for the good things of this earth: 2010

I've been off the blogging map for a while due to holidays, finals, more holidays, and of course some movie making. I'm currently working on a feature called "Boy with Blue". It's 108 pages long and we are shooting the entire thing in 2 days. Yes, you read that right, 2. More about that one later though. The feature "Midway to Heaven" just came out with a trailer! This was filmed in September and I was the Still Photographer. I showed up to set and was handed a Canon 5D Mark II and a bunch of super nice/crazy expensive L-Series lenses and fell so in love with them haha. Good times. This was directed by Michael Flynn.

"Cricketless" is a senior capstone short film that was shot over three weekends in February and March and it premiered this month. This is the super rad camera crew :) I was the 2nd AC for this film. Devin Graham was the DP, Joel Ackerman was the Writer/Director and Raven Alard was the Producer. And here's the trailer:

"Bread to Kill" (formerly known as "Against the Grain") is a hilarious short about Grandmas that fight to the death (literally) to get their bread in grocery stores. This was filmed in November 2009 but I was reminded of it today because while at rehearsals for "Boy With Blue" our location was the same place as where the ax murder scene was shot for this short. It was also a senior capstone film and more info can be found at breadtokill.com I was the Script Supervisor, it was directed by Phil Goodwin, Jack Taggart was the Producer and Devin Graham was the DP.
And while I'm on a capstone kick, here's a trailer for "Man of the Cloth" which was the first BYU student film I worked on. This was shot in April 2009. I showed up to PA but was quickly trained as the Script Supervisor. Bryce Gandy directed, Byron Kirkland was the DP. Last one, "The Third" which is an adaptation of the book Enders Game was filmed in December 2009, as well as January and February 2010. This was such a cool experience to be a part of. We shot mostly in a large soundstage with a huge set and lots of green screen, and some other sweet locations such as underground swimming pools. I was 2nd AC on this project. This was directed by Jacob Schwarz, Produced by Katie Crapo... as she was known then, now Schwarz ;) and Devin Graham was the DP. Here is the trailer and a fun behind the scenes video which features the crew for this film and many of them are people I've worked with on multiple projects mentioned above. I am so lucky to work with such awesome people. :) The best part is that ALL of these movies were shot on the Red (and sometimes with two Reds). True love. :)

For Robbing the Dead. Where to begin on this one?? I'll just sum it up with picture captions. :) This film totally consumed my life during spring this year, from April to June, and it was a pretty amazing experience! We shot at the LDS Motion Picture Studio and on location in some pretty remote places in Utah. I was the script supervisor on this film which was directed by Tom Russell (a film professor at BYU) and the DP was Derek Pueblo. Here's the thing about film. When you spend 12+ hours on set with the same people for a couple of days they quickly become your friends. When you spend 12+ hours on set with the same people for a couple of MONTHS, in all sorts of weather conditions, sometimes in the dead of night, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, they quickly become your family. The film was shot on the Red MX and these photos were taken with a Nikon D40 (unedited, just some fun snapshots. Click to make them bigger.)
For Robbing the Dead Facebook page For Robbing the Dead on IMDB For Robbing the Dead with BYU forrobbingthedead.com

The first day! We shot at This is the Place State Park and it snowed. Mud everywhere!

Whitney, the production design mentor. This girl is seriously genius! If you ever get to work on one of her gorgeous sets, consider yourself lucky! An overhead shot of the saloon set.

Byron at the bar in some pretty cool lighting.

Super cute moment between our actors as they were getting to know each other on the first day on set at the LDS Motion Picture Studio.

Rance Howard (the doctor), Tom Russell (director), and John Freeman (Henry Heath).

Stephen, our amazing Craft Service guru showing off his mad snack tray skills. Seriously though, best.craft.service.EVER. Jean Baptise (David Stevens) showing off his dashing wardrobe. Super cool method actor, rarely broke his French accent during all of production.

Ed Herrmann (um, Richard Gilmore anyone??), Clay, and Ephraim the gaffer with his super cool light reducing eyepiece circle thing. Reminds me of the Duke from Cinderella :)

Lights in the studio. So legit haha.

Byron, the 1st AC had some INTENSE focus pulls and totally nailed them. See that jail back there? Yeah, I helped paint that...

A. Todd in a grave. At night. In the freezing cold. Notice his awesome scarf.

LeGrand and Byron, our rockin' AC's. And a whole lotta clothes.

David and Chris setting up the jib. Sammi (grip) and Jessica (props), in the most precious picture ever.

The crew on the LDS Motion Picture Studio backlot.

Derek the DP. In his defense, it was really sunny and he asked Bree (wardrobe) to pull a hat for him. This is what he got for not being specific. :)

David Liddell Thorpe and his orange cardigan. He was great about training his grip crew to build 4xfloppy forts to shade video tap for me. They got pretty elaborate by the end of production.

The best picture of A. Todd ever (2nd AD). And Margot Kidder.

Barry Corbin with Robyn and John stand in their places, Derek's ready to shoot!

The scene that was directed without the director. Haha I think this was right after lunch or something and Tom wasn't back quite yet but we were losing light...

A super official looking production photo... :)

Bird's eye view of production. There were only two scenes in the whole film that were really hard for me to watch on tap because of the content (it was sorta scary) and the acting was just too real and this was one of them. Also, this is in the wood shop at the MPS, not a soundstage. And it rained a lot this day. On a tin roof. Oh man, poor sound guys.

Tom and Derek in another official looking photo :)

Babbetta's.... I mean Baz's.... incredible yellow boots.

Tom (director), Jon Gries (Uncle Rico, wait, wrong film), and Courtney (producer and Tom's wife)

The crew at on the MPS backlot. Notice craft setting up lunch :)

Electric crew, Gary (and my glasses) and Micah are pretty much bffs now.

Ummm. I don't know who this is, some extra. But I thought it kind of a bizarre juxtaposition of a girl in pioneer clothing playing with a laptop and cell phone...

Bill Nelson! One of our super cool executive producers.

LeGrand (2nd AC) in action. This was in Goshen, BEFORE the rain came.

Goshen Valley, we filmed in the river bottoms, and up on the hill. My car totally got stuck in the mud here and Micah saved the day by pushing me out.

Babetta (assistant to the director) and Phil (1st AD). Typical. Haha just kidding. But this picture is just amazing.

Sam (DIT) doing workflow on location in Goshen. There's a laptop in there. Shortly after this it POURED for a few hours. And somehow we still got the coverage we needed. Miracles do happen!

Utah Lake! We spent a week and a half here shooting on the shore and up in the hills that doubled for the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island.

David and Ephraim. At one point, Derek told them they could only be stand ins if they promised not to model :)

OK click this pictures to make it bigger, then notice the BUGS. Gross. They were everywhere. We will probably all die of some from of cancer from how much bug spray we all used. All those lights were lined up on the ridge and used to light up a mountain at night.

This ravine was heaven sent. We spent a couple of nights here shooting overnight and the wind and cold was beyond anything I can even try to describe. The crew jumped in every chance we got to get some sort of shield from the wind.

This was about the time the movie title changed to "For Robbing the Band" because they all look like they belong in a boy band :) David, A. Todd, Chris, Ephraim, and Derek.

Sam taking a photo of Baptiste
Bree, wardrobe extraordinaire, distressing Baptiste's wardrobe to age it. She uses very traditional methods :)

Chris (best boy grip) hiking equipment up from the ravine.

The Sound Posse!! As scripty, I sat next to Bryan (mixer) all day every day and often rode with them in Brandon's (boom op) car. The only thing this picture is lacking is Brandon's cow blanket, and audio of Bryan singing "got not-not-nothin on you baaaaabe" (which he sang 8 million times during production.)

The Great Salt Lake! Everyone and everything lived on these rafts out on the water. Salt everywhere.

The grip/electric crew dressed up for a day. Gag.

Derek and a bunch of seagulls. This picture..... oh man. All of a sudden people are calling wrap 5 hours early and before I know what's going on, I'm still on the boat with Derek, Byron, Tom, Phil, and Bryan and we start heading towards this rock. This rock didn't look so far away. 4 hours later, it STILL didn't look so far away. In fact, it looked the same exact distance away. But we finally made it, just to shoot some seagulls on a rock. Haha it was quite the adventure indeed and in the end it really is a cool shot. There was a time when Derek and Tom may or may not have wandered away from the boat and I may or may not have commandeered the Red and shot Tom chasing seagulls around. :)