We arrived at the theater next to the old science …
We arrived at the theater next to the old science museum on Friday night to find a large crowd of adults and children milling restlessly around the porch and stairs where we had planned to film. Apparently the theater was full and the staff had shut the doors, but the people outside wouldn’t accept this and kept knocking on the doors. Children were wailing because they couldn’t see the show, and more people kept running up even though it was nearly 8pm; the show had started at 7:30. Da Shan was there with a young woman who turned out to be his daughter. We waited for the crowd to disperse, but they were reluctant to do so. Finally I went up to the door and tried to get them to open the door so that we could shoot, but they insisted through the peephole that if they opened the door a flood of parents and children would try to get inside. Even opening the peephole prompted several families to rush the entrance, cutting Dean and I off from our conversation as they begged to be let inside. The stairs, however, were still usable, so we set up a part of the scene and lit it quickly, since the rollerblading pads Dean was wearing under his tuxedo were starting to chafe. “I’m rolling,” I called up to Dean at the top of the stairs.
“So am I,” he replied, and proceeded to throw himself down the stairs for the benefit of the camera. It was perfect. Now we needed someone to be shown doing the actual throwing. Since we couldn’t find anyone, we took a cab to a Chinese restaurant on Siwei Rd, where we convinced the valet to throw Dean out their doorway several times. By this time it had started raining, mainly because I hadn’t brought my umbrella along, so we wrapped after one good take and went out separate ways. I stayed up until after 3am putting a rough cut of Episode 4 together so that Darrell can get to work on the soundtrack. We showed it to him this afternoon as well as some scenes from Episode 5, and he seemed to like it. I’m really happy the way things are turning out. I think it’s going to be a fine piece of work. Amazing really, as Dean commented to me in a cab today, how we managed to put this thing together in only a couple of months at a minimal expense. We had lunch at Grandma Nitti’s after our meeting with Darrell, and it’s been pouring down rain outside ever since. I love a good summer rain, with thunder and that lush rainy smell. I wish I had a porch to sit out on to watch it all as I whittle things and yell at kids to get off my lawn.
Tomorrow, more editing as I try to get Episode 5 together. Hopefully Darrell will have come up with something to listen to as well; what he’s done so far has been impressive. I need to look into the feasability of purchasing a DVD-R drive so I can record this thing onto one disc to send in. So much for minimal expenses.
Here’s a Babelfish translation of a German publicity article on Lady X:
“lady X” – A global Indie Series of blip 13:14 Di, 18.Maerz 2003 [ e ]
Short film directors watched out: Those sucked. Globalization reaches the Independent film (and that is good like that). “lady X” is still the name of one in developing understood 16th-hasty short film series, whose consequences in different cities play, and of mentioned lady to vaguely act are. The producers look for now Data processing Filmer from all world, which would like to write and turn own episodes with consideration of some dramaturgischer rules (length approx.. 5 min.; Participants get fame and honour, but no money). The films will be shown in the course of the yearly in the InterNet. More information to this exciting project and registration under above left.
On a completely unrelated note, there was a spate of earthquakes last week, some of them quite sizable. The experts say it’s nothing to worry about, but since when to seismologists know when a major quake is going to happen? They might as well be consulting bone etchings.
