Progeny

Last Minute

This project was a little bit of a unique one for me… they had multiple people in their leadership team quit just before the start of principal photography. I had worked with their director of photography on another movie earlier that year and we took good care of each other on that set. So when their first AD quit they asked the crew for recommendations and my name came up.

They called, and within two days, I was on my way to Minneapolis for work.

I had one day on the ground and then we started shooting.

This meant that I was very behind going into things.

I had no working relationship with the director. In fact, prior to filming, I had only met him for about five minutes.

I had very little script familiarity. Usually, by this point, I know the script like the back of my hand, and the schedule is my baby so of course I know it…. But not this time.

It was very challenging, both for me and everyone else. But thankfully, we had a great crew and great leadership that helped to pick up the pieces and get us across the finish line.

Punching Up

This movie was incredibly ambitious, which meant we had to work very hard to make sure that what got on the screen was what the director had pictured.

We were shooting a body horror with multiple full make up transportations on any given day and a lead actor that had to be in special effects makeup all but one day.

The director knew exactly what he wanted on this, which was great, but it was difficult for the two of us to keep the train on the tracks and get him exactly what he wanted.

The vision for this movie was definitely a much higher budget film. The beauty of that is that there is a ton of production value that otherwise could not have been accomplished at this budget range just because people got creative and found ways to make it work.

Thankfully, the director understood where things could be cut or certain shots could be changed while still telling a great story with really really cool visuals.

Creature Feature

I've dealt with plenty of movies that have full makeup, but this was the first one where we had cast of all ages in full alien makeup all day.

One of the challenges I faced was that I was not there for any of the prep, so I had not been able to discuss chairtime prior to filming on the first day with an actor that has to be in the chair for four hours.

We had a great makeup team that did a fantastic job under tight time constraints.

It was just a juggle for me on the scheduling side to make sure that we were getting our full day in as well as making sure that they had enough time to do their craft well.

I definitely hope that I'll have more pre-production time on the next full creature movie.

Great Relationships

When you end up going through a really hard event like this, with people you can rely on, you build really great relationships with those people.

I got to be really close with our production manager, the Second AD and the director of photography who I had previously done a movie with.

These were the people I leaned on personally, and knew they could lean on me as we went through this very difficult experience.

We've all done a project that was really really hard and we always end up with sort of trauma bonded friendships afterward.

I know I'll work with each and every one of them again, and I know we have a shorthand that can speed up the process and make everything easier.