I figured this would be a good way to ease into shooting.  Most of the time, in films, you have a director and then you have a director of photography.  I realized a few months earlier that I would also have to shoot the film myself.  I had never directed a film before, and I certainly hadn’t shot one either.  I was somewhat worried about it, but, hey, I had no choice.  All the cinematographers I knew wanted money.  The same ol' story.  The bastards had to feed their kids.

There is a shot near the beginning of the film where Cristina walks by a building called the Eden Store.  As she crosses, a dog follows her.  When we were shooting this, my nephew, who was helping that day, whispered to me that a damn dog was following Lourdes.  I told him to leave it alone (I was busy shooting it), then, afterwards, I told him that John Ford had told someone once that if a dog runs into your shot, for God’s sake, don’t scare it off.  It is good luck.  So, we felt, perhaps, this was a sign of good luck to come.

After getting used to the camera and the lights, I put together my first set in our house and the actors and crew showed up, and we shot our first major shot of the film.  I say ‘shot’ because we spent all that first day doing one extremely complex dolly shot.  We also had problems with the microphone and mixer.  I hadn’t tested them, so the sound sucked on the first day.

Also, on that first big day (around May 15, 1999), an actress from Phoenix called and said she had been in a small accident.  I asked her if she could come the next day.  She didn’t sound too sure; so I frantically called around and found someone in short notice.

The lady from Phoenix was supposed to do a scene completely nude.  Since I couldn’t find any female in Tucson willing to do nudity (yes, I had put flyers at all the nudie clubs), I found three women in Phoenix who were willing.  Or should I say, two, since the one had chickened out at the last minute.

I called a young lady who had auditioned several months before, but she wasn’t willing to do the scene nude.  So I compromised and had her do the scene in a little see-through teddy.

Needless to say, our first weekend of shooting was rough.

Our second weekend was a little better.  I was getting more comfortable shooting and directing.  I must give a huge amount of credit to the three main actors those first two weekends:  Kenton Jones as Argyle, Jerry Woods as Marathon, and Razel Wolf as Crescent.  All three of them knew their lines and they needed almost no direction of any kind.  If they hadn’t come prepared, the first two weeks would have been a complete disaster.

The next 8 months was a constant ritual of shooting and building and painting and calling actors and tearing down sets and putting up new ones and taping and painting and sculpting and shooting and feeding people and making decisions and, well, in other words, it was HEAVEN.

John Cassavettes once said that making a film was like waging a war.  We did not have that kind of experience.  There were many little bad things that happened.  But, overall, we had a much too easy time of it.  It was so easy, really, that we should feel guilty.

I was quite shocked that almost all the actors always knew their lines.  Considering the fact that I wasn’t paying them, they took the time to memorize their tons of lines and came to the set ready for anything.  We really want to make enough money on this movie to be able to pay all the people who devoted their weekends to us crazy knuckleheads.

 

 

For the first three weeks of shooting we didn't have a monitor. I strongly advise anyone who shoots with digital video (or any video for that matter), to use a video monitor and not just any monitor. It should be a little higher resolution than your camera so you can make sure your shots are perfectly focused. For the first three weeks we were shooting blind. When I finally bought a monitor, it made a world of difference. Everyone could watch the shots immediately afterwards and sometimes as we were shooting. We would all watch very carefully, looking for shadows and other mistakes. The monitor was incredibly important and saved us a lot of heartache.

 

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