James Cullen Bressack, Filmmaker: because in the same shot he's supposed to get sprayed with the blood. Joshua Lou Friedman, AD: All right
guys wardrobe it's clear make them miss me later quiet freeze
lock it up the entire kitchen for the rest of the day today that we're going
to be shooting in we got 19 pages in there it's one long scene bunch of
effects and he is kind of overseeing stuff you see John Fossey or a DP over
there through the food of glass he's tweaking stuff out he hates being on
camera so you should film him as much as possible
Alex also an art tiffin and art department this is Trey he's our gaffer
Hey Jonathas Oh Sookie doesn't want to be
filmed don't move as much as possible
actually does lead to the PIO over here is the production office
and this is John Mayer he is our line producer this is Ross that she is the
homeowner Brian he's our art director of Christian one of our producers Beth art
this is Yuri he's our first day see
chase is our second day see I think he can help since when you when we that are
like five minutes of pop and then we go like four or five takes in a row a will
overheat that's probably the disadvantage to read over a canary but
he doesn't overheat too often also chases weren't a lot of hats on this
show he's not only our second AC but he is also our di t so he's the one who
puts the footage on the hard drives and the sound on the hard drives and then
also gives me playback on the computer if I need to go or reference something
or script he needs to go read something this is Jordan she works in wardrobe
hello this is John he is Tom's manager and a good friend and helper on this
show you can see how Claire can you do that help again so yeah boy we like you
you turn and then it's not like a jump turn and get up to go over okay and
actually I think the the biggest challenge is the biggest challenge on
innocent is I constantly find myself saying and thinking if I just had like
two more days or if I just had like three more days to film I wouldn't have
to sacrifice tough because here I'll show you this is my script and if you
look in it I mean I have my entire shot list that I check off everything on
whether I do it and certain things you know
you see like there's checkmarks next to a lot of stuff and then certain stuff I
don't end up shooting and you'll see that throughout the whole thing and I'm
the only one who's gonna know and edit that there was a shot I wanted that I'm
guessing the audience won't but I'll go oh man it would have been cool if I
could have done that and sometimes I have to simplify some stuff and I had
already shot listed I mean I've seen where I have 38 shots so and we've we've
been good I think the highest we got up to was like double AAA be on the slate
so that was like something like 28 29 shots which was kind of cool and then
also if you see like I have a lot of prep work I do like all my notes for
they're all color coded so you know Blue means visuals
green means wardrobe pink means effects so I have literally notes for actors
notes for everything throughout the entire script on every single page pages
and pages and pages of notes and I draw a little overhead pictures of how I want
to block everybody and stuff like this usually doesn't make sense to anybody
but me but uh it definitely prep work is is the thing that really really I think
solidifies a movie for me so I mean it's also on a miss short of a schedule
because we have 14 days to shoot the movie and it's a 95 page script you're
shooting six to ten pages a day which is pretty intense when I was in Thailand I
had a 28 day shooting schedule so I was shooting like three to four pages a day
but if you look like you know if if you write out a bunch of stuff like in here
I have certain things of like this is how the character feels like she pulls
back in saying something childlike anger and hate behind her voice but it isn't
loud it's more subdued stuff like that it gives you more of a moment that
you're able to just go in on how you already intended for the scene to go you
work with the actors during the blocking and some of some of the actors I'm
blessed like to have people like Zac and Tom Green and Shannen Doherty and and
Stephanie s Dez and everybody who's been involved they've all put in time before
the movie so I was able to talk with them about their characters and really
go through all of this so their scripts matched note wise with my scripts
so they already kind of know what I was going for originally what was layered in
each character and like each character's backstory past the page so we developed
that together and then it's kind of comes into clockwork because with all
the stuff like focus or sound from a plane you don't have as much time to
really work with the actors so you have to go in and and you know work with them
prior and really get them to where you want them before what do you think of
that I just adjusted it so he's looking look he was looking right yes he's gonna
look here Erin's here players here under when she's over here which is over by
the stove I know how much time my ad tells me how much time I have left in
the scene and I have to choose between doing another take or scrapping a shot
and I go well what's more important this angle or that angle and then I go okay I
want the other takes so let's scrap this shot or I go let's just move on so I can
get that shot and so it's constantly deciding like what's the most important
thing for the scene what do I need for the Edit and so if you look at like my
shot list if I pull up any scene I have stuff where it's like what I need and
what I want and like a perfect example is I haven't shot scene three yet and
you'll see I scrapped one two three four shots on it already before I even did it
and I know because this is the one location that we are stealing we're not
permitted for we're shooting we're running into a cemetery really quick
than getting a couple shots there so I know I'm only gonna have time for like
two three shots and I got to get out when I originally shot listed it's like
ten so you know it's it's stuff like that you way things into the balance and
then you'll see over here I'm going through this whole shot list and I start
adding things on the side and scratching out other stuff because when the
blocking changes I go well this shot doesn't even matter so I need that
another great thing is you know you'll go through the shot list and you're
shooting something let's say it's a close-up of somebody
talking and then you also have an insert shot of them picking something up at the
end of the tank I'm just like pan down and show them picking this thing up so
set for that pick it up and I put it at the end of the shot that way I have two
shots in one we don't have to set up for it
so it's it's you know it's a lot of thinking on your toes and grabbing as
much stuff as you possibly can so you know how your films gonna be cut fair
line when they're walking away where he's like move your ass and it pushes
him into the room that way over from them to these guys okay during that
whole exchange then we're going to get a shot of them from here well is walk here
three I'm going to get an insert shot that has to match for a transition of
Kevin's arm going onto this door and then after that I'm just gonna let it be
festive as special okay prioritize in there seems what you want versus what
you need because always shoot general coverage of what you need so that if you
have to move on you can because I see a lot of people always getting stuck in a
scene and they're like well I need this for the Edit and I need that for the
Edit and it's it's a lot of wants so you choose on your day you know if you have
like the preliminary schedule for the day like this right here you go through
and you see all these scenes now we have a giant scene count today and a giant
amount of pages and you look at that and you go okay like let's say like this
scene is the most important right here so that's where I'm gonna focus my the
most of my time or this one and then the other scenes you especially when you're
fighting against the clock the other scenes you shoot generally you know you
do something cool but style is sometimes a luxury on these shoots so you don't
have to make every single scene a stylistic masterpiece you just have to
make it competently shot and then you go in and finesse it later the garnish is
what you what you save for later if you if you
at the time one of my favorite things about doing a scene like this especially
in like this location that we have over here is I originally had like 14 shots
shot listed for this scene a bunch of stuff prepped and then when we were
doing the walkthrough I saw this this part of the hospital on this location
and it looked really awesome and I knew it was gonna look good on camera and the
lights but since it's such a tight space I chose this location which totally made
my shot let's go completely out the door because now I can't do any of the things
I originally planned because it's such a tight space and so many people so now
we're kind of like winging it a little so it's a it's kind of fun because it
keeps you on your toes and it's it's very different because you know I'm very
prepared all the time in this and one of the first times where I kind of just
have to make make things up as I go which is we'll see how it goes and I
talked with my DP a lot I created a Dropbox I'll pull it up I go like you
know lighting and mood so these are certain like I wanted practical lights
throughout the house so I took pictures of that I'd paintings that had hold on
pictures that have the moon we'll have like shots from other movies so these
have like definitely the same kind of lighting that I wanted for the aesthetic
look of the film and so you go through and you look at how this is lit and you
see like know that stuff and then now I'll pull up a shot from my actual movie
and you'll see how we matched it so and this is what we ended up with this
is still from from monitor on color-corrected so it's all about having
having that that dialogue in that conversation and you know for me it's
really important to have everybody on the same page so they all understand the
vision so I always you know that's just my cinematography file I also have you
know an art file effects file a hair file a makeup file a wardrobe file and
all that stuff and everybody all the department heads put their stuff into it
and I put my stuff into it and we combine and work it out and it looks
like Marcus is pulling me now the market
No
yeah yeah we had a rain bar right and so how is it that's not problematic just
easy just turn it all in minutes it was actually a little problematic it took us
a while to get set up and it was hiding like the stands for it to get it going
but it's it's cool and and the funny thing is is it that's one of those
things where like I fight for random aesthetic things we're like you know
there was no reason that it had to be there other than like I thought it'd
look cool if rain was in the background for one shot so we spent money I'm
having this rain bar because I thought it was important for how I wanted to
introduce Tom's character because I wanted him to be coming out of the rain
one of the things that I'm really played with the most on this film that I'm
really excited about is is my scene to scene transitions like every single time
in the movie there's there's almost every scene we go into a scene to see
transition so it's like you know I'll have a character pick up a coffee mug
and then they'll go to sip it and we'll cut into a close-up of them sipping it
and when they pull it away from their mouths we pull back and we're in a
different scene so it's just them sipping the same coffee mugs but they're
on a different day in a different scene so finding different moments to have
something that similar art-wise so you're on that focused on it and then
you're somewhere else I like to hide how we got from one place to another and I
think it definitely helps with the fluidity of the movie and also with the
fluidity of the character because a lot of this movie plays as some cerebral
thing within the character psyche almost as if it's the the lead actresses psyche
so it's almost as if like the entire movie is a quilt woven together so I
don't want stuff to people to ever know when something ended and when something
begins and we go in and out of flashbacks a lot so one of the cool
things about that is instead of having the flashbacks be separate scenes
I'll have the character turn and look and wee-wee dolly over there and we have
a dramatic lighting shift and it plays as if it's a little play in front of her
and then they leave the room and so there's these really cool transitions
that that play out and like the world changes lights come on are
loulou's and I I got a lot of that from watching the movie Lone Star if you've
seen that so we've been kind of copying that a little bit but you know doing my
own version of it but watching it I was like I have to do that kind of thing
that was awesome and so I played it both ways which way you wanted here um I
think this side this side but also at the same time since since your
characters supposed to be it doesn't matter
nothing what all right I just wanted to make yeah for you for you specifically
just because your characters I could be looking up here yeah approaching a
distributor in advance is something that really helps especially for this film
what I did is I had my movie pernicious which is coming out in theaters soon
that all the distributors saw when I was playing festivals and they made bids on
it and the distributors that we didn't end up selling the film to I approached
and said hey you know they put in an offer for it and I said hey if I made a
film in the same genre would you buy it and they said yes and so they pre bought
the film and so these films were pre-sold before they were made it was
very easy to finance them based off of they were already sold before they were
made so it's like hey one once the film is delivered you get X amount of dollars
from the distributor it's very easy to say hey can you finance this because I'm
literally basically borrowing money from you for like a little bit of time and
then it comes in they basically said as long as I'm writing and directing which
on one of them and I swung it as a tube film deal that I would write both with
his act exact with direct one and I would direct one and then they said that
it had to be like ghost house types so like you know John were films with a
supernatural element that's that's what's big right now for for genre