So last week on Tuesday, I thought there's no way in heck I want to be a director because I hated the day so much. Again, also because it was cold. Today I feel like, hey, I could actually have fun with this. This could be really great. So I'm feeling pretty happy about that. So who knows what's gonna happen? It's only day five. There's many more days to go. We I have no idea what'll happen. You know, we're gonna do some night shoots, some like 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. We might even do 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. So who knows? Maybe uh maybe I'll change my mind again. But we'll see what happens, we'll see how it goes. Signing off,