Snafus and Victories!

All right, all right. We're not lazy bums now that the big schlepping of equipment and memorizing of lines and, you know, little task of directing and filming is over. This past weekend Ruan and I were out of town with family in Phoenix watching some baseball. Now, first of all: LET'S GO OAKLAND. Second: Spending those 4 days away from work, away from a broken computer (I'll get to that part) meant coming back to SO MUCH FOOTAGE. But watching after 4 days of rubbing our eyes clear of any biases or over-stimulation was absolutely necessary, and the timing was pretty perfect. This made the reviewing process delightful, fresh, and I found many new details in the performances that only a rinsed palate can appreciate. So THANK YOU Phoenix. One more time, just for good measure: LET'S GO OAKLAND.

In the last couple days, we've been jumping around tasks, namely due to two things: Ruan's monster computer failing and the subsequent lousy repair technician(s), and the issue of sound.

To elaborate: Ruan's computer is gigantic, has several hard drives, it has a lot of software, it does a lot of stuff, it edits things. That's about as detailed technologically as I can be, but the point is, it's got a lot of muscle, and we need it. It was slowing down, and needed to be overhauled. We took in at the end of the shoot, expecting it back when we returned from Phoenix in working order. During our trip we had a lot of back and forth with the service department of Lousy-Electronics-Store, and when we sat down at his new system this past Tuesday, something wasn't right. Because of this, the process was slow, and I decided to do what I coud and review footage to pick takes, so that when the programs were running smoothly we wouldn't have to sift through everything. We did get a good edit on several scenes, and as of today, Ruan has again reconfigured the monster and hope to get back at it Saturday and finish over the weekend.

We are still very ON schedule, I just wanted to have crept a little ahead by now. Relaying on technology can be nervous-making, especially when I don't speak 1's and 0's. Thankfully, Ruan is fluent, and confident as ever about what he does. Sigh of relief.

Issue number two: SOUND. Remember my description of Ruan's computer and all the appropriate and correct jargon I used? Right. So apply that same tech-knowledge to the concept of picture editing for story telling, and syncing the mixed sound files from our on-set mixer, to movie files in editing software. ACCCKKKK. Then add into the mix a Deaf editor and, well, let's just say there was a lot of blank staring. And Googling. BUT. Thanks to our 1st AD, and also editor of his own projects, Jason Roberts, we found a program to help sync the sound. After about 4 hours of famililarizing with the software, selecting and syncing, we got the hang of it and got well on our way. Our sound will ultimately be balanced and mixed in post, and well as have some elements designed by a professional team; the quality we expect and require is high. We just need to do what we can to be efficient in terms of time, money, and provide the post-audio crew with what they need to do their best as well.

Other exciting news that has begun to brew: SCREENING! and SOON. In April for sure, and I can't wait to get the details settled. You'll all be the first to know, promise.

Photos!

I shared this via our backer updates, but wanted to post this here as well to make sure every sees the photographic work by the lovely Tali Dagan Jorgensen. And to show you how cool set was! Seriously, tons of fun, and I'm so happy to have these pictures. More coming as well from our awesome crew memeber Kyle Emard.

Once more in case you missed the link: SET PHOTOS!

From Ruan, Director of Photography

From DP, Ruan:

Ahhhhhh, my feet are cooled off now. They had been burning for several days as I was busy with the set up for great composition and lighting. This was important to tell the story and emotion through the scene in a visual way. Before I go ahead explain my experience during the production, I will like to take my hat off to Anna Schumacher for her wonderful directing and much more during production. Often, I tried get her attention to discuss for make some change due to space, lighting, but guess what? She often had to say wait, or even not respond, or send a lighting guy, as she was working so close with actors to make sure she had a good connection and both could develop the character in each scene. So I had to leave her alone and make some changes myself, as I know that she believes in my decisions and is happy to accept some adjustments I made. My favorite is when we were done with some take, and she was said "No, I want to get closer, like even closer." She made the camera frame with her hands, and made them tiny and close up to my eyes "like this close" and disappeared again to work. I had to call my camera assistant to get me the correct lenses to get specific perpective as what she looking for. You have no idea how her brain actually still alive at the very end of 12+ hours production and ready for the next day. Congratulation to her and our wonderful team that we completed this production in those 4 days. Yes, we still need film very few scene due to an event that impacted our production schedule which we will complete in the week.

Back to my expereince, I enjoyed driving that 12 feet truck with $60K worth of grip equipment. Seriously, FULL of equipment inside that truck.This is from loading up the gear.

I was so excited and couldn't stop imagining how the picture will turn out with the all that grip equipment, and the camera we had. Every time we set up, it blew my mind that every aspect of frame has lots of emotion and dramatic feeling when we needed it for that shot. I want to thank Joel Stout for being our wonderful gaffer. He delivered exactly what I want to see in frame every shot. I also want to say thank to wonderful crew, Jason Roberts: 1st AD/BestBoy/organization master and much more, Kyle Emard: Camera Assistance/best boy, and much more, Kevin Chui: Key Grip, he was a huge help to us. They worked very hard to use all the equipment well, and make sure everyone is safe when the equipment was on set, and make my work easy during production. Also Jules for being there to help with translating and keeping an eye on ASL during the scenes.

I can't give away too much information, but leach scenes had a great result. The last scene of production was my favorite scene because we set up perfect lighting, and a great frame for the closing of the story. It had perfect contrast and color to represent the feeling in the scene we needed. I am looking forward to getting all footage together in one magical sequence to put together Finding June.

Gaffer Joel!

Thank you once again for wonderful support and believe in our production.

Keep eyes on Instragram or this blog for upcoming pictures and info about the production.

That's a wrap!

Well. Sort of.

Remember the LA marathon? We didn't get to make up that lost time today, as we were shooting again in orange county, and couldn't fit in a location in Orange County, and then three in Hollywood. Too much distance to cover, not enough hours in the day, too many SAG rules!

This means we'll have to do pick ups in this coming week. We only have about half a page of action to cover, which we can get in a day in Orange County, and back up in North Hollywood. This also gives us a chance to review the footage that we have, and make sure there are zero gaps in what we've got.

Today is probably the 4th or 5th (likely more) time I've watched an actor from the monitor and felt a tingle around my nose and the beginnings of tears at what I see. And I don't mean it's because the lines written are special, or that every scene is a tear jerker, but in every scene we've shot, these artists have delivered 100%, and I believe them every time. It's a truly wonderful thing to witness.

Today we shot in the hospital, an important scene in which June has a final check up before a surgery, and we learn that she has an interpreter. Thanks to Santa Ana Health Group, we were able to secure an entire clinic for the afternoon, load in all the gear we needed, and have access to a real room without disturbing anyone. Outside we worked with two of our actors, Amber and Kalen, on a scene with a nurse, and an interesting connection that I cannot wait to get the final edit on. Both of those ladies are talented, and so fluid to work with.

Speaking of the talent I've managed to score on this project, we wrapped up in Orange and headed back to Hollywood where yet another lovely actor joined us-- Lexi. As we were running the scene, making line tweaks and discussing feedback, I found that we were taking out words and lines often. Amber and Lexi found a natural groove in this scene that didn't require exposition, and we caught several tiny "mistakes" that becamse the pieces of their performances with each other that I liked best.

We went guerrilla style in the metro, but I've found the LA public transit world to have been nice to us filmmakers on more than one occasion. By the way, LA metro stations look awesome on camera if you're on the hunt for a good looking transportation scene. Much better than the bus stop I wrote in the original draft. The more indie sneaky approach to filmmaking is one aspect I love, because you get funny stories, and great mistakes. Jason Roberts was red-faced and giggling, trying to hold his thumb on a hose out of frame to make rain. Quinn punctured holes into soup lids because the effect was better then out rain machine, and hanging one foot and his head out the window to get the perfect angle. Or the best grumpy face you've ever seen was caught on the face of a woman staring into our lens on the metro, because we didn't block off the car and do it pro-style. It's actually pretty great.

We are going to review a lot of footage tonight, rest our feet, and I hope our actors are home and cozy-- they worked really damn hard this weekend. We'll be back at this several days this week to pick up those scenes, get a few inserts, and as I get more pictures, I'll post them here.

This certainly not the end of any of this, as we have lots more to do! Also no way am I ready to be done with using all the fancy film jargon I got to say everyday. But. That's a wrap on principal photography. I can't wait to share this with you.

fun from the set

Joel and Ruan checking frame, Jason keeping things moving along.

Pretty cool to use this slate... Jason only lasted on clap with the old fashioned wooden one.

Talented ladies Amber and Kalen- I'm so lucky to have had them in this project.

Our sound guy Kevin, on Friday.

Wren our Sunday/ Monday make-up lady, and Joel and Kevin on a short gaffing break.

Sunday night shoot; huge thanks to Matt for hanging in there.

We have many photos from photographer Tali Dagan, as well as some from my roommate Sara, and our ASL coach Jules. Coming soon!

Day #2/3!

How could I miss day two? So sorry to not have posted-- twelve hours pass and it feels like a blink, and we're all sore and feel awesome and by the time we got wrapped with production, it was straight to an Rustic Lantern Films event that was in the works ages ago and home, we had only 6 hours until call time.

Yesterday we had a light day, because of this event in the evening, and several of our guys were involved with their production last fall. We picked up some short scenes, including the first time we meet June. Being an artist used to to theatre, it was certainly a challenge to direct a scene showing the first time that we see this character after completing a scene the day before at a story climax. In the film world, jumping from scene to scene in an order based on locations and scheduling has certainly provided for me, Anna, a new creative process in terms of how we get the actors to where we need to be to produce the scene.

Second challenge: how do we creative a fake fender-bender that looks real, without enticing the typical LA rubber neckers?! We managed, but had a helicopter circling for quite some time. Our gaffer Joel says there are vicious rumors that in LA, if they notice your filming outside and it looks like a small crew, they'll fly over to bother your audio. The jokes on you, we're using ASL!

We wrapped our first lovely make up extraodinaire Jessica, and welcomed Wren today for today and tomorrow... and, well, Wednesday?

Look. I love the LA marathon. I'd actually even love to RUN in it. However. Man I'm trying to short an ultra low budget with limited time but union actors and could ya NOT BLOCK OFF, oh, ALL of hollywood? Our day began about 2 hours late. And in film language that means we easily lost several pages of text, a scene. One of our locations was on Hollywood Blvd, but wih all hose runners, just wasn't going to happen. not to me took that our lead told me she was nearly tempted to start dodging joggers to get across Hollywood Blvd and up onto my street. I'll be honest, when our last shot was nearing 11pm and we were several pages behind, I was worried. I'd be lying if I said the stress is soothed, but I am feeling more zen about scheduling set backs, and the big picture is: okay, so we don't get it Monday, lets go for Wednesday.

One of the coolest parts of the day? Annette Nitko, a founder of Pink Wings of Hope, was in town for RLF and stopped by the set! Our actors were thrilled, and it was a lovely distracted from the mounting bicycle frustration. It was brief, but wonderful to have to there! In addition, a big thanks to Jules Dameron for her time in being our ASL coach and master on set today-- her expertise is an extremely important part of the process.

Tomorrow morning I will be collecting and uploading some of our pictures, with some on-set happenings. Big thank you thank you to all the actors for hanging in there even in the twelfth hour. They are all extremely professional and I couldn't have made it through today without them.

Come back tomorrow. Love and gratitude to you, from us.

Day 1: WRAPPED!

It's been 16 hours since we crawled out of our... let's call it a 2am-6am NAP, to get coffee and and get the day going. As the make-up artist arrived, our actors, sound... I realized there were even MORE details we hadn't addressed: where should people leave their bags? who is taking continuity pictures today? Umm... WHO IS MAKING LUNCH, because come on, I bought taco fixings! The indie-film universe smiled on us today and these little details weren't so much scary as they were little "oh *&@#*^" and grin moments where the timing clicked into place it all came together. Soon we'll have REAL production photos to share, thanks to our dear friend Tali and her fancy photo skills.

Today was an excellent of example of people rallying to make something beautiful and awesome for the simple sake of being a part of it's inspiring delivery into the world. And I don't call it inspiring because of the sentences in the script or the genius of any actor, but for the energy that surrounds an art project.

The ladies brought a lot of focus and respect today when we filmed our meeting group scenes-- some scenes were hard, some were long, and we did hit a bump of two while behind schedule. But we didn't sacrifice a single shot, and I think we owe a lot of that fact to their flexibility. Thank you Coco and Julie for your heart and sweetness, Lindsay for your brilliant hands and positivity, Pat and Linda for joining us last minute and going with the flow, and Avra for coming out of nowhere just to be involved because the subject matter meant so much, and thanks to Amber giving it her all every single time. Ruan's patience and thoughtfulness for the picture is incredible, Joel set up and torn down lights like a rockstar, Kevin our sound op found every plane within hundreds of miles and made it stayed the HECK out of our takes, Jessica kept our talent looking fresh and great, Jason ran the set smooth, and Kyle never failed to pull through in the clutch, he and a friend solved the taco lunch fiasco! A well-oiled machine, we are!

After the meeting room scenes were done we moved outside-- the rest of the night's schedule a bit in the air. one of our actors was flying in, landing at 7pm, driving 30 miles south from LAX International Airport on a Friday. These are not great circumstances. His flight got delayed. It sat on the runway. It landed late. It taxied into the wrong gate. The terminal was full. They rolled to a private landing strip. They took a shuttle back to LAX. And when he got here at 9pm, the car had barely stopped moving when he jumped out, a toothbrush, deodorant and a few wardrobe options in hand. He kept jogging across the lot, signing a mile a minute: "I have a green shirt, green, light green, which one? where is the bathroom, I'm ready for make up, I'm ready, let's go, let's go, let's go!" changing his shirt, brushing his teeth, getting his make-up all at once. Within 7 minutes Chris and Amber were on their marks for a rehearsal. We shot a wonderful scene with much aliveness and I am ten thousand percent sure that waiting, appeasing a cast and crew in their 13th hour with pizza and a puppy was the right thing to do to get them on screen together.

Tomorrow is a light day, picking up some b-roll and establishing shots. I'm seeing 3 keyboards at this point so, goodnight, and thank you all infinitely. This is pretty darn cool.

9 hours till ROLLING!

YOU GUYS. I can't believe tomorrow we actually start filming. Today was probably the craziest day this week, as I don't think that I stopped moving from about 8 AM until right now as I write this. We officially have all of our gear, all of our crew on a call sheet, all of our food, all of our props, all of our set dressings, and the only thing we need is tomorrow morning for our actors not to get stuck in traffic on I-five south. All of the kickstarter fundraising in the world sure won't put an extra couple lanes on I-5.

I think one of the coolest feelings for me today was realizing that the more and more that I am involved the small projects, the more and more I become excited about the cool stuff to get to use. Today we picked up our camera and grip gear, and our 1st AD, Jason Roberts, picked up the steadicam box and said "this is our first official work!". It's pretty awesome to think that only a few weeks ago we had our fingers crossed for the Kickstarter video, and here we are.

We are lucky that we get to do what we love, and that people believe that we are good enough at it to make a difference while doing it.

Tomorrow's scenes will be focused on the breast cancer support group meetings. Some of you may remember from our explanation on our Kickstarter video that June goes to this group with an interpreter; we will have a lot of opportunity to embody June's feelings with the camera in terms of how we capture the spoken dialogue and her feelings of detachment. We are so lucky to have a wonderful group of ladies with us for the support group scenes. Some are people from the community who I don't know, and some are people I do know. In every facet of this project we've been able to include people who have been very closely affected by breast cancer; it's humbling and meaningful to us to have people on board to feel that this story is close to their hearts as well. These scenes are spoken dialogue, and we are so fortunate to have a pro on set with us to mix sound. I've learned sound is actually one of the most important and most finicky elements of filming and postproduction.

I had a really cool conversation this morning with our sound mixer over at Switched at Birth, Robert. He told me about how important it is to capture all the sound possible even if the scenes themselves don't have any spoken dialogue. I was so happy to hear this from a professional because the 'producer' side of my brain said, I don't know if we can afford to pay a sound operator everyday! But my 'language-loving' side of my brain said that so much ASL is happening with different sounds for emphasis: voice, palm hitting palm, contact with parts of the body-- all of that is so important. It reminds me of something that one of my teachers said to me when I was taking ASL: We were having a discussion about the meaning of "Deaf- experience". He told a story about someone who said to him once that sounds just didn't happen in his world. My teacher said, "sound absolutely happens in my world, I just experience it differently." That is one of the things that is so awesome and exciting about this project; we have several different worldviews all coming together into one story. I also want to say a big thank you to Tali Dagan for coming tomorrow to take production stills, and photographs of some behind-the-scenes action for us to share with all of you see you can see what it looks like when we're doing what we do. For the next four days I will be posting at wrap time, and maybe during lunch or break if I can get my sentences together! Here we go!

FUNDED!

As I wrote this morning to our backers: we have made it past our goal of $6,500! This. is. awesome. We are positively floating right now. I have written and deleted several sentences already because I'm a little lost for the perfect words. How about: THANK YOU for believing in us, believing in our story, the impact of film, the importance of care and honor in storytelling-- it's a wonderful feeling of support. So, onward! We'll update on the blog, send the links out so you can see how everything is going! We start Friday. We can't wait. Can't! This week we owe a big thanks to Laura Y, Diane Bray, Rachel Mazique, John Hsu, Veronica Nitko, Lindsay Evans, Erin Oleson, Jacquelyn Johnston, Kris Ide, Lory Reese, George Julian, Marizka Davis, Leila Hanaumi, Rory Osbrink, Andrea Gutierrez, Glenn, Shelly LaSun, Tony Nitko, Michael O, Angela Kramer, Karla Gunn, and Jason Roberts. Thank you for helping get up and past our goal! So glad to have you as a part of making this happen. So, now what? Well. WE START FILMING. It almost feels like we had everything ready to go: lights in place, camera on the dolly, make-shift crafty on ice, actors on their marks, staring at our backer updates on kickstarter, just WAITING to press record. Now that we've made it, in 5 days, the camera rolls. We've just finalized our camera and lens package, and it arrives Wednesday. Ruan will have a chance to play with the lenses, and I can practice bossing him around. Just kidding. But he will play around because we have several lenses we will use for this film to best capture what we need. A few of our scenes happen in tight spaces; the kind of lens we use for a given shot wil dictate how the audience feels in the relation to the actors. Some lenses will have a more true-to-life size feel when we want to get up close, while other lenses offer a wider range so we can capture more of the actor or space from the same distance. This makes the picture more dynamic and better relays our story visually. We have also finalized our equipment list, and let's just say... now I'm calling Uhaul for a 5 day rental. Tomorrow our tech-side will all be in order, and all the tangible moving parts will be en route, getting assembled, and our gear lists for each day for fast inventory will be settled. This is a huge relief, because a big part of what we want to, and have committed to doing, is having gorgeous picture and a visual story that is never "good enough", but is instead right on with the heartbeat of this story. This comes to you from a layover at Chicago O'hare after a wonderful time socializing with some of the ladies from Pink Wings of Hope, who have been such an inspiration for this film. We're off to board, check back tomorrow!

48 hours to go on KICKSTARTER!

We are in our final days before the end of our fundraising campaign and hit a little sad bump: we lost a pledge of $175. Relying on the kickstarter app to keep the updates flowing failed, as they were left 'pending'. Losing that pledge made us realize this error, and also made us realize that not everyone sees our promoting and updates and Instagram and facebook thank yous and for any of you felt we didn't acknowledge your donation, we are sorry, and assure you it was unintentional-- every dime donated makes us light up and we are grateful to all of you. Our latest backers, who have rallied SO MUCH in the last week, deserve a huge shout out. Many thanks to: Julie, Kalen Feeney, Pink Wings of Hope, Janet Bonner, Melissa Keilbus, Amit Balchandani, Jann Goldsby, Alexander Baack, Phillip and Antionette du Plessis, Nancy Horowitz, Tanya Chongsuwat, Martha Anger, Michael Moran, Colin Blattel, Jurgens Huysamen, JoJo Benfield, Kevin Johnson, Christopher Kimbrough, Abiel Georgeo, Lisa McBee, Anna Porter, Lex R, Bradley Gantt, Chase Burton! With that: good news!!! So much of it, I hardly know where to begin. Probably the best: we have our hospital location secured! This was a tricky one, due to privacy laws, hospital business operations, property permitting, you name it. BUT, thanks to contacts through Phillip du Plessis and RN Joanne Gray, Sharri Mahdavi, Carol Kim, Susan Johnson, Demetri Sirakoff and likely many others who forwarded emails, sent phone numbers to and fro, we have a space to work in. We are so lucky to be filming several scenes in Santa Ana. Other exciting location snagged: THE BEACH. Also hard, because apparently the city of Los Angeles is not making enough revenue on parking tickets (I find this hard to believe, as I'm sure I am single-handedly paying the salary of at least one person in a government position downtown in parking violation fees), and beach filming is a tricky long expensive process. But, no matter, as we've gotten a good deal, fire permit being printed as you read this. Next exciting piece of business is that we have our production schedule READY. As anyone trying to make it in the business knows, it's important to have a day job. What this means for us is a lot of "Oh NO. when are our actors actually available?!". It's quite a mind exercise to cross reference work schedules, character appearance in scenes, time efficiency in terms of traveling from one location another, and what time of day we need to film certain scenes. Whew. But we did it! And one of the coolest things to let you all know is that we are right now on a plane to St. Louis Missouri for a premiere showing of a film by Rustic Lantern Films. Ruan was their director of photography and we of course support the world of film and art happenings. This all continues to be cool because St. Louis is also where Pink Wings of Hope is based. Pink Wings and Deaf Inc., is an affiliate of the RLf family, so everyone will all be in celebration together. Pink Wings had been an inspiration, the women incredible, and has supported or project in many ways. Being able to spend the weekend before we film talking with these ladies in person is such a lovely calendar-coincidence, and it makes us believe we are certainly on the right path. Thank you again for your support and belief in us. Tell you friend and family, every dollar counts! We have 50 hours and $2,000 to go!

VLOG, and a note about kickstarter

As we're getting closer to production time, we went ahead and uploaded a video to do some thanking, and talk about where we are. CHECK IT OUT! It's in ASL, but worry not you non-signers: we have captions! Finding June is it the last week of our campaign to raise $6,500. We are just about half-way but on March 10, if haven't met our goal, we don't get to keep all the funds that people have been so generous to give us! Help us out, pass the word along.. we want to get this film made. Check out our KICKSTARTER FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN