i48 Friday Night: Production

We arrived at Montego Bay, the bar that allowed us to shoot on their patio, at 10pm ready to rock-and-roll. Each and every one of us has worked together before in some capacity, just not on the same set. We meshed together so fucking quickly though, that you'd think we'd all done this as a team before. We allowed each other their own ideas - we listened respectfully and added our own thoughts when we felt the need to. I don't want to say that it was perfect, because that would fuck me for the rest of my film career, but it came pretty damn close. Maybe we were all just on our best behavior, however, you'd think the stress levels were sky-high considering we had to finish this thing in 48 hours. But we were all VERY relaxed. It was probably the beer...

The actors settled into their roles very quickly, while Mike, JC (our DP), and myself settled into our production roles. We all fit, like little pieces of a puzzle. If I remember correctly, we shot for about an hour - not bad for our first time out! - then left the premises to head back to the writers room. My friend, who works at the bar, was so hospitable. He gave me a $20 card for drinks, which I handed off to our actors, the rest of us had to continue working.

We arrived back at our place, opened our own beer *wink* and got to work. Gene worked on transferring the footage from both cameras (oh yeah, we were so professional that we had TWO cameras), while Mike and I continued writing. I think we turned out a pretty decent script. Our biggest difficulty was staying in the PG-rated guidelines. I mean, HELLO?, not a single one of us (I'm talking the entire cast and crew) could keep our minds out of the gutter long enough to not tread into rated R territory. But we pulled through and kept our script clean. Well, as clean as could be, we'll let you be the judge of that when it's released on Saturday.

We finished our writing, watched our dailies, and I think we called it a night around 3am. Call was 8am for our two male actors and Mike and I. We had a long Saturday ahead of us...