Black Market Kidneys Production Day 1

We began production today on our first "professional" film, Black Market Kidneys. Jason and I had to pick some stuff up, so we left early and arrived at the house way before we were scheduled. Eventually our cast and crew began to arrive. Mike, one of the guys who built the house we're filming in, said he's out of town and would get someone to open the house up. It turned out to be his father and brother, who showed up an hour late because they had to pick someone up from the airport. Mike's brother, Joe, was driving and walked up first. He's tall, with a beefy build like a linebacker, His look is completed by a closely cropped mohawk. He reminds me of a cross between a bulldog and a grizzly bear. Their father, John, is shorter, but has the stocky build of a retired pro wrestler, and the grizzled look of a weathered sea captain. They swirled through the house like a hurricane, opening doors and turning on lights. Then, just as quickly, they were gone, leaving no destruction in their wake, no sign that they'd even been there. While Catherine worked on getting the white make up on Sarai, the rest of us worked on filming the scenes in the house with Ben (me) alone. This took awhile, but Catherine had not finished the make up. It wasn't her fault, but the fault of cheap liquid make up and having to cover an entire body on her own, so the rest of us pitched in. Some sight that must have been: four guys and a girl, circled around a woman in nothing but a bra and panties, hurriedly trying to apply make up. Once Sarai was sufficiently covered in make up, we moved down to the basement to film Ava's scenes. Once we put Sarai in the tub of ice, the make up began to come off. Other than that, things went smoothly and we got into our groove. Then (Name Deleted) showed up and everything went to hell. The look on her face as she followed me down to the basement said it all, "What did I get myself in to?" Gone was the friendly woman at the auditions; she'd been replaced with a cold and bitter non-person. One would think she'd be impressed by the house. She really ground filming down to a crawl with her bad acting. She would mess up takes by forgetting a line and or not doing an action correctly after I showed her exactly how I wanted it done. We trudged through it though, and got Sarai's stuff done so we could get her out of there, then we moved upstairs to film my scenes with (Name Deleted), and things really got bad. In the basement, Claudia has only about one line, but upstairs she has to actually carry on a conversation. Again she'd botch lines and every take her acting sucked. And she wouldn't carry on the character after her line was finished. After she delivered the line, like immediately after, she expected us to say cut. We can't do that cause we need the frames for editing, otherwise it'll cut too close to the line and either cut off part of it or make the cut choppy when putting it together with a reverse for Ben's lines. But as soon as she completed the last sentence, she would freeze, murdering the moment. We didn't finish with her until around midnight and we started with her around 6:30 pm, even earlier with Sarai. So Jason and I had been there a long, long time. And we had to go back and reshoot some of the scenes with me on the second floor room so the light would match up with what we shot with (Name Deleted). I was pissed because it took longer that it should have and the bitch is messing up our movie!

Production Emergency

We were all set to begin production on Black Market Kidneys tonight at Le Carpathian. Then I get an e-mail this morning from (name deleted) saying she has to drop out of the movie because she just found out she got a paying gig as a back up dancer for some Brazilian rap star the world has never heard of and probably never will.

There are a few issues with this, other than the obvious one of her dropping out the day we were set to film.

First of all, she didn't just find out about it. Thanks to the wonders of MySpace Comments, I was able to discover that (Name Deleted) knew about it a week ago. And secondly, the show isn't until the end of September, and we'll be done long before then, so there is now conflict whatsoever. Now we have to go crawling to (Name Deleted) and hope she'll take the part after we turned her down. I did it nicely, though, saying we liked her talent her audition, but didn't want to waste her talent on this small of a film.

Replacement

Called (Name Deleted), she's on board to play Claudia. So, now instead of filming at Le Carpathian two nights, it's going to be consolidated into one. It will be a long night, but at least now we'll be able to have Claudia and Ava on screen at the same time instead of having to fake it in editing.

We spent the afternoon driving around Lake County looking for bars to double as the Mick's Pub location. It was a bust, though.

black market kidneys Auditions

We had auditions for Black Market Kidneys today. Even though we only have the house location secured, we decided to go ahead and cast the thing. It didn't go that bad for our first auditions ever.

There were only four people who showed up that we were actually considering casting. The other two we had show up was our make up artist/1st A. D. Catherine, and a guy we have on hold to see whether or not Owen is going to do the movie.


Our cast for BMK is:

(name deleted) - Claudia

David Brown - Ben

Sarai B. Goley - Ava

Scotty Schultz - Barney the Barfly

Owen Higdon - Mick the Bartender

Black Market Kidneys Location Scouting

We've been trying to get the short film I wrote, Black Market Kidneys, in to production for a while now. The main hold up has been finding the two locations we need: a house and a bar. I had put an ad on MySpace earlier this year, but only got two responses, neither of which would have worked for various reasons. We put it aside when there was a family emergency.

I recently put another ad on MySpace and got a response from a guy named Mike, who built a house with his father and brother in Howey. We stopped by to meet with him today and look over the house. It's better than we ever could have hoped for. It's two storied, huge, and has a secret passage down to the basement which we are so going to use. It's a great place and is going to make our movie look really good.