Tuesday, June 30, 2009. I got up at 4 a.m. and by 4:30 was at the Handy Market grocery store in Burbank where we were to shoot the brief scene of Owen looking for a larger container for the black hole. Zander was there when I arrived with a trailer for makeup and costumes, since after the store we’d be at a park all day with no indoor space.

We got the camera together and Johnathan got into makeup in the trailer, and then we finally got into the store around 5 a.m. as the employees started stocking the shelves for the day. There was some confusion about paying the location fee. The owner wasn’t there, but had instructed his employees to get our check before they let us shoot. We only had a skeleton crew, and none of us were sure how much we were supposed to pay them. We finally made a guess, and I started writing the check only to be stopped by another problem: None of us knew the owner’s name. Surprisingly, neither did any of the employees. All they knew was that his first name was Alan or Allen. I made out the check to Alan, leaving space for him to fill in his last name.

James and I walked through the store looking for the best place to shoot the scene, which we planned to do in one tracking shot, following Owen. We found a good aisle for him to end on and worked out a little blocking for him to move through. We shot a couple of takes as Johnathan got comfortable with the blocking and James got the shot down—it was only the second time on the entire shoot for which he actually operated the camera himself, the other being the final shot of the movie in the bowling alley. For most other shots we had two cameras going, and he needed to watch the monitors to see what each operator was doing.

As we got the blocking and camera move down, I noticed that Johnathan was holding the mustard jar as if it were just mustard, so I reminded him that there was a black hole in it. He did a fifth take where he held it carefully, but it still didn’t quite look right. The take was otherwise all right, and I wanted to get out of there and move on to the park, so I said, “OK, I guess we got it.” But Johnathan picked up on my hesitation and said, “Get what you want, man.” And he was right. I realized I’d just gotten lazy. We adjusted the way he held the jar and did a sixth take which was exactly what I wanted.

We wrapped out of there and headed to Montrose Community Park where we’d be the rest of the day. I thought about what had happened in the store and realized that yesterday had been such an important day and so stressful that once we got through it, I felt that the movie was basically done. I’d gotten up this morning already mentally wrapped. I told myself to check back in. Today should be easy, but it was still important. As it turned out, I don’t think I was the only person who wrapped a little early, because we ended up leaving the slate in the store and had to send someone back later to get it.

We reached the park at about 6:30 a.m. There was a park monitor there to make sure we didn’t break any park rules or leave the area we were permitted to shoot in. There was also a Glendale Police officer named Brian Le, who was there to monitor the shoot for the city and also provide security. The rest of the crew had been there for a while, so the equipment, tents and tables were already unloaded and partially set up.

I had a little breakfast, and then James and I scouted the park for where to shoot the scene between Owen and Georgette. We walked past the big playground area near the parking lot and up a hill to a top lawn area, where there were a few trees and some concrete picnic tables with benches. We decided to set the scene on one of those benches and found a nice composition for the master. We did a rough blocking and were set to go.

I went off to talk over the scene with Johnathan and my good friend Earnestine Phillips, a terrific actress from Theatricum Botanicum, who was playing Georgette. By the time they were in costume and makeup and we headed up the hill to block the scene, the crew had somehow gotten all the equipment up there and had put up a tent around an off-camera picnic table, lined the sides with sound blankets to darken it, run electrical cable up to it and fashioned it into a very workable monitor tent. Those guys rock. I set up my MacBook inside as a download station for the data cards that would come off the camera with our precious footage.

We got the scene blocked and worked out our first shot, and James and his crew did their thing. This was our first outdoor scene in the movie. Shooting outside in daylight is a different beast from shooting inside. We didn’t use any lights, but you have to be strategic about controlling the sunlight. We tried to get off as many of the important shots as early as possible while the sun was lower in the sky, which gives the light a nicer quality. The rest we did with large silks and reflectors, to diffuse and bounce the light so it wasn’t too harsh. In some ways it’s simpler than shooting indoors, in that there’s less you have to do to set up for a shot. But on the other hand, there’s less you can do to control the look.

As James got the shot ready, Johnathan and Katherine and a few other crew members chatted with Officer Le, our Glendale Police monitor, who turned out to be really nice and a very interesting guy. I had a chance to catch up with Earnestine, whom I hadn’t seen in a while. Shooting a movie is an odd experience compared with working on a play. The feeling of community in the theater is very strong, and it’s built on spending hours together every day for a period of weeks. On a film set, you spend even more hours together per day, in a very high pressure environment, but it’s extremely concentrated. There’s no time to get comfortable and relax together. So the sense of bonding is both stronger and weaker than in the theater.

While we were getting the first shots off, we had our second visit from a representative of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). The same woman had come to set at the house on the second or third day of shooting. Nobody on the crew had ever had a single visit from a SAG rep, let alone two in a seven-day shoot. We never did figure out why we drew so much scrutiny, theorizing that it might have had to do with the fact that we were such a low-budget movie but had two experienced actors in Joanna and Sam. In any event, the rep was very nice and could see that we were aboveboard. She chatted with the actors for a few minutes and then left.

As we shot, I began to wonder if we were running behind schedule. Our permit allowed us to shoot until noon, and it was already 10:30, with a lot still left to shoot. James had always kept the schedule in mind and moved at the right pace before, so I didn’t question him about it. Maybe I should have—it turned out that there’d been a miscommunication and he thought we had all day in the park. When Becca asked him how much more we had to do, and the mistake was discovered, we all suddenly became a lot more stressed out. James didn’t think we had time to get all our shots. We huddled to try to figure out how much we could cut to get a bare-bones coverage of the scenes we needed. I suggested we set up A camera to shoot Georgette’s epilogue while B camera roved the park shooting the documentary footage of extras we needed.

We set to work, but James was really unhappy. We didn’t have time now to set up the dolly track we needed to properly shoot the epilogue. We got it set up for a handheld shot and did a quick camera rehearsal, which didn’t look too good.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, some enterprising soul, probably Becca or Mike Venezia, checked with Officer Le about the permit. Apparently, he was under the impression that our permit was valid until 9 p.m. They called the city, who confirmed that. I found out later from Nathan that we had originally gotten a permit to shoot until 9 p.m., but had changed it to save some money. I said a silent “Thank you” to inefficient city bureaucracies.

We all breathed a huge sigh of relief, saved again by the skin of our teeth. We broke for lunch, after which James set up the dolly track and we did the epilogue properly. It took several takes to get the timing right, so I was really glad we hadn’t had to rush through it. Meanwhile, Jasmin shot a bunch of documentary footage, choreographing the extras to look like people out enjoying the park. It helped that the playground was well-attended, so our extras blended right in.

Finally we were done with the park. But now we had another problem. We needed to shoot the new scene I’d added to the script on Sunday, where Karen picks up Owen in her car. Because it was such a last-minute addition we had no permit for it. So we fell back on the venerable tradition of low-budget filmmaking: shooting guerrilla-style. James and Becca and I walked around the park looking for a place where it abutted the street, and we could shoot without our cameras technically leaving the park. This would of course be a weak excuse, as we’d have Amy in a car on the street, and Johnathan walking out to meet her. We finally found a place where there was a kind of low-traffic alley that would work perfectly. Of course it was well outside the part of the park covered by the permit.

So now we had two problems: Officer Le and the park monitor. We tried to move as few people as possible and as stealthily as possible down to where we’d be shooting, but we still ended up with a huge contingent of people down there. All our stealth accomplished was to make it painfully slow to get everyone moved and ready to shoot. First Marissa had to arrive, then Zach with the sound equipment, and so forth.

We’d left a couple of people up above to try to keep Officer Le and the park monitor distracted. But as we were getting the shot set up, I looked up and could see the park monitor staring down, apparently directly at us. I was sure he was going to come down and shut us down. But then he just turned away as if he hadn’t even seen us. Whew.

Once we had the scene blocked and camera moves set up as fast as we could, we got a few takes of it, and we had it. One more scene down.

All we had left to shoot were the car scenes, which only required a small core crew. We took a few group photos to commemorate the shoot, and then most of the crew was wrapped. There wasn’t time to celebrate, though, because it was starting to get late. We’d been at it for more than 13 hours, and we’d be losing light soon.

The car scene was another situation where budget had led us to shoot guerrilla-style. We planned to do it similarly to how we’d shot the other car scenes in Agoura Hills. Only this time we’d attach a “hostess tray,” which is a camera mount that attaches to the window frame and shoots in either at the driver or passenger. Then we’d have James in the back seat shooting the same actor from a 3/4 back angle. We’d have to make two excursions in the car: one with both cameras on Karen and one with both cameras on Owen.

When I saw the hostess tray in place, I became really nervous. If I thought the hood mount had looked scary, this looked downright dangerous. It stuck out a good 18 inches from the driver’s side window, and we had to cover the entire window with black cloth to keep the sound in the car as clean as possible. It also looked like it would draw stares from anybody driving nearby, which was exactly the kind of attention we couldn’t afford while shooting without a permit.

And then I saw that Officer Le was looking at the car and talking to Becca. I walked over as he asked her if we were planning to drive around Glendale like that, and what our route was. Becca and I bumbled around trying to avoid answering the question, but I was sure we were about to be shut down. Becca asked innocently, “Will that be a problem?” Officer Le said he thought it would, but he’d call his sergeant to check on it.

I groaned inwardly, and sat on the liftgate of the equipment truck. At the very end of a shoot that had always teetered on the edge of disaster, it had finally struck. Officer Le went off and talked on his cell phone. I couldn’t blame him for shutting us down. If I’d been a cop and seen that rig, I would have shut us down, too.

He got off the phone, and Becca and I walked over to hear the news. He told us that we didn’t have a permit for shooting the car. I nodded numbly, trying to think of how or when we could pick up the scene.

But Officer Le continued: He’d gotten us an emergency permit, and his partner was on her way over. When she got here, they’d take follow and lead positions to escort us around Glendale while we shot the scene.

I couldn’t believe my ears. I wanted to kiss the man. Not only were we back in business, but I felt much safer about shooting with a police escort. Just another movie-saving miracle.

As we waited for Officer Le’s partner to show up, Katherine drove off to get sandwiches for dinner, since the remaining cast and crew were now in overtime. As we got ready to head out in the cars, we noticed that the bucket containing the black hole, and a backpack with a stuffed koala in it (another key prop) were gone. They’d been sitting under a tree one minute, and now they were gone. We searched everywhere, but couldn’t find them. We’d been rushing to wrap everyone out, so maybe someone had packed them out, not realizing we still needed them. We called everyone we could think of, but nobody had them.

Finally, Officer Le’s partner, Officer Kim, arrived, and the car was ready, so we had to go. We’d just have to shoot without the props. It turned out that the angles we were using were such that it was plausible that you wouldn’t see them in the shot. Still scratching our heads at the Mystery of the Missing Props, we headed out.

We were shooting Johnathan’s coverage first. We drove a few loops around Montrose with the cops fore and aft, and I called out direction from my cramped position in the back of the car. The crew had removed the rear seat so that James and I were just sort of thrown in together in the back. It was uncomfortable, but it worked. James operated the handheld camera, shooting from inside the car. I operated the sound recorder, and wore headphones to listen in, and I also had a monitor for each camera so I could see what we were getting.

It was tough to get any kind of performance in those conditions. Every time we made a turn, Johnathan and I had to check the left side for Amy, who couldn’t see anything out her window. And we kept having to stop and start when traffic got in the way. In the course of three or four circuits around the downtown area, we managed to get what we needed.

We headed back to the park and scarfed down the sandwiches Katherine had brought while the remaining grips moved the hostess tray to the other side of the car. Then we headed out again and shot Karen’s coverage.

This time the passenger-side window was blocked off, which wasn’t as dangerous in terms of blind spots. Also, we were a little more comfortable with the setup, so everything went a bit more smoothly. Once I’d gotten a performance I was happy with, we headed back toward the park, and I had Johnathan and Amy try variations on the scene, just for the hell of it. And of course, we got some of the best takes out of that.

We pulled into the park, got out of the car, and I announced: “Love and Other Unstable States of Matter is a wrap!” Those of us left applauded, happy but exhausted. We horsed around for a few minutes and posed for a few snapshots.

Then Johnathan and Amy headed home, and the rest of us packed up the last of the equipment. As I was loading up my car, Officer Le came up and told me that he thought we should know that the license place on the picture car was fake, as was the registration sticker. I looked at the plate, and it was in fact made of plastic and obviously fake.

Officer Le had run the VIN and found that the car had last been registered in 1995. He suspected the place that had rented it to us was shady. I was dismayed, wondering what would have happened if we’d shot without police escort and had been pulled over driving an unregistered car with fake plates and a giant camera sticking out the window.

Officer Le recommended we just return the car as quickly as possible, not confront the rental house about it, and just warn others away from them.

I decided I couldn’t let anybody else risk driving that car anymore. Not only was it illegal, but it was dangerous to drive. So I parked my car outside the park and took the picture car back to the rental house. I stayed off the freeway, taking surface streets to North Hollywood, which took forever and was a pretty harrowing drive with no turn signals. I had to remember how to use hand signals, something I hadn’t done since driver’s ed when I was 16.

I finally pulled into the lot to return the car, and realized immediately that this place was clearly not a fly-by-night operation. It was a huge lot, with probably hundreds of cars on it. On my way back from the lot in Katherine’s car (which had been stashed there the day before), I called Nathan and he looked over the paperwork. Apparently, somewhere in the fine print was the notification that the picture cars from this place were not street-legal, and were meant to be used only with a police escort. Oops!

I met Katherine at home, where she’d dropped off the equipment truck. She drove me back up to the park where I picked up my car and headed back home. Katherine had already eaten dinner, so I stopped at In-n-Out Burger on my way home.

It was a little after 9 p.m., and there was a long line of cars waiting at the drive-through. I had a few minutes to sit in my car and savor the fact that we had finished. It had been much harder than any of us had expected, and it certainly hadn’t gone as planned, but we had done it. We had our movie in the can.

The next few days would bring stresses of their own … While returning rented equipment, I’d end up driving the truck into the low-hanging “truck-killer” branch James had pointed out in front of Joel’s house (and which everyone else had avoided during the entire shoot), ripping it off completely. I’d also sideswipe a parked car with the truck, smashing its side mirror. (I guess I really shouldn’t have been driving the truck.) We’d discover more lost equipment, and contingency costs would pile up. And, of course, then we’d have to start in on post-production. And we never would find the lost bucket or backpack.

But for this night, I was perfectly happy, just sitting on the sofa with Katherine, watching TV and eating my burger. It was so sweet.

pictures from day 8 »