The Funnest Shoot of ALL TIME?!

On the morning of March 19th, 2010, a small group of movie makers got into their cars and headed up north about 200 miles to shoot their latest short, The Meriwether Device. 6 cast and 5 crew, 2 cameras, lots of DV tapes, frozen pizzas, tomfoolery, and one really cool house by a lake. It all added up to our most successful and enjoyably exhausting shoot yet. It was 3 days of solid work, but the comraderie and creativity of the thing kept us all going...

Some highlights:

• Jim Roll, bless his giant fuzzy sideburns, managed to work through the pain of KIDNEY STONES (which he thought was just a really bad stomach ache), and finish his role without missing a single scene!
• Al "Owl" DiBlassio was along for his first movie with us behind the camera, and he and Jen were like a 2-headed cinematography beast. I do believe this is the best-looking footage we've gotten so far.
• Once again, as is our custom, we ran out of time shooting at night and had to cover windows with garbage bags and tarps in order to finish the indoor portion of the shoot. We at Lionbelly are considering hiring ourselves out as garbage bag wall engineers for other filmmakers. Whoever invented contractor-grade garbage bags deserves a whole bunch of wet kisses right on the mouth. From Jim...
• For the first time, we were able to watch dailies of the shoot each evening, as a group, which was quite helpful. It takes a lot of the tension out of the equation when you KNOW you have good footage to work with as you go, rather than praying it will all cut together later, sight unseen.
• Joe Sacksteder did a great job slating everything and taking copious notes as the shoot progressed, as well as overseeing many of the production and assistant director duties.
• Maggie Meyer, who played "Angie", was along for her first acting job with us and she fit right in and did great work, throughout. The other actors consistently hit it out of the park, and it felt like a true ensemble. Carol Gray, Tom Szymanski, David Serra, Kristin Beckett, Jim Roll and Ms. Meyer were all on their game and managed to keep the energy level high, even at the end of an 18 hour day of shooting.

The movie is now in post-production mode and coming along nicely. We will post more about it as it gets beaten into shape during editing, scoring and mixing. Overall, though, it seems like a very fortuitous beginning for our 2010 slate of projects.

Yahoo!

You can join the Facebook page for The Meriwether Device here, for up-to-date news, etc.