On the cover of Rolling Stone…er…not quite, but close…sort of

So, I get a call from the manager of the company that publishes the magazine we're going to be in. He said he was calling on behalf of the company to see if it's ok if they make us their cover story. Are you kidding me? Of course it's ok if they put us on the cover! That is such a great step for us because the magazine is circulated throughout central Florida. People won't be able to turn around without seeing our ridiculously good looking mugs. Take that bitchy reporter! I take it this means the article is going to be all about us. Boo yah!

The Bunnyman Production Day 4: The Bunnyman Begins

David Scott presiding over the crime scene as Sheriff Sam Hooper

We had planned for a really rough day because we had several long, one take tracking shots; including one which moved from exterior to interior. It was also the day that a photographer was coming over from the magazine to take pictures.

The photographer, a slightly youngish looking man with a glint in his eyes and a rakish air, was the antithesis of the reporter we met with yesterday. The photographer arrived before any of our actors and proved to be a very amiable person. Not once during the five or six hours he was there did he get in the way or mess up a single shot. In fact, we forgot he was there. He even agreed to put on a Deputy shirt and can be seen as a crime scene photographer in the movie.

Sheriff Hooper (David Scott) discusses the murders with Coroner Michelson (Raven Gabbard) as Anthony Rao takes photos in the background.

While we waited for our cast and crew to show up, we posed for some photos and dressed the location. We started with scenes 4A, 4B and 5, which comprise the 2nd sequence of the film, and opens with GENE THOMPSON (Lee Matheny) reporting on the first murders enacted by The Bunnyman (James Koncyk).

Lee Matheny as roving reporter Gene Thompson

This was our major tracking shot and biggest worry because we move from Gene and news cameraman (Mike Rechis), who we had standing in the courtyard, up to the front door where Deputy 6 (Richard Madrid) is questioning Mrs Elaine Driscoll (Nesly LaTorre). Stephens (Trent Stover) enters and Mrs Driscoll repeats her story to him.

Trent Stover, Richard Madrid, and Scotty Schultz question Nesly LaTorre

Then we follow Stephens into the house where he bumps into Corman (Scotty Schultz) and Michaelson (Raven Gabbard), then we follow him into the living room where Hooper stands surveying the crime scene. A lot of ground and quite a bit of dialogue to cover in one take. Any number of things could have gone wrong. The main problem, however, ended up being the roar of automobiles as they passed by. We got it done, though, and moved on to scenes 1- 4, the opening sequence of the film and our first look at The Bunnyman.

The Bunnyman (James Koncyk) hands out candy to trick-or-treaters.

Since our schedule doesn't allow for a lot of rehearsals, we like to give our actors a few rehearsal takes (which we film). It helps to get them loosened up and get in character. It also helps us see if the shots are going to work or not. Which came in handy today since we had so many people on set and had the two long tracking shots. The rehearsal takes allowed us to work out placement for the extras and how to maneuver around with the steady cam and portable sound equipment. That way, by the time we're ready to film for real, we've worked out any technical kinks and the actors are comfortable with their line and the camera.

We got through nine scenes today in about seven hours. That includes setting up, rehearsals, filming and packing up.

Originally we weren't going to have The Bunnyman say anything other than one line at the beginning of the movie, "I just love Halloween, don't you?" But we decided on location to have James ad lib some stuff with the trick-or-treaters. Trent, who had been sitting upstairs with everyone else in our improvised holding room during The Bunnyman scenes, came up to me later and said that it's going to be hilarious if we have James continue delivering his lines the way he did today. Trent will be pleased, because we agree with him and plan to let The Bunnyman have many more lines.

Our First Interview: Pooch Screwed By The Press

We had our very first meeting with the press today. Ok, so it was just one reporter for a local magazine (but it is one of the biggest magazines in Central Florida) and it totally blowed (not the good kind either) but our name is going to be out there now and as someone once said, "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

It was arranged for us to meet the reporter at target. I used to work there, so I went around talking to some of the people I know who work there, but let's be honest, it was mainly to brag.

The first words out of the reporter's mouth were not hello or nice to meet you, but "I though you'd be older." My first thought was, "Fuck you, lady!" but being the gentleman that I am, I simply said, "Oh." I'm 26 and Jason is 23, so we're really not that young. I could see the light drain from her eyes and the eyes of her husband (who used to work crew on commercials and I have a sneaking suspicion he tagged along in hopes of getting a job. Yeah, right. Doesn't everyone know by now that we can't afford to pay anyone? Working on a DaJa Vu Films project is strictly volunteer.)

The entire interview lasted maybe twenty minutes. She didn't start taking notes until the interview was almost over. Her attitude was very condescending, she talked down to us, and she was using exaggerated facial expressions like people use when talking to babies. And we ain't no babies, baby. And insult upon insult, she decided on the spot during the interview that she wasn't even going to do the article completely about us (shouldn't that be the editor's decision?) but do an article about us and other local filmmakers because she wasn't going to have enough on us to fill out an article (ask more questions bitch!) First of all, we approached them with the story; secondly, we turned down two other magazines to give them an exclusive; thirdly, we were very open and ready to promote our company and movie. It's not our fault if her own prejudices against America's youth and horror films kept her from asking questions. She didn't even ask about The Bunnyman, which you can learn more about on our website The Bunnyman.

The photographer is coming to the location tomorrow while we film the opening scenes, hopefully he'll be better.

We've got a rough day tomorrow, so I'm off to bed.

David

Fun With Liquid Rubber

Debra Sussman (Lynn Hendricks) came out to the DaJa Vu Films office space today so that we could do a torso casting of her for when her character gets killed in The Bunnyman. Debbie is currently involved in a big project which we are unable to talk about. I think she's working for the CIA or something, but she swore us to secrecy so we can't say a word. Anyway, she called me this weekend because she was telling her make up guy on the huge project that we were doing a casting of her and he didn't want to have to work on her if her skin was all messed up, even though the appliances he's put on her have caused Debbie to break out in blisters. Oh, what little faith she has in us. But I assured her that we're not using any cheap stuff. We're using a liquid rubber (we did a test of my arm using alginate, which is what most make up books say to use, but trust us, save your money, cause alginate sucks ass) that's made by the same company that produces the material the new bat suit for Batman Begins was made out of.

We made sure to feed her first. Generally, our rule is not to feed our actors. Food costs money and we have better things to spend our money on than something you basically only rent anyway. But when you're going to have actors in an uncomfortable position for four to five hours, its best to feed them so they don't get cranky.
After lunch, I put on Wild Hogs so Debbie would have something to watch so she wouldn't just be standing there for hours doing nothing. Jason and I set to work.

Things didn't go exactly as planned. We had latex gloves to put on the release cream, that worked out just fine. It was the liquid rubber that proved to be the problem. No where did it say that you need to use a thinner for the first coat except on the instructional DVD that we had to buy. We thought we could do the casting without it. We thought wrong. The liquid rubber began to dry almost as soon as Jason could mix it and it clumped up on the bristles of the paint brushes we were using. Same thing for the latex gloves, so we asked Debbie if it was okay if we did it without the gloves. Trooper that she is, Debbie said, "Go for it." So we stripped off the gloves and got down and dirty. Reason number one why it's a good idea to use friends as guinea pigs instead of complete strangers. Friends are less likely to slap you when you are "forced" to grope and man handle them.

We put on two coats of the liquid rubber and filled in the gaps. Wild Hogs had ended so I put on Heartbreakers and we started putting on the plaster strips. These are purchased in rolls of gauze with dried plaster, which are cut into the desired lengths. When cut, the strips are dipped in warm water and applied. They form a support and shell for the mold. We had to wait for everything to dry before we could go any further, so we took a break and enjoyed the movie. Once the mold and plaster were dry, we removed the shell. Then Jason had to cut a strip down the back of the mold so it could be removed.

I had put some of the rubber below where we'd put the release cream, so Jason had to cut some of the rubber from Debbie's skin, accidentally leaving a gash (and they say I'm clumsy). Which is reason number two why it's a good idea to use friends as guinea pigs instead of complete strangers. Friends are much less likely to sue when injured.

And we now have a perfect casting of Debbie's torso, replicas of which will soon be available on our website. Hey, we've got to finance this movie somehow, right?  

Editor Note: The last paragraph is an example of David's poor sense of humor. Replicas of the torso will not be sold on our website. 

The Bunnyman Production Day 3: I Shot The Sheriff

We had David Scott and Scotty Schultz, as well as Trent Stover and Derek DuQuesne out for filming today. It was raining this morning and David drove his bike, so he got a little soaked on his way over.

We started out with David, Derek and Scotty. Since we planned on shooting the sheriff station scenes in sequence, we didn't have Trent come in until later.

We began with Scene 42:

INT. SHERIFF'S STATION - DAY

From a PHANTOM POV we enter the Sheriff's Station and slowly approach the desk where DEPUTY CORMAN sits, his face buried in a newspaper. He takes a sip from his coffee cup. As he sets the cup back on the desk, the paper lowers and he sees.. To find out how the scene ends, you'll just have to wait to see the movie.

When Trent arrived we paused to shoot all of the Sheriff Stephens bits and let David have a break, sending him to the communal "trailer" while we worked with Trent. Once we got that stuff done, we called David back over so we could do the fight scene between Hooper and Stephens. It didn't work out quite the way I wanted, but we got some really cool angles.

When we finished with Stephens' scenes, we let Trent go and finished Hooper's scenes and sent David Scott home. Then we worked on some scenes with Corman and Loomis that the other actors aren't in and worked on some recently added some mostly improvised scenes between Loomis and Corman so that we can have something to fill in any gaps that may arise in editing.

It was a seven hour day, but we completed every one of the sheriff's station sequences. Which isn't bad considering it would have taken a studio weeks to do what we did in only seven hours. Bully for us!

Scotty sleeping on the job.

The Bunnyman Production Day 2: Rain Rain Go Away

We had our second day of production on The Bunnyman today. We had David Nevill and Tom Thorne out to do the Old Man Roberts interview with Dick Solomon as well as Trent Stover to finish out the scene for when Dick leaves Roberts to interview Sheriff Stephens.

Richard Madrid and Mike Rechis rounded out today's actors as deputies. I had originally wanted to have a lot of deputies walking around in the background, but we couldn't find anyone willing to take extra roles. But, we luckily got Mike and Richard, who added so much to the role that it worked out much better just having the two of them than a whole bunch of people there anyway. Keep it simple.

Once we got everyone in costume and settled in, we hauled them down to the barren orange grove that's doubling for Old Man Roberts' property. As we unpacked our stuff, ominous storm clouds hung low on the horizon, so we tried to get things moving along. We gave them some rehearsal takes to give the actors a chance to warm up and also to let us decide about character and camera placement. It also gave us a chance to see at what point we wanted the deputies to leave the car that they were searching in the background during the Roberts/Solomon interview and walk over to Sheriff Stephens.







We only got in a few actual takes before the storm clouds let loose, so we packed up our equipment and our actors and headed back to our sheriff's station set to wait out the rain.

Since we had Richard and Mike there, we went ahead and filmed scene 20A, the opening scene in the sheriff's station. When I was writing this scene, in my mind I saw a large space with deputies crossing back and forth in front of the camera as it moved towards the desk of Deputy 6. But the set space we have isn't large enough for that, even if we'd had the deputies to fill it. Once again, having to keep the shots simple worked out. We had Richard play Deputy 6 at the desk, we put Mike on the left, and put an extra Deputy shirt on Tom with his back to the camera, to even out the frame and began filming.

Trent arrived about this time, so we had him go over and suit up, while we finished the scene. When Trent got back, we shot scene 20B INT. SHERIFF'S OFFICE - CONT. Then we shot the reverse on the Deputies for Stephens' speech since we had the deputies there. We'll film Trent's delivery of the speech tomorrow.





Once we got those scenes in the can, we packed up our gear and actors and headed back to our exterior location.

We started filming the scene over again since Trent was there, so that we could get the entire scene shot in one take. The scene is viewed from the POV of a news camera so we wanted to have one long take without any cuts.

After Dick Solomon leaves Old Man Roberts to speak with Sheriff Stephens, we had David Nevill go over to the car and start looking through it. He brought his own props to pull out of the car. So during the interview with Stephens, David is in the background pulling out a condom, money and other stuff. Then he gets spotted by the deputies who come over and arrest him, but not before chasing David around the car. I felt sorry for Tom and Trent because Jason and I are cracking up at what's going on behind them, and they had to remain serious and focused. All while watching Jason and me barely holding back our laughter.







Everyone really put a lot of energy into the scene and gave us some great stuff. David Nevill is a master at improv. It's going to be great!

Dave Roberts says: "I want you to see this movie mother fuckers!"

The Bunnyman Production Day 5 Long Day's Journey Into Night

We had three different sequences scheduled for today and got all of them completed.

The day began around 8:30am when David Nevill showed up. We let him in the office to get settled while we waited for the actor playing Tex to arrive, then we headed down to the grove to film.

We completed all filming for David Nevill's character, which turned out to be some of the funniest bits in the entire film. The dude is hilarious even when he's not saying a word.

After sending David off, Jason and I grabbed a bite to eat and watched Jack Frost 2. We watched the first one, Jack Frost (not to be confused with the Michael Keaton flick) a few days ago. Not a great flick, but not a bad one either. It had Shannon Elizabeth in it, so it couldn't have been all bad, right? But the sequel sucked.

It had just ended when Debra Sussman arrived.We chatted for a bit while Jason got some stuff ready, then went over and filmed some of her scenes. 

Then we had some spaghetti while waiting for The Bunnyman, Kat and Gordon. Kat and Gordon were running late so we had James come on down and film his stuff with Debra. Finally Kat and Gordon arrived so we sent Debra home, filmed some stuff with James, then got down to the nitty gritty of filming our first nude scene. 

We finished filming everything around 11:30pm and didn't get everything packed up until around midnight.

The Bunnyman Production Day 1 Lilith Mistress of Mayhem

Production began today on The Bunnyman: The Sleepy Ridge Murders.

The luscious Mistress of Mayhem came out to the set today to film part of her cameo appearance for The Bunnyman today. She brought a very sexy outfit and a cheesy cheap red wig that was perfect for the cheesy quality we wanted for these scenes which will appear on TVs throughout the film.

I love it when it looks like a woman is hanging on my every word. What she's really thinking: "Is he ever going to shut up?"

We had Lilith do the scenes with three different accents, normal, Valley Girl, and Bronx. The Bronx and Valley Girl accents are the funniest, but we're not sure which ones we're going to use yet.


It was a lot of fun working with Lilith and we thank her for gracing our humble little film with her grand presence. What a way to kick off a production!

Grrr!

Location Hunting/Phone Tag

We went location scouting today for the field we're going to be using for Old Man Roberts' place. We weren't able to get the woods area I originally had in mind for the scene because it's not cleared out. But we were able to find a nice little spot, only now instead of being in the woods, the scene takes place in a frozen out orange grove.

It's proving difficult to get in touch with Lilith Mistress of Mayhem's people. She's signed on to do the film, we've just been playing phone tag the past few days trying to get her scheduled. I was finally able to speak with her manager, Debbie, and it looks like things are set for this Thursday. So keep your fingers crossed.

David

Rehearsals

We had our first rehearsal today in DaJa Vu history. We started the day with David Nevill (Old Man Roberts) and Tom Thorne (Dick Solomon) David is hilarious. We were originally in talks with the great indie filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman to do a cameo appearence in the role, but he was unable to take part due to scheduling conflicts. But David is really taking the part and running with it, and we're kind of glad it didn't work out with Lloyd as David brings his own brand of twisted humor to the role. Tom did a good job as well at balancing the professionalism and nervousness of novice news reporter Dick Solomon.

We also had all of the cops out today, which is comprised of David W. Scott as ex-sheriff Sam Hooper, Trent Stover as the current Sheriff Stephens, Scotty Schultz as Deputy Corman, and Derek DuQuesne as Deputy Loomis. We even had Raven Gabbard come out to go over his part, Coroner Michaelson. He's never acted before, so we wanted to get him out and used to being on camera, a lesson learned from out last production, Black Market Kidneys.

We worked out some problems and got to see how some of the stuff in the script is going to work out and added some really cool moments that help to define the characters.

It's all on tape, so if we don't post it on our website, I'm sure you'll get to see some of it on the DVD once the film is released.

Until then, keep checking the blog and our website for more information on The Bunnyman: The Sleepy Ridge Murders