Meet Our Movie

Brian (lead male) is bringing his new girlfriend Kathy to meet his family for Christmas dinner in rural Minnesota. Brian's family (age range from 5 to 75) expects him to bring the old familiar girlfriend they love and consider part of the family. When Brian enters with someone new, they don't know how to react. The story resolves when Kathy saves the life of one of the Uncles in a quirky, comedic scene and is welcomed into the family.

Loosely based on a true story, "You're Not Cindy" is an autobiographical comedy/drama of a Christmas when my college boyfriend surprised his family with me and I received a used, non-working clock radio in a shoe box as an impromptu gift from his confused parents weakly faking that they had expected me.

Without boring you with specifics, certain things need to be done before our movie hit the big screen.
1. Write a screenplay.
2. Find professional actors that would act for free
3. Find a location that looked like a Minnesota farmhouse, seated 16 for a Christmas dinner, wouldn't mind 35 strangers making themselves at home and was easily accessible for actors and crew from Canada and the US.*
4. Prepare a couple turkey dinners for 16 including pickled herring and several Jellos with Cool-whip.
5. Choose and wrap Christmas gifts for a big bunch of people in February.
6. Find and inspect hotel rooms for cast and crew.
7. Coordinate catering.
8. Find Christmas outfits for everyone.
9. Find a dog the day before the shoot since that is when we found out that our Canadian dog didn't have a rabies shot.
yada yada yada
Real movies have a lot of other people do this stuff but as usual it was just the two of us.

A series of lucky coincidences led us to the Lovitt Restaurant in Colville, Washington with an exterior that looked exactly like a Minnesota farmhouse if you didn't really know what a Minnesota farmhouse looked like. The Lovitt Restaurant, as you might guess by the name IS a restaurant, so inside it looked like a restaurant which would be fine if we had written a screenplay about a family that was having dinner at a restaurant but they weren't....they we at Aunt Marge and Uncle Joe's farmhouse for Christmas. Spokane cousins, that I only talk to when I need something (mostly kidding), earned a healthy spot in our credits with a collection of Christmas decorations that sang, snowed, kicked, swiveled and blinked. Then, between local secondhand, rent-to-own and furniture stores we managed to find a couch, loveseat and comfy recliner around town. Coffee and end tables, refrigerator, stove, a couple afghans and a TV that we could have on in the background throughout the day (is anyone else familiar with this family gathering phenomenon?)

Stuff I'd never really thought about...
If you want to shoot 'actor A' close-up from the front saying her lines and then 'actor B's' face reacting to 'actor A' when she's talking...it's at least two different set ups/takes....lights, mics, camera...everything. Then if you want to get a shot of 'actor C' overhearing and reacting to 'actor A and B', it's also and other set up/take. And, if actors A, B and C don't do their lines and reactions exactly the same every time, the takes can't be edited together smoothly which means that not all takes are good and you have to keep shooting until you get something good. You get the idea. When i realized that all of the gifts in a gift opening scene have to be wrapped up over and over exactly the same for each take, it was too late to make reservations for Costa Rica and spend the winter on the beach. A dinner table scene is similar. Let's use jello as an example. It gets passed around. Everyone takes some and puts it on their plates. Cut. Now let shoot it the other side. Easy for you to say. Now we need another untouched jello and clean plates.
And this is why we ran out of time.

Film Festival.
The venue (OK...so it was the school cafeteria) was sold out (if you can consider a free event 'sold-out') for our world premier. The standing room only crowd of movie buffs and surprised students looking for dinner, enjoyed the evening of 9 student films and 50 cent cookies that cost me 75.*
The audience laughed everywhere they were supposed to and then some. We held a question and answer session after the films and someone asked if our Christmas dinner scene was a real family dinner and if everyone knew each other. I guess that could be interpreted as a compliment? The event was followed by a party at our Nelson house until 2:30 and included international guests from as far away as Metaline Falls, Washington.


*For the event I bought some sweet breads and then went back and picked out 10 cookies at the Kootenay Coop Bakery.
"Would you like two more cookies?" the cashier asked.
"No thanks, I'm good", I responded.
"OK. That's 7-50".
I handed her a crisp purple 10 dollar bill.
"Thank you. If you would have gotten 2 more it would have been a dozen for 4-75." she said handing me my change.

If you think this post has a lot going on...you should have been at the Lovitt during the shoot.

The first photo is of the Lovitt before we did our magic.

Meet Our Movie, cont'

You have to look at these too.

The photos are of the shoot and my female filmmaker classmates JoAnne and Rory. JoAnne (left) took the photos on location, brought her kids to act and whipped up a tiramisu (see scenes 3 and 4) out of a cool-whip and cinnamon covered stainless steel pot.

Where Is The Camera? (part 1)

The buzz was "Pizza and Nelson Brewing Company organic beer in cans at Kathy and Vince's Wednesday night". The whole class came. A film-maker party. Like Hollywood. At 1 am we said good-bye to everyone except Rob who never left. Whether the full house was because it was OUR party or because we had free pizza and beer...I'll never know.

The public screening is Friday. Paul, Clay and Rob did the posters. I don't feel all that represented by our poster with the naked woman (covered in lycra only after protest) draped in film, toting a camera made to look like a machine-gun and announcing the event with a heavy metal/horror film font, but what the heck.

Figuring it would be easy to hang a few posters around town on the way home from school, I grabbed a handful. Not easy. Everywhere a poster could be hung, a poster was already hung....all current. While standing in front of a coffeehouse bulletin board a foot thick, I was approached by a musician who told me the best thing to do was to come back at 1:30 am...that way I could take some of the posters down from the night before and hang mine....a suggestion I chose to ignore.

The last time I mentioned the film we were preparing to shoot the car scene.

Take 1.
We were about to be the first car scene shot in Ione, Washington. The car was secured on the flat bed which was about to be pulled by Leon, the fella that put in our septic system, and his huge diesel truck. Vin wore a harness that was secured to the bed of the truck so well that if he would have fallen off he would have been dragged for miles. The tripod and camera weren't going anywhere. Our actors had driven down from Canada. ACTION. Ever notice how much a huge diesel engine vibrates at 20 miles an hour??? You'd notice if you were trying to film two people having a conversation in the car it was pulling while standing on it's flatbed. Well. That didn't work. We did, however, manage to get the boom shots and luckily Vince forgot he'd ever mentioned the shots from the airplane.

Take 2.
One week later.
Vince built a camera platform. Called a 'hostess tray' in the industry, it mounts to either side of the car and shoots through the window. If you want to spend 1500 dollars you can buy one or if you're Vince, you can build one out of scraps for about 20. The actors were mic'd. Everyone had a walkie talkie so we're synced for 'ACTION'. I hung holiday-looking garlands throughout the town so the audience would know it's Christmas even though it wasn't and even though the garlands didn't show up in any of the shots. Vin mounted an inverter to the car engine so we could run lights (held by huge suction cups suctioned to the hood) off of the car battery. Joel, our lead male, drove and did his lines as if there were no bright lights shining in his face and he could see just fine. Cut. Good take.

Where Is The Camera? (part 2)

Are you tired of camera scene pictures yet?

House.
Life is so much easier with a place to hang our coats when we walk in. I think I mentioned that we needed a coat rack, that Max, Vince and I headed down the railroad tracks to find some spikes and that Max didn't find any but Vince and I came back with 17 between the two of us. Today at Ryan's machine shop, Vin sand-blasted and shortened the spikes at a 10 degree angle while Ryan welded them to the metal plate he'd just cut and drilled. My job was to hold off the guy with the broken cultivator emergency for 15 minutes until they were done.

With the front door open, the house is 966 square feet plus 58 acres.

Exciting News.
Energy Star credits for the washer/dryer and the refrigerator just showed up on our electric bill.

Just A Quick Pop In

Almost everyday I promise myself that I'm going to post and entry in my blog so you can see that I'm not very good at keeping promises when they're to myself.

School and Canada.
Six hours of "After Effects" (a complicated (for me) software program) yesterday and now when I make a movie where I'll need to have a car fly through a glass window on the 50th floor of a skyscraper, I'll know how to do it. It's the very same class in which I created a skeleton that danced the Macarena.

I got an 'A!' on my last editing test. You may think I'm punctuating the 'A' in order to emphasize it but I'm not. This is not an 'A' or an 'A-' but an A exclamation point. Just another cute little Canadian quirk.

Every week I look forward to going up to Nelson and look just as forward to coming back down to Metaline Falls. All year Vin and I been whispering in the car while sitting in the customs queue without even realizing it. I guess we both felt like somehow the customs people could hear us in the car if we spoke at a normal volume. Going through customs I'm always a teeny bit nervous. I'm sure I look guilty. I know I always feel guilty.

One easy swipe of my BC Health card and the receptionist sat looking at all of my Canadian medical records. Then, when no one was checking in, she swept the floor until an examination room was free and she could set it up for me. As students we get BC Health for about 100 dollars a month. I wish I was sick so I could use it. Thursday I had a physical. I was 3 minutes late. Two minutes later, the doctor came out to get me and apologized for making me wait.

House and home.
Interior doors. We decided on what we wanted so the hard part is done. You'll think it's weird, but we had some sheets of corrugated metal left from the siding that we're going to transform into doors. How will that look? Beats me but I'll know in about a week.

We now have a cute little Asko washer and dryer, showers, bookcases, dining chairs and wooden steps. The washer and dryer are energy star, the bookshelves and steps are local wood from Steve Kiss..neighbor, logger and talent from Vin's first film. The chairs are from Sundance Catalog (sorry).

Our Saturday movie night ('Benny and Joon'...filmed in Spokane in 1993) had a record 7 movie loving lasagna eaters in attendance. Both the lasagna and the movie were delicious. Must sees: 'Benny and Joon', 'Bart Got A Room' and 'Gilbert Grape', my recent new favorites.

The elk are back. Back from where? They didn't fly south because I know I would have noticed since they travel in groups of 15 to 50. Guess it's their little secret and I'd know if they wanted me to know.

Notice, in the last photo, how the wood from the outside looks like it continues to the inside (where we need some coat hooks*). Very Chic.

Warning. If you think that after 25 years of sleeping in a king sized bed, you can go back to a queen...you'd be wrong.

*Max, Vin and I found 17 railroad spikes, soon to be coat hooks, on a walk from our house yesterday.

Angles and Intersections

There is no reason for this post other than that I like the way these pictures look.

We're getting close to finalizing our 18 person movie cast. (I don't know how we get into these situations) We just picked up a 'Danny' character. He's the nerdy 40 year old cousin that lives at home. An Oldsmobile enthusiast that drinks the wine he makes from a kit the day after he bottles it. We're filming at the Lovitt Restaurant, a wonderful old farm house with a big porch, in Colville. The owner/chef Danny character, who lives above the restaurant with his wife (who does everything other than chef) and 15 month old daughter, will also be catering the cast and crew meals with creations from local and organic ingredients. I should remember, but I don't, that 30 years ago he and I played sharecroppers in a local production.

I just returned from the Post Office, (the front door is NEVER locked) where the first grade's crayoned winter scenes are scotch taped to the windows. Mostly evergreens and snowmen with legs.

Done.

Eggs, A Table And Siding

It was so so so easy to write a car scene into our film. Such a perfect opening sequence. Easy. Now, how would someone film something like that? Where is the camera person? On the hood of the car? And how would you hear the people inside talking when the camera person is on the hood of the car? I wonder if you could use mirrors for something somehow? Well. Looks like we're renting a flatbed truck and putting a car on it, tethering the camera person (Vince) somewhere in front of the car. and having the driver (Kathy) drive the flatbed truck with the car on it back and forth over the same 1000 yard section of road over and over again, shooting with different exposures and angles. The actors will be mic'd. Then, the camera person will get into the driver seat and shoot the passenger while she is saying her lines with the person you think is in the driver's seat, but is actually sitting in the back seat saying his lines and then the actors switch and Vin films the driver from the passenger seat, while the flatbed truck driver is driving back and forth along the same 1000 yards of road. When that's done, Vince will get into the cherry picker that is positioned over the road and the car will drive back and forth under it while Vin is shooting. THEN there are the shots from the airplane that I'm secretly hoping we don't have time for. Vince thinks the car scene will end up being the easiest scene to shoot. I don't like the sound of that.

Today was big. The stove (isn't it just the cutest little stove?) that was sitting in the middle of the kitchen NOT hooked up for a month is now sitting in the middle of the kitchen hooked up, which is much better and as soon as Vince figures out how to reconnect the wire he accidently cut through behind the stove, we can move it into place. The inaugural homemade pizza was delicious although it was tough deciding where to eat it....in the living room while watching a movie? or at the not-done but usable new table (not blurry in real life) while sitting on the new chairs that came today? I decided to eat one piece at the table on a new chair and another piece on the couch in front of the movie. Oh, before I forget....never get white upholstered furniture, (as if you didn't already know that) unless you only wear pajamas.*

Ryan Kiss, one of the 200 people in Metaline Falls, made our table frame. His dad Steve milled the two 18 inch cedar planks that rest on top from a tree that was leaning on a house in town. We still have to finish the top but in the meantime we can use it as another horizontal surface for piling stuff. Ryan also made the kitchen sink base, kitchen shelf tower, entry bench and as soon as he's done painting the John Deere skidder with a de-limber and boom grapple for which we were somehow bumped, he's going to make us some bookcases.

We have movie night at our house every Saturday night. We've only had one so far. In attendance was Joe (my 30 year friend that harvested the porch beam) and his wife Trish who brought us eggs from their chickens that are so pretty I don't want to eat them. And Chris who brought a Harvey Wallbanger cake and a pile of 30 year old photos documenting him, Joe and me planting trees in a clear cut. Thirty years ago Chris and I traveled together (felt our way around) in New Zealand for months and we laughed everyday all day.

I could check and see if I already told you about our home theater but since I can walk faster than our internet, I'll just assume I have. (8 speaker surround...sound familiar?) Anyway. It doesn't matter where you are in the house, the screen will be too close and the sound will be too loud. I say we should have bought a smaller screen. Vince says we should have built a bigger house.

We're getting exercise again. Yaaayyy. It all started about 2 weeks ago. All we had to do is decide that being 8 pm and 20 degrees wasn't a good enough reason to be inside at home like everyone else. We bought our $272 dollar season pass (like the 700 other season pass holders at Nelson Nordic) and 3 oz. headlamps that are as bright as a car headlight and last for 4 hours on the medium setting. My season pass picture looks like a little old lady and Vince's looks like a thug. The night loop is flat and lit. Part of the area outside the lit loop is open enough that most of the time we can ski under the moon and stars without our lights. We're both satisfied with around an hour. We did a 1 lap ~4 minute race last Thursday. 2-up starts. Vin and I started together. I jumped the gun on purpose. Entry fee was a donation so we asked if they wanted money or ski wax since we brought a million years worth of wax with us. They said they'd rather have wax. Later we saw the poster for the race that said it was a fund-raiser for Haiti?

Look. Siding. I know you're thinking...."how will they keep it from rusting?". We're not the only building in Metaline Falls covered in rusted corrugated metal but I'm pretty sure we're the only one's that think it looks cool.


*in our defense, the white upholstery was the only choice we had so we're not crazy.