Movie diaries 11

[mapsedge]

A .44 makes one hell of a racket.

Well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory.

Let's see. We've got ghouls. We've got dimension-hopping villains. We've got an abandoned hotel, haunted by the aforementioned ghouls and villains. One of the lead actors wears a black hat, black boots, and a white duster. Another of the leads is a retired police detective.

You can't make a movie like this without guns. You have to have guns. Lots of guns. On the set at any given moment there are at least two shotguns, four revolvers, and two semi-automatic pistols. Those are the ones being held or worn by someone, and doesn't count the ones still in the box. That doesn't seem like a lot for an action adventure movie, until you learn that there are only two people on camera carrying projectile weapons. How many guns do you need to kill the undead? Eight, apparently.

For the production, I ordered a box of ear plugs, the foam kind that squish into the ear and aren't really visible on camera if you put them in right, and reduce any noise to a maximum of 29 decibels, about half the volume of normal conversation. They don't make you deaf, but they certainly take the edge off. What gets you is the concussion.

Our shoot has us one day in the basement of hotel. Built in 1890-something, and finally closed for business after a variety of failed business ideas through the 1970s and '80s, the place has for five years or so been the home of squatters, pigeons, and local teens needing a place to fuck and smoke dope, and sometimes both. The owner tried unsuccessfully to sell the local city government on converting it to an old folks' high-rise; it only took two meetings for them to refuse. Next stop, demolition.

In the meantime, it's ours.

We're in a large room, about thirty by sixty feet, one third divided off into a bath area and the rest open and used for storage of a lot of junk. The floor is dusty, of course, and the concrete ceiling is decorated with stalagtites of peeling paint. The junk has been pushed all to one side, leaving quite a lot of space to work. Oh, before I forget, no lights. No electricity in the room. The only lights are the one mounted on the camera and two or three flashlights.

The scene calls for the good guys to advance into the room, get attacked by monsters and open fire.

Imagine standing outside during a lull in a thunderstorm, not far from a telephone pole. Lightning strikes the pole, and when the flash is gone there's that instant of silence before the air rushes back in with an astonishingly hard "whoomp", the split second just before you hear the thunder. Imagine standing in the space vacated by the air and the lightning, and being there when the air rushes back in.

WHOOMP

No pain, not like that. It's not like it knocks the breath out of you, but it's like having someone hit you flat on the back with a phone book. A big phone book. Like Chicago, or Los Angeles.

And with every bang, it snowed paint flakes.

I came to enjoy the days when there'd be shooting. The ear plus aren't very comfortable, why should they be?, but still...it's fun.

There was one casualty. Even with blanks, in this case half-load shotgun shells, there's still stuff coming out of the barrel. Murphy and Gunslinger were careful to never point the shotguns directly at the ghouls, but to aim just off-target - on camera, you can't tell, and it adds a measure of safety. One of our extras moved off his mark and bent down into the line of fire. A piece of wadding struck him on the side of the head just above his eye. He wasn't injured, but it hurt like hell; we sent him home. He is, by all reports, fine.

Comments

there's an old English "gun safety" poem...

[themadblonde]

about NEVER pointing a gun, loaded or not, @ another person. Unfortunately I don't have it here....

One of my fave theatre "saves" involves guns, working & non, in our college production of "What the Butler Saw." I'd be just as happy not to have to work w/ guns again. ;-)

Re: there's an old English "gun safety" poem...

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

Our standing policy is that guns are never pointed at people: they are always angled off slightly and the difference compensated for by camera angle. There is also a minimum safe distance for each weapon, just in case. Our extra forgot his mark once the cameras rolled, and leaned into the "safe" zone.

[purpledumbass.livejournal.com]

Ah, there's nothing like discharging a firearm in an enclosed area....
:-)

Keep the report coming! They're certainly fun to read at work...

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

An enclosed area with peeling, probably lead-based paint on the ceiling. You know FDR used to come to Excelsior Springs for his health. If he could see the place now.

I'll keep them coming, though I'm running out of material. I have to keep reminding myself that just because I was there an getting bored with it, the rest of my friends haven't been. There's certainly more to tell...just be more work to it.

[purpledumbass.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm... Lead-based paint... Back when I was a kid, I didn't get REAL toys-- Just all the paint I could peel and... Waitaminit. Maybe that explains a lot....

:-P