Webisode #3 Launches

WEBISODE #3 "Mere Voices In The Crowd" SYNOPSIS:
The crew braces themselves for the coming storm over the school's stem cell research program vote. Joshua Gordon's vigil against the program ends in dramatic fashion as several students are taken to the hospital after a clash with campus security. Deana takes charge and uses her resources to help the Student Government President Kyle Blankenship defend the school against attacks by conservative columnist Bonnie Rockwell who is inciting backlash to kill the vote. Tate and Dee Dee embark on a frustrating journey to get their towed van back, and Nikki and Haley's disagreement on stem cell research boils over.




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Director's Journal - April 24th, 2005

With the wrap of production of Webisode 4, whatcha say we do some of these ole' production journals eh?

Director's Journal - Sunday, April 24th, 2005:

Day 2 of filming this fine weekend, sun out and indeed beautiful weather again. It was a rather light day on the production calendar. We started by welcoming back Ann and Ja'le back to the set after a long hiatus. They play Haley and Chris and hadn't shot together since September when we filmed all three of their scenes from the pilot during our first production week. Nevertheless we scraped off the rust and knocked out their three scenes. Got away with lighting with just the lowel kit, which was nice. And made Ann only force down a little bit of soggy cereal, we're on a tight budget people, we can't keep replacing the cereal in between takes, come on! We ended the day with an evening shoot with everybody's favorite, Mr. Bill Wassem who plays Dr. George Vallone who you'll learn a lot more about in the upcoming webisode. Bill and Givani rehearsed a bit on the porch because we were about to shoot our first car dialogue scene of EvansAmerica. We made a decision to stay away from these as much as possible, not because they are hard, they are actually the easiest thing to shoot and you don't have to worry about securing the location, you just throw the crew in the backseat and have the actors drive wherever they want. But, this can become a crutch and pretty soon, you notice a lot of driving around in the scripts. But since this was the first, I'm not worried and the setting O-town sun gave the scene nice light. We picked up some pickups in a nearby parking lot, ridiculously rushing in between takes to get all we could out of magic hour. And wrap.






Yeah dogs. Ep4 is totally in the can. After the long drawn out shooting schedule that was ep3 (we did start shooting it last September), we kicked out ep4 in short order.

Our final day of Ep4 shooting was done at the illustrious, if not amazing, Fremont High School. It was a little scene where DeeDee, Paul, and Tate try to get a permit for the protest they are planning. (Oh stuffing, kind of a spoiler there I guess.) They encounter the Permit Lady (played by SEP alumnus, Jackie Walker) and I'll just say that Hilarity ensues (I hope). The shoot went off without a hitch, as they usually do when you have a 5-person crew.

The day was finished up with a last scene from the finale of ep4. The highlight of this scene (aside from the terrific performances from Branden and Jackie), was the fact that Dan and I got to fulfill our fantasies and actually play God for an hour or so. To explain, last weekend when the majority of the party scene was shot, it was really sunny out. Today, it was not so much sunny. Armed with two of our 1K (re: really effing bright) lights we simulated the warm sunshine ("Let there be light!" We said. And there kinda was). Ask either actor and they will tell you it was not warm. It didn't show though. With that scene we finished principal photography on ep4. Look for it in a couple weeks.

I think Dan mentioned this earlier, but with the conclusion of ep4, we're going to take a short hiatus, to write the rest of the season. We hope to get shooting again in mid-June and finish off this first season of EA. Thanks for sticking around for the ride. We're just hitting our stride and it will only get better! Keep your eyes/ears/nose peeled as there will be much going on around here at evansamerica.com, even in our "absence."

late,
sc.

Director's Journal - April 23rd, 2005

Could it be that I'm putting a director's journal up from this weekend, on....wait for it....THIS WEEKEND! It is true. Well we will be wrapped with webisode #4 this weekend, except for one scene rescheduled for next Sunday. Nonetheless, we were on our way early Saturday (well for us early, back off) to downtown for our first scenes of the day. The wind wasn't too bad on our audio, wind can always be the worst enemy for sound when you shoot exterior scenes. In this scene there is a crazy yet funny girl who's a fan of the site in the show who corners Tate who in return is forced to act like Dee Dee is his girlfriend to keep her at a distant. It's a funny scene and everyone did a great job. We watched the dailies late that night and the takes are just hilarious. Branden brought it on this day, we got served. His facial reactions are just money. Later that evening we changed up the script slightly to accomodate the lack of extras and not wanting to piss off my neighbors by lighting up our backyard like frickin Field of Dreams. So the crew is instead setting up for the eventual crazy protest party that will ensue. See how we think on our feet. I captured some awesome roofs shots as well as you can see from the photos. We wrapped at a decent 7:15pm just in time for me to catch my Pacers get the crap kicked out of them in Game 1 of the playoffs against the Celtics. Oh well.

The MinuteMan Project

I am not quite sure what to think of this, it is a fascinating story, but in my mind very scary. It is called the MinuteMan Project, about 200 volunteers led by this retired guy Jim Gilchrist. Who are taking immigration control into their own hands by vowing to do border patrols along the Arizona/Mexico border themselves. Neither Bush nor Fox quite knows what to make of it, or what to do about it. Can you really stop a bunch of bitter old men from patroling the desert in their trucks. It's a real throw back to the wild west law enforcement, some are calling them vigilantes. They say they are just there as a deterent, and that illegal aliens will be scared to cross if the Minutemen are around. But what happens, when a group of immigrants decide, eff it, let's just go, they aren't U.S. officials? Do the minutemen stop them, kick the crap out of them, what? I'm asking, I want to know, who is responsible for them? And I really think the choice of name is tacky, come on, what they are doing in no way does justice to the historic U.S. group of heroes known as the "Minutemen" who were after all, IMMIGRANTS!

Director's Journal - April 2nd, 2005

What could be better than mixing poker with filmmaking? NOTHING. Come on, keep up. We had a very fun scene on the agenda today involving the group playing poker and deciding how they are going outwit their newest adversaries. We rehearsed the hell out of the scene so that it finally was coming off relaxed and fun like I wanted it to. We decided to add a bunch of smoke to the scene to give it a cool look, which Givani and Branden took great pride in with their cigarettes. It looks really sweet on the dailies, but the buildup of smoke almost killed us all. Wouldn't that have been terrible yet tragically funny at the same time. The police find the cast of EA dead in a garage/turned filming studio. A scene gone awry. When we finished the scene and opened the garage door, this huge plume of smoke went outside. With that our neighbors changed their bets that we were filming porn to the new Reefer Madness film. (shout out to chris for letting me watch some of that on his HD TV yesterday). I can't wait to edit this scene, the camera was always moving on the dolly so if it cuts well, wow, Dan will be happy.

Director's Journal - April 1st, 2005

Big weekend as Webisode #4 production started off on Friday night with two scenes between Tate and Dee Dee. Fun scenes that Scotty and I wrote way back when and when I say write, I mean scribbled down in a notebook in a moment of sheer creative spontaneity. Apparently we had to teach Lara how to flirt on screen, what's that about? I'm not sure, but moving on, we had a lot of fun shooting the scenes. Scotty lost timecode about halfway through on the DAT, I yelled and bitched, but got over it and we marched ahead. The kitchen was a pain to light and took awhile, which is funny because we had just lit that kitchen two months earlier for Scotty's short film "New House". But this was at night so we needed a different scheme. It worked out and then we moved to the bedroom, oh yeah. Big props to Lara for the blushing type shots at the end of the night, she knows why, and you'll know why if you check out Webisode #4, launching May 13th. Look at that, shameless plug, I always manage to get those in.