The First 48 (part 4)
The Assassination at India Palace
OR
Well, The Food Was Pretty Good!
You think you're funny, Funny Man!
Pulling from my “education” of the Metro shoot, the plan was to have the writers all work together on a story for this next 2 Hour Film Project.
I even preselected a genre and sort-of story line for the writers to bring to this meeting. (Since they didn’t really get a chance to write the last time, I figured that I’d have them at least show me what they could come up with, given some time on their own.
Our production manager secured an Indian restaurant for this location and, since he’s connected, got the dinner thrown in. (Amazing how many more people showed up for this rehearsal!)
Everyone, and some new people I never met before and who didn’t even end up being on our 48 Hour Film Project, gathered around and I gave these specific instructions: “Okay, so I want everyone that is going to write to sit down together over dinner and come up with a story.”
Everyone got up to get their plates and proceeded to have dinner and to not work on a story at all!
Time was ticking away, as we didn’t have the place for that long and after dinner and after realizing that no one had done any writing at all, I put the writers together to come up with something.
At this point, it was becoming clear that everyone had had their own idea of what we were going to do and that chaos was going to reign supreme again.
The director went off to shoot some establishing shots he said he had in his head and most of us just milled around.
After some time, that same fussy actor from the last shot came to me to declare that the actor and partner “couldn’t stay long”. I said it was alright if they left. The trouble, it seems, stemmed from the fact that the idea they were working on, that actor was helping with the writing tonight as we were short one writer, who happened to take a wrong turn and got frustrated and decided to just go home!
Again, the director had his own idea for the story. And what we ended up shooting was a mix of the two ideas, I think….
Again, the 1st AD had his setup messed with by the production manager. (He didn’t like the lighting set up but didn’t realize that the 1st AD and the director and grip had already figured out that because of the glass entrance, the lights couldn’t be set up that way. Those guys being more passive-types, just opted to let the PM do his thing, as it wasn’t worth the fight.) It was just a practice run after all.
One of the ideas for the story was created by our PM. Everyone kind of went with that idea with a few twists. Our director is very good at taking some idea and putting a funny twist on it that appeals to more people. Our PM told us he used to be a stand-up comedian and so his character would be sort of funny. Uh, well, yeah, right…. Nevertheless, our director made a funny short out of it called Assassins Anonymous.
Laugh Clown Laugh!
We didn’t get close to the amount of footage and there were a lot of mad people at the end of the night!
After we wrapped, the first AD, the director and I met at my house. We talked long into the night about what worked, what didn’t, what we could do to improve things, etc, etc.
We seemed to iron things out fairly well. I had the feeling, that we’d be better off, if I got rid of some people, three in particular, but as fate would have it, I wouldn’t even have to raise a concern.
To be continued…
See the video: