It's Catch-Up Time!

Ok guys its catch-up time!

I haven’t had the chance to write in this thing for some time now. But I can tell you one thing, a shit load of stuff has happened.

Let me see if I can crystallize the past few weeks for you.

Ok, so…. Everybody arrived two days prior to the start of principle photography to set things up, and make sure everything was ready to go for our first day of principle photography. Josh (our lead camera op and engineer), Zach and I went through all of the equipment and started doing tests. We quickly ran into many problems… sorry… “opportunities” regarding the monitor and lack of parts to our follow focus rig. We dealt with it and figured out a few work arounds.

In the mean time myself and the other producers were on the phone on and off with Megan, trying to figure out this situation we were in. On my drive up to NY, I was under the impression that the Meghan situation was all resolved, unfortunately, I was dead wrong. What transpired over the next few days still boggles my mind, and for the most part I have tried to forget it ever even happened.

Essentially during those first two “set-up” days in NY, what I will now dub the “Magner Situation” quickly turned into a pile of shit. After many phone calls back and forth with Meghan it became apparent that her father being in the hospital was not the real issue, the issue was her mother. Unbeknown to us, Meghan never really told her mother that she was working on a feature length film, until, you know, three days before principle photography started. Basically her mother had no idea what this production was, who we were, and why Meghan was involved. With this now known, myself and Vinny, many times offered to speak to Meghan’s mother, father and whole family about the situation, to try and put their concerns to rest. They ultimately didn’t want anything to do with it.

So it came down to many long conversations between Meghan and I, talking about responsibility, commitment and acting like an adult. I told her that we had open arms for her, and that she needed to stand up to her mother, and let her family know that this was what she wanted to do, that it wasn’t the end of the world, and that this was such an amazing opportunity for her. We then came to an agreement that her mother would speak with Vin’s father (and amazingly generous, and kind man) about the movie and the shoot in NY

*** I would like to let it be known that during this whole time we were completely blindsided by the fact that this, Magner Situation, was even an issue, this was absurd, having to deal with an actresses mother?! Over something like this? It just seemed very un-professional and a little awkward, however, we were more then willing to take the time to resolve the situation in a professional manner, and try and keep Meghan on the project.***

The morning came when the call was supposed to take place between Vin’s father and Meghans mother. To put it short, it did not go well at all. Apparently as soon as the call started Vin’s father was greeted with some nice swearing and cursing. Ultimately they said they wanted to shut the production down, and they wanted to sue us, they even asked if their daughter was going to be in any nude scenes…. This completely blew us away and was such a childish and horribly disrespectful display by Meghans parents that we were just flabbergasted.

After this event took place we had an easy decision to make; we had to drop Meghan to protect ourselves from her psycho family.

I called her up and told her that we had to cut all ties with her. She didn’t really seemed phased… I don’t think she fully understood how much she had fucked us.

With this over with, Brianne, Vinny, Vikki and myself decided we would continue on with all of the scenes in NY that did not include Lana. We told the crew the bad news, and then we all got back to work. Since the next day was the start of principle photography I knew we needed to do a mock scene to practice. So everyone set up in Vin’s kitchen and shot one of the NY scenes to test out how we all worked together.

The mock shoot went well, we ran into a lot of things that we had to work on, and afterwards we all sat down and talked about it, we had an open flow of ideas and how to use them to fix the problems we encountered. It was an extremely good learning experience for everybody.

The next day we shot for 17 hrs straight. It was an interesting day. Everyone worked together as a group, the actors came together and pulled through the cold 12 degree night shoot (big ups to Bobby Ceriello and Jason Upchurch for weathering the storm) Bobby blew us all away with his amazing acting. I guess all of those 4 months of rehearsals and prep were worth it. J-Up did an amazing job as well, he really captured the essence of Calvin (despite the cold). We actually had to stop shooting for periods of time to allow both of the actors (and the crew) time to warm up inside. Greg Nutcher did an awesome job playing David’s father Tom. Those glasses looked truly baller!

All in all it was a great learning experience. We ran into many “opportunities” during those 17 hrs… we worked through them and we overcame them, but most importantly we learned from them… all of us did.

I want to say that I am truly honored to have such and amazing and wonderful crew supporting me and working with me. This movie would be nothing without their hard work and dedication.

The next day we got some pick up shots and a few other scenes out of the way and then everybody was able to go home early.

But wait it’s not over!

Vin, Vikki, Claire and myself went back up to CT to do auditions for the newly opened role of Lana. To put it short it didn’t go that well, most of the people didn’t show up and those that did were either waaay to old, or just not what we were looking for. Over the next week or so we had some good ones, had some prospects. Vikki and I then had to fly out to Utah for Sundance with a bunch of other QFS members, so that put a hold on things.

To shorten things a bit, after a few good choices, and a few deal breakers we found our Lana: Jessica Merigan a talented budding actress from Rhode Island.

*** Looking back on it now I am glad we were able to get rid of Magner, she was loose baggage on the production, and could have cost us more pain and heartache if this had happened later on. I think we all learned a lot from the situation. You just gotta take everything one step at a time. And since we were prepared for the worst we were able to find a new, better Lana.***

Then it continues - - -