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When it Rains, it Pours Concrete

March 17, 2004

[ Editors Note: The delay in this thrilling production journal is by no means Shane's fault. If anything he so threw me by getting it to me so far in advance that I completely forgot to go through my Monday-night panic attack, which usually leads to production journals getting posted... sorry about that ]

You know how bad things are supposed to happen in threes? Apparently whoever’s in charge of karma for this film can’t count.

Then again, maybe we did tempt it a little. When we started Dead End Days, we shot four episodes per month, always in the first weekend. For February, we upped the ante a little, and squeezed six into one weekend. The surprising thing was, it went smoothly. We got everything we needed, it all looked great, and there were no major mishaps. So maybe we should have figured on a backlash this month.

We were going ahead with our fast new schedule, and were going to be shooting five episodes over March 6th and 7th. After doing six, it seemed like it would be easy. We arranged schedules between actors and locations, and everything was a go. That is, until Brad walked into work on Thursday, and discovered that his office, one of our key locations, was now a construction site.

It seems that there was a small problem with insufficient insulation below the floors. And someone had decided, in a split second, that enough was enough, and it was time to call in the military.

Hammering, painting, and sand-blasting were the order of the day, as well as the aforementioned work on the floor. About as conducive to work (let alone filming) as whooping cough. Brad tracked down a foreman to check their schedule, and yes indeed, they would be working all weekend, from about noon until midnight. So now, not only was Brad working in a warzone, but the two episodes we were going to shoot there were gone. On top of that, the air was so noxious that Brad’s throat began to swell.

So, two of five episodes gone. It wasn’t even Saturday, and we were down to three. Not an auspicious beginning. We waited anxiously for something else to fall through. But Saturday morning rolled around without any more bad news. So we loaded up and moved to our first location. (Which was Fuzion Cafe, on Danforth right near the Greenwood subway station. I have sampled the bubble tea, and can say objectively that it’s delicious!)

First order of business: pull the blinds off the walls. Not on purpose, of course. We were all excited to be shooting daylight episodes at last, and we wanted the windows as open as possible. So we lifted the blinds. Two of them worked fine. The third was booby-trapped, just for Matt. He touched the pull-string, and the whole thing fell down onto the plastic plants below. Without even a first shot in, we were already wrecking the place. We didn’t even turn around while we fixed it, afraid of what the owner, Andy, would say if we did. He was kind enough not to kick us out, though, and after that momentary panic we moved on. The shoot itself actually went quite well.

By our original schedule, we would wrap at Fuzion sometime around 1pm, and our next location wasn’t available until 8, so we were going to rehearse. But the way things were going, we wanted to shoot as much as we could before everything went wrong. So we decided to fit part of our Sunday shoot into that long gap. And a good thing we did too, as you’ll see in a few moments.

The shoot required Ashley and Bruce to walk down the street together. As we were setting ourselves up, though, we noticed a few police lights moving slowly towards us. No sirens, no screaming wheels, just flashing lights crawling forward at a turtle’s pace. That kind of thing gets distracting in a shot, to say the least, so we waited for them to come by. As they came closer, we realized that it was a traffic block for a marathon runner. Always ones to recognize opportunity, we set up the camera quickly to get a shot of Ashley and Bruce applauding the brave man. So, the first police car passes. Then the marathon runner. Then a van painted with the phrase “Run for Cancer Research”. Yes, this was a cancer marathon, and we had set up a dead guy to applaud from the sidewalk.

We moved on, trying very hard to put that inappropriateness out of our minds. The shot we needed was a long one, and required Brad to walk backwards with the camera while Ashley and Bruce moved towards him. For about two blocks. Brad bravely set himself up, and Lindsay, our makeup artist, volunteered to be his guide, to make sure he didn’t run himself into anything. I moved ahead to ask people to clear the way (which proved unnecessary) and kept my eyes on the script (also unnecessary). All in all, we had Brad run the backwards gamut five times. He looked like he’d been put through the dryer by the end, but other than that, it was remarkably problem-free. We moved back inside for a rush rehearsal before we moved on to our next location, Fat Phill’s on Marlee.

This shoot began quite smoothly. We arrived, paused for a bite to eat, and then began shooting. There were, in fact, no hiccoughs at all until we found out at 10:30 that the restaurant was not closing at midnight, as we had thought, but at 11. We had half an hour to finish, and at least 4 more shots to do, with multiple takes of each. We set into speed-shooting mode, but we knew at the same time that we would never be able to finish. By 11:15, maybe, but not 11. So our contact at the location, Chad, went to work. And in that strange way he has, he convinced the owner to let us stay after he was closed, to finish the shoot. With five minutes left, everyone looking panicked, he came back to us and informed us that we had all the time we wanted.

But we didn’t want to abuse the kindness, so we wrapped as quickly as we could. We had the last shot done by 11:10, and everything packed up by 11:30. With many thank-yous, we moved back out onto the street. Brad and Rob climbed into the car to take Dean and Shelley, two of our actors, back home to Brantford, and the rest of us rushed home to sneak in as much sleep as we could. Call for the next morning was 9am.

Everyone, surprisingly, was on time. Lindsay started applying Chad’s makeup, and Matt, Brad and I started going through the shot list for the day. Rob kept an anxious eye on the weather, which was getting colder by the second, and now had the distinct possibility of starting to snow.

We had half of our cast and crew, but we were still waiting on a vital component: three actors who would be playing the part of Young Punks 1, 2 and 3 (One of which is, in fact, our talented editor, Mike Thorn). Once they arrived, Matt hustled them through the layout of the scene, and we got them into costume. Within an hour of their arrival, we were ready to go out and shoot. We picked up the camera, opened the door…

And the first snowflake landed on our doorstep. And then more came, and more, and more. It was a full storm in five minutes. And we had shot the first half of the episode the other day, when the weather was clear.

And that was the final straw. We sent our punks home un-filmed, we apologized to Chad and Lindsay for having them do makeup needlessly, and we all contemplated whether it would be appropriate at this point to weep, or if that would be unprofessional.

So, by the end of the weekend, we had finished half of what we hoped, and all on the Saturday. We used the Sunday to watch footage, record voice-overs for episode 15, and calculate how many episodes we’d need to film in April to catch back up again.

Six and a half episodes will be on our plate. Our most yet. So hopefully, after this Greek tragedy of a shoot, we’ve now got some karmic credits in our favour. If not, we’ll make it work somehow. The show must go on.

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