PICTURE’S UP! QUIET ON THE SET!

It’s SXSW, and the city is abuzz as I pull into the lot at Torchy’s Tacos.  I park my car up against a hay bale and step into the Texas sun.  We’ve been trying to put this lunch together for weeks, and finally here we are, about to savor what are arguably the best tacos in town.

So now it’s girl time with two talented chicas from my acting class.  The conversation is lively, rolling, about everything from boys to the acting business and all the joys and vagaries those things entail.  Susan’s daytime incarnation is as a lawyer for the TABC (she has some gruesome stories to tell) and Jolyn earns her money as a graphic designer.  She tells us she’s recently left her job to work full-time on her own projects which makes my entrepreneurial heart beat faster.  Obviously this is both a scary and thrilling time for her.  One of her immediate missions is as a producer for the trailer/investor-calling-card/short film her boyfriend Jay Galvan is going to direct in a few weeks.  When they get financing, they’re going to film the feature.  The name is El Coyote.

A good chunk of my childhood was spent making trouble in sound studios while my father did his voice-over work (he was one of the biggies in NY at the time); I’ve also worked as an actress for most of my adult life so I’m very familiar with the biz, but I’ve only worked behind the scenes on one other movie.  I tell her I have that experience as a script supervisor – that’s the person who keeps time codes on the takes and watches for continuity issues – and that I’d be happy to help out if she needs it.

In a phone call two weeks later I’m talking about how it’s a goal of mine to someday 1st Assistant Direct.  I’m also chatting about kismet, and how a gig for my espresso business fell through, so I’m able now to do all 3 days of the shoot.  Well, ok Jolyn goes completely CRAZY for the idea of having our espresso machine on the set.  These are 12-15 hour days and people need coffee.  Plus it elevates the whole vibe of the production.  This is a shoestring budget, they’re running largely on favors and the passion of other filmies, but she is going to find a way to make this work!  I tell Lucy that since I’ll be working the set there’s no way I could do any more than load the equipment in and out, and she’s totally down to work it alone.  So all is go for Hallowed Grounds’ first movie set.

The other great phone call came a few hours later when Jay let me know that I was going to 1st AD.  To me that’s the coolest role you can have on the production end aside from the technically skilled jobs like Sound Mixer, Director of Photography (DP), or Lighting.  Basically, you keep the whole production to schedule which is no easy thing since directors always want to cover everything from here to the moon!  You wrangle the actors and make sure everyone else is in place for the shot, just fyi if you can’t find anyone they’re usually wherever the m&m’s are.  You also yell out when the picture is up etc. so that everyone will be quiet, and ask for the camera and sound to roll.  In essence, it requires you to be bossy and loud, two of my favorite things!

We shot this weekend and it was spectacular.  El Coyote is going to be beautiful (for anyone interested in technical stuff, we shot on a RED camera, which you can read about here).  There wasn’t one person on that whole production who was anything less than vital, and the flow, especially on the final day, was so organic and powerful that it almost felt like the movie was an inevitability.  The last couple of days since we wrapped have been so touching with all the emails of appreciation back and forth.  It’s just like a love fest.

Oh, and it goes without saying that Hallowed Grounds was a big hit.  Well we should be, we kept them awake!  The line producer has already passed our name along, and several others are going to do the same including the fx guy Steve Krieger who promises to “pimp us out all over Dallas.”  That does mean what I hope it means, right?  I am NOT looking for that kind of career change.

More pictures pending and of course news on the movie to follow.