So let me tell you about my flick... (little bit of a rant)

Tim Miller

Tim Miller

Well-known member
We started shooting a short film two weekends ago...

Scheduled solid for the weekend Friday night till sunday night.

Well one of my actors (jeff) says that his girlfriend isn't spending enough time with him (she works 3 jobs) so he thinks he is going to have to back out of the sunday shoot...the longest shoot of all the shoots. This wouldn't be a big deal, because I very much respect the relationships, but they were going to spend 4 days solid together on memorial day weekend. He says he is going to work things out.

We start shooting Friday and Saturday, things are going as good as they can. Sundays shoot is 12:30pm, I get a call at 10:30 that morning saying that he, jeff, almost broke up with his g/f because of this issue, so he is going to cancel for the day.

That leads us up to last thursday, we are going to shoot some single actor stuff of jake, the main actor. He says he lost his sunglasses that he had so he has to go buy some more. So we postpone it till next thursday (today).

Yesturday (wednesday) comes and I meet jake at improve practice. And guess what? JAKE HAS A NEW HAIR CUT, more precisely he buzzed his head, about two inches off and it had a blond streak in it. This from a guy who does student plays and has shot his own films. He then tells me he got his haircut on the day he went and bought the new sunglass FOR THE MOVIE! So I am pretty furious, I got over it quick because there is nothing to do, so we decide to still go on with the shoot of his individual stuff for tomorrow.

Today comes - 5 o'clock shoot. I spend the day cleaning the apartment so we can shoot. The person helping me shoot says he is going to be 15 minutes late. Well jake shows up, something else is different about him though...
What happened jake??? He was messing around last night and went to do a belly flop onto the couch but missed and BROKE HIS NOSE! That's right, broke his nose! He has a huge scar across his nose and some scrapes on his face.

Now, the short that was going to take a weekend to shoot is now postponed till end of July, early August. Worse stuff has probably happened to people before but this was new to me.

Anyone have any advice for the hair ordeal? I have makeup for the scar but I figure just wait till both is fixed.

Good times. No, no, no, great times.

:kali:
 
This is common. Fire the actors. If you signed union contracts with either of them, report them to SAG.

However perfect you think they are for the role. They aren't, and they have proven that to you. I repeat. Fire them. Recast. Spend a long time casting. Don't mess up casting. Casting is your life. Your key to success.
 
Funny, what is it with actors cutting their hair IN THE MIDDLE OF A FILM? Happened to me twice. I almost blew a gasket. You roll with it. I would recast the actors and start from scratch.
 
I would, I would. But this is just some friends and I, that we were going to enter into some indie film contests and stuff.

zoostory said:
This is common. Fire the actors. If you signed union contracts with either of them, report them to SAG.

However perfect you think they are for the role. They aren't, and they have proven that to you. I repeat. Fire them. Recast. Spend a long time casting. Don't mess up casting. Casting is your life. Your key to success.
Click to expand...
 
Isaac and Zoostory offer the right advice, but if you aren't looking at it professionally why should your actors. If it's "just some friends" and you're just going to enter it into some "indie film contests and stuff", then I'd say go with what you've got and make the best of it.

However, if you are serious about making a great film then recast and start fresh, friends or no friends. If they're true friends and don't really care about filmmaking then they'll understand.
 
In future, only hire bald actors.

Blind, bald actors (they tend to keep the same sunglasses).

Blind, bald actors with no noses (seriously, I saw a piece on 60 Minutes many years ago about people who lost their noses and the images still haunt me).

Either that or only do shorts about people who wear wigs and Groucho Marx noses and glasses. Of course, you'll have to spring for those and your films will all look alike, but ...

Sorry, that's about the best I can do. :thumbsup:
 
Cast a second set of actors, shoot the rest and claim its an homage to David Lynch.
 
Sounds to me like Jeff is pussywhipped and Jake is a dumbass.

If these are friends then don't hire your friends to be actors in your films. Hire actors. If these are actor's; remember not to hire them again.
 
Hudson nailed. I believe the answer here is to hire John Hudson as your AD.

Your story is the root of the troubles to be had with no-pay gigs. It's sort of the trade-off between not having to cough up cash vs. getting to make demands of your actors that outrank their personal life issues. I know it's not always possible to pay everyone, but boy is it ever worth it when they start whining about the work (especially when the "work" you ask of them is absolutely miniscule compared to the prep you've had to do!)

The sooner you can afford to finance projects up front the better off you'll be. Crap like that is what really motivated me to get funding up front and stop the deferred pay business. It's more profitable for you in the long run anyhow!

...okay -- all that to say, but now I must get back to prepping the no-pay short I'm shooting next week. :)
 
On Pestilence, I found out the morning of the shoot that 5 people could not make it.

5 people.

Do you know what 5 people would have done to my ambiance.

(grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)
 
Oh John,

I did laugh out lound on that one.

I needed that.

:dankk2:

(and its all true)

John_Hudson said:
Sounds to me like Jeff is pussywhipped and Jake is a dumbass.

If these are friends then don't hire your friends to be actors in your films. Hire actors. If these are actor's; remember not to hire them again.
Click to expand...
 
Live and learn :lipsrseal

I cannot wait to get to NC and be around people that actually are into film. It'll be a breath of fresh air.
 
On my second short film, same exact thing happened to me -- the lead actor chopped off all his hair. I was half-way done with the flick, and school was ending so I had to either shut down the production completely and trash it or find a way to deal with it.

Since I shot half the film leading up to a certain point, and they were "tripping" on drugs, one of the other actors popped out from behind and put a snow hat on him. No one ever asked why, and it worked flawlessly for the movie. But I don't know what the details of your project are so I couldn't really say what to do.
 
When I was working on Awake there were a ton of continutiy problems as it was shot over a period of 5 months. Alot of this had to be this way as the main character had to have 3 different hair styles and different versions of his facial hair. But the worst thing that happend was him losing his one of a kind hand made knit hat on a plane. We shot the whole ending sequence very early in the film all with him wearing this hat. I then had one last end sequence scene to shoot, and he no longer had this hat, luckily this scene occures earlier in the film so I basically had him go without the hat and then as he was walking away from the camera I had him put on a hat that looked similar. It worked out great, never heard a single comment about it.
 
Like I said. This is common. Just be fortunate that it happened at the beginning of your shoot and not the last day.

I don't buy any of that "friends" stuff. As has been well said on here, you're either passionately working hard at your dream of being a serious filmmaker, or your a hobbyist. If the latter, who cares, it's just friends having a fun time. If you are the former, then you need to ally yourself with likeminded people.

Unfortunately, this is a world where people either get it or they don't. It can be lonely at times, because you'll realize that even your closest friends will never really get what you are trying to do, and often times think its a joke. For whatever reason, that's just the way it is. To most of society, filmmaking is a fantastical make-believe realm... where they enjoy the product, but have no respect for the process.

So invite your friends who messed up your shoot to your next bbq. But not to your set.
 
We learned to make sure that you always take the props home with you to make sure they come back. We had to wait a whole summer to shoot something because the main actress colored her hair.
 
Hire a real actor. If it's just a friend, then they won't commit to it as much. You should have started looking for someone new the second he said he might not make it on Sunday. You should burn him on a project next time just to remind him that work ethics means a lot.
 
You EXACTLY summed up what is going on with me at this current time. EXACTLY. I can give excuses, but I'm not, because you said what I know I need to do. So yeah...its like my friend said once, "It's hard for me to be nice because of other people."

zoostory said:
Like I said. This is common. Just be fortunate that it happened at the beginning of your shoot and not the last day.

I don't buy any of that "friends" stuff. As has been well said on here, you're either passionately working hard at your dream of being a serious filmmaker, or your a hobbyist. If the latter, who cares, it's just friends having a fun time. If you are the former, then you need to ally yourself with likeminded people.

Unfortunately, this is a world where people either get it or they don't. It can be lonely at times, because you'll realize that even your closest friends will never really get what you are trying to do, and often times think its a joke. For whatever reason, that's just the way it is. To most of society, filmmaking is a fantastical make-believe realm... where they enjoy the product, but have no respect for the process.

So invite your friends who messed up your shoot to your next bbq. But not to your set.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top