Yesterday night, Emil the Director and I drove out on a mission.  We needed to leave the city limits to get spray paint to make stanchions for the museum lobby.  Stanchions, for those non-vocab people like myself, are the things that hold those ropes that make the maze for people to stand in line.

Mission 2 was pick up some styrofoam beanbag fill that Emil had ordered from walmart.com and had sent to their store in Niles.  We need the beanbag fill because we're pretending it's Ice-Melt.  We got there, found spray paint (not even locked in a cabinet!) and then came the hard part.  As only Walmart and the people of Walmart can, the next hour of our lives was spent in a line at customer service trying to get this beanbag fill.  Only two people in front of us, but we still waited for 20 minutes.  Finally we got to the front and asked if this was the place to get a "Site to Store" order.  Nope, we have to go to the next register over, where, of course, we wait again because the same person has been trying to solve some problem for the entire time we've been in line.  They finish, we ask again...  "Is this where we get a Site to Store pickup?"  "No...  the next register over."  We walk over.  The cashier follows us.  He pulls up the order and Emil signs for it.  The cashier leaves to go get the box.  We wait.  We tell stories from stupid-er years past...  The cashier returns with the box and suggests that we check to make sure it's OK.  Thank God we did...  The particles are at least 5 times too big; they're bigger than peas.  Giant peas...   not Ice-Melt.  "Why don't we just crush up some styrofoam?" I suggest.  Whatever, forget about it...  "We need to return this."  

So...  we get back in line.  But this guy can't find the product, can't figure out the order.  We can't return it.  We stand around for another 15 minutes while he tries this, tries that, throws away receipts, tries to find another barcode somewhere, it doesn't work...  on and on.  Finally a manager stops in and saves us, and Emil and I try to convince ourselves like the trip was worth it because we needed spray paint anyway.

The point is...  this "fake rock salt" is just one of a thousand prop issues to be solved.  This one, clearly, took up more time and effort, but in a production like this we have to solve a million problems like this.  It's a *production* and like making, say, toothpaste, it has inputs and outputs.  Unlike toothpaste, there are a LOT of inputs, most of them totally unique and completely necessary to produce one output.  One shot of hundreds of shots which, once edited and arranged, produce THE output...   the movie, King of the Dead.  It's really incredible how much time and effort goes into the planning, shopping, scheduling, arranging, calling, coercing, managing of all these elements that will eventually combine to make the movie.

Yes, this little piece was somewhat like drudgery, but for the most part it's exhilerating and fun.

Time keeps marching on and on.  We're less than three weeks from shooting King of the Dead and in a lot of ways it seems like a dream...  in others, it's quite real.  There's a constant flood of emails from BasecampHQ, our project management software, as we tighten up each little thing.  At this point, focusing on the first couple weekends of shooting and finalizing things that, in any Hollywood production, would have been taken care of months ago.  Things like, location agreements (where are we gonna shoot that hallway scene?), actor contracts, hiring a carpenter to make sets for us, figuring out how we'll feed the cast and crew (this is my job, for now at least).  It's quite a lot of work, and it's easy to see how big productions cost so much money.  At some point, it becomes business and everyone wants to get paid decent money for doing all this work.  Where we're at, pay-that-can-be-lived-on is just not going to happen so there's always the question:  "How can we get this done for free or cheap?"

That said, it's really impressive the kind of talent we've been able to recruit to all departments.  A real lesson, for me, was sitting in on our first auditions which were held a few weeks ago at Lucky Number Grill on Milwaukee. I showed up late, so I missed the first few, but no matter...  there were hours to go.  Each actor read the same lines for each role, so I heard the same lines read over and over.  We probably saw about 40 actors and actresses; some of them read for multiple roles.  I thought back to the interviews we'd been conducting for QA Manager at my "real" job and how we'd spent hours trying to get just a person or two who might be qualified, then a few more hours talking to each person...   Not so here.  We had our pick of 10 or more people for each role.

Also really impressive, for an outsider like myself, was to see how each actor's mental image and corresponding portrayal of the characters differed.  Carolyn is a bitchy museum administrator...  but how does that come across?  When she tells Sayeed he's late, does she check her watch?  A blackberry?  Does she just *know* he's late because she's that type?  Another character was so generic in the script that they could be male, female...   pretty much anybody.  So we got some really wildly variable reads for that one.  One actress let out a truly blood-curdling scream at such a tremendous volume I still can't believe the police weren't called.  It was pretty cool, because after seeing a few of each character, it immediately stood out to us who was really great.  Unfortunately, the flip side of having so many talented people means that, of those we saw that night, only four (I think) got called.  Fortunately for us, we got some *extremely* talented people.

Stay tuned for an amazingly exciting post about shooting scripts, schedules, call sheets, and the like...

About two weeks ago, Dinah and I decided to join some friends who'd planned a camping trip to Mississippi Palisades State Park in Savanna, IL.  Then, I planned to surprise my lovely lady by taking her for a hot air balloon ride.  At the beginning of the summer, we'd made a list of summer goals and this was one we'd yet to check off.  I'd never kept a secret from her for long, so this part was especially hard.  I somehow managed by telling a number of friends about my devious plans...  I finally told her on Saturday, just as we'd finished an arduous hike on some rather poor trails, all while dodging hordes of mosquitos and orange-clad weekend workers wielding heavy construction equipment with reckless abandon, totally unable to understand why people might want a *quiet* hike.  It was rough.  Mississippi Palisades State Park?  Not impressed.  The balloon ride, though, made up for it.

It was a sunrise flight, so we had to wake up at 5:15 to get coffee and get there on time; the flight left from Eagle Ridge Resort, outside of Galena, IL.  We woke up at 5:30, but couldn't wrap our minds around the idea of a coffee-less morning...  so we were about 10 minutes late.  After signing some papers and apologizing for our tardiness, we ran down a path to a field where the balloon was laid out flat across the ground.  The basket was tilted on its side and was already hooked up to the balloon.  It was enormous.  Our pilot, Taylor, introduced himself and explained how the balloon would inflate and how we were to hop in.  Then some farmboys with extremely dark circles under their eyes (it was, by this time, only about 6:20 in the morning and while it wasn't still dark, the sun had yet to peek over the horizon) fired up two giant, gas-powered fans and held up the balloon's opening to let air in.  The air rippled through the balloon, making the field into a sort of rainbow sea for a minute, then it took on a round shape.  There were around 6 other couples there, and everyone was taking pictures and movies...  always the guy with the camera and the girl looking pretty (annoyed) standing in front of the rising wall of rainbow.  Taylor had said we could touch the balloon...  so we ran over and felt the sides...  they're made of a very strong fabric and have to have extensive testing done yearly to see how far it will stretch...  make sure it hasn't got any holes in it, etc.  

Once the balloon was getting pretty full, Taylor hopped into the basket (it was still on its side) and fired up the propane jets.  The heat caused the balloon to rise into the air, pulling the basket upright with Taylor still inside blasting away from one jet after another.  The balloon had 4 propane jets and he'd switch from one to another presumably to avoid overheating one.  Once the balloon was upright, we'd been told to hop into the basket too.  Again, Dinah and I took the lead.  This was smart, as it put us near the pilot area, which also contained most of the equipment, gauges, etc.  Not that any place didn't have a good view...  After a lot more blasting of propane, the balloon left the ground "like a herd of turtles" as Dinah likes to say.  We hardly noticed it take off besides a vague notion that we were moving in relation to the ground.  Taylor pulled some ropes and blasted some more and we rose to treetop level.  It seemed so unlikely that we wouldn't get caught on the branches, but I'm sure Taylor was doing that on purpose...  He kept us expertly positioned just above the branches.  We drifted over some trees and over a lake.  Once over the lake, we dropped down to maybe 10 feet above the water and hovered along wherever the wind took us.  After gliding around the lake for a while, we were approaching the trees on the other side so, after some prolonged propane blasts, we rose quickly above the trees and then continued higher up.

As we rose higher and higher, the rolling hills, trees, golf courses, and farms of western Illinois spread out below us.  The sun was coming up in the East and because of the hills, it only lit up some of the ground.  It was exceedingly beautiful.  We climbed higher and higher, eventually peaking at around 3500 feet.  Taylor told us we were traveling about 25 miles an hour.  We'd never know, though, because since we were going the same speed as the wind, it was calm and peaceful (except for the occasional propane blast).  As we gradually descended, Taylor contacted two "chase vehicles" on the ground and let them know where he was and what field he intended to land in.  Someone from the van went to knock on a farmhouse door to get permission to land, but no one was home.  I suppose it's also possible that they were asleep, seeing that it couldn't have been much later than 715am.

Anyway, we prepared to land by facing away from the direction of travel and hanging on for dear life.  It had not occured to me before that landing a balloon must be difficult given its lack of wheels, landing gear, etc.  Basically, the idea is to get the balloon close to the ground where the wind isn't as strong.  Then, the balloon slows down.  Then, you just let it drop until it hits the ground and eventually stops.  There are some ropes that go up inside the balloon to flaps on the sides.  There's another such flap at the top to let hot air out.  I'm not sure what exactly Taylor did to drop the balloon, but he told us to hang on and we hit the ground, took off again for about 15 feet, then hit the ground again, then after one more hop, came to a stop.  At this point, we stayed on the ground waiting to see if it was OK to take the balloon apart in this field.  Apparently, during our landing, the chase people had found out that the field belonged to a neighboring farmhouse and had gone over there to check it out.  Apparently, if they hadn't agreed, we could have taken off again and looked for another field.  Anyway, we hopped out of the balloon and repeated the whole scene with guys taking pictures of girls...  of course...  now that we were all friends, there was some "let me take a picture of both of you" going on...   I offered to take the picture of a couple, the old man from which looked just like the guy from the "Tube Sock" Skittles commercial.  

Conclusion...    It was really cool.  Not quite a "thrill seeker's ride" like skydiving.  Very calm, peaceful, natural...    I'd highly recommend the company.  I think it was buyaballoonride.com...   they're the only company operating in the Galena area, so you can't miss them!

As of last week, I've officially signed on as an executive producer for a horror movie.  Why?  Well, I'm not exactly sure.  It feels much like that time I convinced Dinah to take mime classes with me; I suppose that filmmaking has been lurking in my subconscious as an interest that I haven't had the time or specific inclination to pursue until now.  About a month ago, the opportunity presented itself and after some lunch meetings and reading scripts, scrapping a project and starting a different, cheaper one...  BAM!  Next thing I know I wrote a check for a thousand dollars and this morning the director (Emil) and I dragged Dinah to every Village Thrift location on the South Side of Chicago looking for knick-knacks that a viewer might be convinced were part of an exhibit at a museum and for any jewelry that could have been worn by an ancient Egyptian.

More about the movie...    Essentially, it is the story of some museum employees who battle an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld after he is inadvertently brought back to life by the staff archaeologist.  The first week of my involvement has been extremely exciting for me.  While many of the team worked together on Emil's last movie, The Landlord , I am new to the business and have the naive enthusiasm of someone who has no idea what he's getting into.  Emil has put a lot of effort into getting things organized and, more importantly, budgeted.  We're using a project management software called "BaseCamp HQ" that handles communications, files, schedules, budgets, etc of the different departments (wardrobe, makeup, location, art, photography, casting, etc).  As a co-producer, I have access to everything and the right to hire assistants for certain departments.  Of course, we can't pay anyone...

The thrift store marathon this morning was a bit of a headache.  Village Thrift had a 50% off everything sale... so you can bet that the aisles were full and lines were extremely long.  But we found a lot of gold jewelry that *could* be Egyptian and about a garbage bag full of various pots, vases, and colored-glass bottles to use as pretend museum artifacts.  All for around $50.  We didn't shop for much else in the wardrobe department because until the actors are cast, we won't know their sizes.  Also, Emil tells me, it's good to work with the actor/actress on building their character and part of that is letting them pick out their outfit and accessories.  Anyway, I could go on for hours and hours but I'm going to try to keep these posts reasonably brief!  More later.