Originally, Lynn (Debra Sussman) had two children. Late last night we found out that the kid we cast as her youngest child, Dana, wasn't going to be able to make it to the set today. So I spent this morning cutting Dana out of the script. Where I could, I just gave the lines to Tommy, but these instances were very few. Most of the scenes I had to cut out completely, but these either just had Dana alone or only with Jayme or The Bunnyman. They were short scenes, so it wasn't a big deal to scrap them. The pumpkin carving scene was a bit trickier. If we cut it we would loose too much of the running time and we needed some sort of lead in back into the house before Scott and Gordon arrive. I had no choice but to rewrite it. I ended up writing a monologue for Kat about how the horror directors of the 40s - 50s were better than those of the 70s - 80s. I don't necessarily agree with this; I think a lot of those old movies are boring as hell, but it felt right for the character. We gave the new pages to Billie when she arrived and she was ready to go a while later when we got to that scene. She really nailed it.
I was not looking forward to filming today. The majority of the film takes place on the house set, and we were filming it all in one day. Times like this I wish we had a budget over a few grand, or better yet, a studio backing us so we could take our time.
We try to shoot in sequence as much as possible, but gave prioirty to the scenes with Tommy to ensure that child services wouldn't come knocking on our door. But can it really be considered child labor when said child will never see a dime for the work?
Debbie's mother was kind enough to drive into town to the local sub shop and pick up a load of sandwiches. So for the first time in DaJa Vu Films history, the cast was fed something other than water and coffee cake, and that was when they were lucky. We let most of the cast break for lunch while we filmed a few scenes of Jayme on the phone. Then she got to eat, while Jason and I plugged on with grumbling, empty stomaches.
During the break we had James come down and suit up and went right into filming Gordon (Chris Iwan) and Scott's (Alfonzo Ramirez) death scenes.
In the script Gordon is supposed to go into the kitchen, lean into the fridge to get something to eat. When he closes the door, there stands The Bunnyman, who grabs Gordon's head and twists it off. We did not have the opportunity to do a head casting of Chris. And when he took his shirt off and we discovered he has nipple rings, we could not pass up the chance to exploit them. So Gordon now dies by electrocution, using his nipple rings as contact points.
Usually on days when he's on set, James totally steals the show. But today, I'd have to say that Chris Iwan is my favorite actor of the day. This is Chris' first film. He came to the auditions with Billie and we talked him in to reading for some roles and he was awesome enough to agree to play Gordon. Today he was improvising like a pro, he knew all his lines, and his is one of the funniest death scenes in film history. We died laughing!
We called everyone back in to finish up, then sent everyone home except for Britteny and Alfonzo for the overly aggresive boyfriend scene. I was looking forward to this scene the least out of all the scenes in the entire movie. I've known Britteny for just over ten years and although she's grown up now, I could not help but see the lanky girl she was ten years ago, and had trouble directing a guy to grope and man handle her. We all got through it though, and ended a very long day.
