The second and third days of shooting Roth Rind's new short film, entitled "Grace," were an experience in themselves. We came up late Friday night to a secluded ranch 10 miles away from the observatory on Mt. Hamilton. Mohammad Harirsaz, Brent Franklin, Daniel Szymski, Roth Rind, Boran Vukajlovic, Sean Siwajek, and Sheldon Steere spent the first night until about 4:00 AM building the tunnel on the hillside, building a sniper's nest for the character Dae-Hyun, as well as burying the cable to run the explosions we would be firing during the shooting. The next morning, we had a 7AM wakeup call (some people were to be up at 5AM) and ate breakfast, paid for by Roth Rind. We started shooting and then ran into our first snag when the squibs we had made for the gunshots wouldn't fire. We decided to just shoot what we could that didn't use the squibs and then figure out how to get them to work that night. We filmed everything up until the first shot that would need a real explosion in the background, which was supposed to work on the same general principle that the squibs were working on, so when it didn't work the first couple times, no one was really surprised. That was when Daniel Szymski came up with an idea that saved the production, all we had to do to insure the explosions/squibs would go off was to just coil the wire. It was that simple. After that, the explosions fired on time, the squibs were fixable, and we could carry on with production. We wrapped that night and everyone relaxed for a few hours, and then at about 9PM, Christianna Gunn, Peter Kim, Brent Franklin, Daniel Szymski, Boran Vukajlovic, and Sheldon Steere spent the next 4 - 5 hours working on re-doing the squibs with the new coiled wires inside so that they would be ready for the next day. The next day, with another wakeup of 7AM we woke up to a beautiful fog settled over the valley. We spent the next couple hours waiting for the fog to dissipate. We did a few tests of the new squibs, which worked perfectly, and then waited for the final bit of fog to burn up. Finally we started shooting, and just as the first shot started, the squibs stopped working. We spent the next half an hour trying to figure it out, when Daniel came up with another amazing idea, instead of using the firing system, he would wire it up straight to our on-site generator and zap the squibs. Again, it worked, and we were able to get back into production.Production went relatively smoothly until we got to a complicated shot where the squib was supposed to burst a packet of blood inside the American Soldier's helmet that Marek Haiba was supposed to be wearing.We couldn't get the squib to fire in a way that would burst the packet of blood in the right way. Once again, Daniel came to the rescue and was able to get it to work, however the helmet was the wrong helmet, and it wouldn't fit on Marek's head, which meant we needed to fire a bullet through another helmet in order to get the shot, and set up the squibs again. All this took the better part of an hour, and when it finally was finished, it was already too late to shoot the final part of the scene, and since the tunnel didn't so much blow up as catch on fire, we decided we would go out for another day of shooting next Saturday. So stay tuned for another epic story of shooting next weekend.
In the mean time, check out these shots from the shoot, as well as some pictures from the shoot taken by expert photographer Stephen Abbas, the on-set photographer, on his blog:http://www.stephenabbas.blogspot.com
All in all, the shoot was impressively professional, and everyone's positive attitudes, attention to detail, hardworking work ethic, and good vibes helped it be one of the funnest professional sets I've ever been on.Despite the few errors that came up, which were met with a positive problem-solving attitude instead of slowing everything down, everything went smoothly, and almost everyone's expectations of what it would be like were more than exceeded. I'd like to thank Silicon Valley Film Studios, and everyone who made the shoot this weekend possible:
Mohammad Harirsaz, Brent Franklin, Daniel Szymski, Roth Rind, Boran Vukajlovic, Sean Siwajek, Sheldon Steere, Christianna Gunn, Amani Marie, Stephanie Emerson, Peter Kim, Stephen Abbas, Donn Bradley, Marek Haiba, Zak Migurski, Jennifer Gonzalez, Danielle Baker, Stuart Rind, Ashley Elieff, Marco Onton, and Jerry Pang.
Greg Danger: Industrial Espionage, along with the characters, names, and stories are the copyrighted intellectual property of Sheldon Steere and Salty Samurai Studios.
Matt Cross and the Garage Boys are back! Salty Samurai Studios' own Sheldon Steere, along with Producer / Director Roth Rind, and Director of Photography Matt Cross will be working on the new K-57 Music Video "We Here to Party." During the summer, Matt Cross and Sheldon Steere filmed the music video "Hustla" for K-57, Mi$$ Ri$$, Rizwan the Akkie, and The Jacka. Editing is finally almost done, (look below for screenshots!) and K-57 liked it and has commissioned us to do the next project, "We Here to Party." We're very excited to work with K-57 again, and now that we'll have a budget to work with, this next music video looks like it will go off with a bang!
If you would like to hear music by K-57, go to http://www.myspace.com/k57ishere
