Well, I know that technically I need to put up the next part of the AMPHETAMINE story, but being as the war movie is getting distribution, I figured I would re-post this. Originally, it was on MySpace, but nobody uses that damn thing anymore except for bands.

Enjoy!

RHINELAND production diary


History & Perspective


I’ll start at the beginning. Well, not the BEGINNING, but close enough. I’ll start with AMPHETAMINE.

AMPHETAMINE was my first feature-length effort. We started principal photography in December of 2001, wrapped in April of 2002, and premiered it in June of 2003 at the Pageant. It was derivative of Tarantino and was made on a low budget. (just HOW low, I won’t say) That being said, it was exactly the movie that I intended it to be.

Some people loved it, some hated it, and I guess the rest of you never even heard of it. All of that aside, at the end of the day, AMPHETAMINE was picked up for distribution by SRS CINEMA earlier this year. It’s going to go around the world, and, hopefully, people will buy it.

So what next? What the hell does one do to follow up such success?

Good question. I started out broke when I began AMPHETAMINE, and became even more broke when I finished it. Fortunately, I didn’t believe in letting a minor setback like having no money stop me, so I decided to make another movie.

This time, I decided to make a movie about Boxing and Shuffleboard. The movie was called SHUFFLE.

I worked for a long, hard, miserable time on the screenplay, and then shot a teaser trailer for it. The idea was to generate interest in the project. The main thing that I generated was more debt for myself.

Not that I don’t think that the SHUFFLE trailer is good (I do) and not that I don’t believe in the project (I do) But it’s a damn hard movie to make with no money. I mean, ANY movie is hard to make with no money, but this seemed much harder for some reason.

I needed backers.

But what could I take to them? What clout did I have? What kind of track record to point to?

One feature length movie that hasn’t even (Summer 2006!!) come out yet? Track record my ass!

I needed something more. But what?

The 48hr Film Project came to town again, and once again we took up the challenge. Last year we made “Southside Story”, a cop/zombie flick (Best costumes! Audience choice!)

This year we made “Vous M’Amiez”, a 7-minute WW2 epic (Best costumes! Audience choice!)

After recovering from the letdown of not winning Best Picture, I took stock of the situation.

My basement was full of WW2 stuff.

I had all of this WW2 stuff in the first place from working on Wicked Pixel Cinema’s DEADWOOD PARK earlier this year. I thought to myself “Well, shit, if we can pull off a short this epic in 48 hours, why not a feature?”

If I can make a competent, yet simple, WW2 feature over the winter, surely someone will give us money to make SHUFFLE! Thus the RHINELAND odyssey began.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. In order to do SHUFFLE correctly, I  would need lots of locations (AMPHETAMINE had over 30) tons of extras, a name actor or two, four boxing rings, about forty Shuffleboard tables…. the list goes on and on.

To do the war movie, I needed ONE location….outside. Outside is free. I could do a small-scale movie, with a small cast. It would be simple.

The only problem is, I can’t do simple. Simple is for suckers. So the project got bigger. And bigger. And BIGGER.

Pre-production started in August. By our December start date, we had four re-enactment groups involved in the project, a number of investors, a large cast and crew, and two 300+ acre pieces of property for locations.

We had a huge hilltop bunker set under construction, a large number of smaller foxhole sets completed, and a weapon& wardrobe department that could outfit thirty-plus American and German soldiers.

We had period vehicles lined up, pyrotechnics, and special effects.

All of this was brought about by the will and determination of a small but dedicated group of people. The people of 88mm Productions.

That brings us to the present.

The purpose of this production diary is to shed a little light on how we at 88mm make movies. To share in the ups and downs, the triumphs and tragedies.

I am fully aware that by exposing the project in a public forum such as this, I give my enemies the opportunity to see me stumble, and maybe even see me fail. I have one thing to say about that:

Fuck ‘em.

This diary is for the little guys out there, the people grubbing away without hope. I’m here to say, “Take heart!”

It IS possible to make movies here; If I can do it, you can, too.

Don’t listen to the nay-sayers, the “Professionals”, and the people telling you that it’s impossible.

It’s not impossible, just hard.

Hard is good. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.


Chris Grega
December 2005





DECEMBER 3rd 2005
Day 1
Ft. Bell Fountaine park

The alarm goes off at 4:45 in the morning, but it doesn’t matter; I’m already awake. I never sleep well before the first day of shooting on a project.

I stagger up out of bed into the pitch-black, freezing cold morning and begin loading my car.

The first day of a new project, and it’s a WW2 re-enactor tactical battle. Somehow or another I have convinced these people to let me bring cast and crew to their closed-to-the-public event.

I must be nuts.

I should be easing everybody into the shoot, not starting with an ass-kicker of a day like this, a day that I have virtually no control over anything that will be going on.

What the hell, it’s free production value!

I pull up to the entrance to the park, and am greeted by a man in the uniform of the 2nd Rangers.

“I’m with the film crew” I cheerfully say.

He looks at me with a blank stare for an uncomfortably long time, then mutters,

“I don’t know anything about a film crew.”

Promises, lies, and threats swirl madly about my brain for a second. My stomach does a flip-flop, and I feel the McDonald’s Bacon biscuit begin to work it’s way back up my throat.

Striving to keep the panic out of my voice, I tell him that,

“Um, yeah, Perry said to meet him at the front gate. He’s my point of contact. Is he here yet?”

PLEASE BE HERE!!!!!

The guy looks over  to someone standing by a jeep and motions him to the car.

It’s Perry. He seem s a little wary of me, but tells me that everything is A-OK for the day. We’re going to be provided with a liaison for the event, a fella by the name of Chuck.

I’m then directed to where to park, which I do, then set about waiting for my people to show up.

SIDE NOTE : BEING A LOW-BUDGET FILMMAKER
There’s an art and science to being a low-budget filmmaker. It’s part General, part negotiator, and quite a bit of Bullshit artist.

My approach is simple : Keep it low-key, and keep it friendly.

If you walk into someone else’s business, home, or event, announce to one and all that “I’m a FILMMAKER, Dammit! Everybody make way for my vision!” You will come across as an arrogant, conceited asshole, and people will be less inclined to help you.
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With that in mind, I walked up to the entrance of the parking area and had a nice chat with the old man in uniform directing traffic. (Apart from my Superman sock hat, I was wearing the same clothing as the other re-enactors, so as not to stick out)

About 40 minutes into our conversation, he asked what unit I was here with, and I told him that I was with the film crew. He was mighty interested, so I told him a little about the project, and thanked him for letting us come out today.

After about an hour, all of my cast(minus one) and crew had arrived. I had  steadily been telling them to park at the back of the field and wait for me there. Every time a re-enactor would ask who “Those people” were, my new friend the traffic soldier would tell them that they were the” film crew, shooting the battle today”.

How’s that for diplomacy?

Eventually, all of my people(minus one) get put into uniform, crew included (well, one crew member couldn’t fit into anything, so a cape was fashioned from a tarp and wrapped around him—-very super-hero or Liberace-like)

We then spent most of the day getting footage of actors next to vehicles, in vehicles, and sitting in the woods. The battle raged around us, and we had a good vantage point on a wooded hillside. I kept our people out of the way, mostly, but had two camera crews running around getting as much footage as they could.

The missing actor finally showed up, 3 hours late, hung over, and in a bad mood. The 1st AD, 2nd AD, and a producer were all calling for him to be fired on the spot, but I took him aside and worked everything out.

I had a long talk with Chuck, our liaison, about WW2, re-enacting, and filmmaking. By the end of our day, we had another ally! We made quite a few contacts with other re-enactors interested in being part of the project, so it was a good day.



DECEMBER 4th 2005
Day 2
Desoto, MO

On location in the backwoods of Desoto. It’s 6:00 AM, dark, and cold. Our headquarters is a 100-year old cabin, with no running water or electricity. There is, however, a wood-burning stove that gets HOT, and an outhouse a mere 500 feet away.

We’re shooting some of the early scenes in the movie, a mine-laying sequence. For some reason things are taking twice as long as they should, and the first shot isn’t done until after 11:00. Eleven!  We’ve been here since SIX!

The cold makes everyone miserable, and we don’t have our warming tent yet, so people just have to take it. Luckily we have Butch. Butch is the man with the Austrian troop transport called a Pinzgauer. That damn thing can go anywhere!

It’s probably a ten minute hike down a big hill to our HQ, but the Pinzgauer takes it all in stride. I also adds a nice touch of atmosphere, having cast and crew load up and roar off in a most military fashion.

Snow flurries are in the air, night comes quickly, and one of the lead actors is so sick that he can only stagger into the shot, give his lines, and stagger out again…. but we manage to get everything on track and get 90% of the footage we need for the day.

DECEMBER 10
Day 3
Desoto MO

What difference a week makes! In an uncommonly generous mood, I pushed the cast and crew times forward by a half-hour.

Big mistake.

Almost everyone showed up late. This pissed me off to the utmost, because we are shooting outdoors in the winter, and time is of the essence. On top of everything else, it snowed two days ago, so we had to scramble and re-schedule scenes to make the continuity work.

This time, we have the warming tent all ready, so now people have a place to hang out (or slack off, as the case may be)

We had German re-enactors on set for the first time today, and they were a pleasure to work with.

Because of the snow, we had to re-schedule an Effects scene in which a character loses his leg, so the FX guy had almost no prep time. We shot the day’s footage in sequential order (snow continuity) and as a consequence had to work through lunch and nearly lost the light for the leg scene. Not fun, rushing things like that.

As an added bonus, our ONLY night shoot of the ENTIRE movie was on this night.

The gun wranglers showed up with a sub-machine gun( an M3A1 Grease gun) and blanks for our two rifles, but they only brought three rifles of their own, not the five that we needed. Whoops…..

SIDE NOTE : THE GUNS
I have two real M1 Garand rifles that I bought for the production, as well as an airsoft Grease gun that looks and feels EXACTLY like the real thing. The rest of our weapons are plastic or resin dummy guns…the actors have to keep switching ‘em out for closeups. They are also extremely fragile, and a number have already been broken. The first thing that an actor does when you give him a prop is destroy it, apparently
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The cold wreaked havoc with the blanks, and the lighting schematic just wasn’t working (we used a generator, which had to be turned off to record dialogue)

It was a grueling shoot, but somehow we got through it all.

A number of cast and crew decided to spend the night at the cabin. To celebrate the completion of a tough day, someone broke out a bottle of wine.

Bad idea.

Almost everyone had a glass or half glass of wine, ate cheese, bread, and deer meat, then went to sleep.

One crew member and one actor had different plans. They stayed up drinking for most of the night. The crew member eventually dropped off to sleep. The actor on the other hand got falling down drunk.

He woke up everyone in the cabin with a rotating menu of cursing, sobbing, falling over people, and complaining loudly about the fire going out. He had imbibed four beers, one magnum of wine, and a third of a bottle of rum.

Needless to say, cast and crew alike were ready to kill him. It was only after he passed out around six AM that anyone got any sleep. I think I managed about forty minutes.


DECEMBER 11
Day 4
Desoto, MO

Yesterday I gave a fiery speech about timeliness, commitment, and dedication. All of the cast and crew who didn’t spend the night showed up on time. Some were even early.

They arrived to find the rest of us bleary-eyed and half-asleep. Damn.

The day got off to ANOTHER late start , and to top it all off, our drunken actor had to leave EARLY, around one thirty. This drew black looks and mutters from everyone else.

We got most of what we needed, and wrapped around four.

When we loaded out for the day to head back home, everybody was feeling a little down.

Throughout the week, The main production team and I had several meetings, and came to the conclusion that the problem actor had to go. It was tough, because I liked the guy on a personal level, but he was endangering the project.

On Wednesday the 14th, I was viewing the footage from the weekend. It had glitches all throughout it. But there was something worse than that.. It was all accidentally shot in 60i.

60i, not 24p.

SON OF A BITCH!!!

A big portion of our footage was completely fucked up!!!

At a meeting that night with one of the producers and the production designer, we tried to figure out what to do. We called the DP, and he was beside himself with grief. He asked to be fired, or at least dropped into a pit full of snakes.

It was an honest mistake, I assured him. It’s OK, we’ll fix it.

By an odd cosmic twist, the only footage that was unusable contained our problem actor. Everything else, more-or-less, was OK.

I worked tirelessly with the producer to rework our schedule, I fired the old actor, brought in a new one, and the same producer stepped up to take over the 1st AD spot when the original person had to drop out. I think it was a case of being in over his head on the job. I think he was smart for admitting that to himself, and I held no ill feelings toward him.



DECEMBER 17
Day 5
St. Clair, MO

A different location, and a fresh start. This time we’re renting a house on the property that has heat, electricity and running water. It’s a palace! I gave another fiery speech to kick things off , and everyone responded favorably. They even took the news about the footage well. Go figure.

Today we had more German re-enactors, and the pyrotechnician.  We were doing a fire-fight scene on a road in the woods between our main characters and a German patrol.

With our new system in place, we had actors on set rehearsing by 8:00 AM. We broke for lunch on time, and spent the rest of the day firing off blanks and setting off explosions. The only downside was the fact that we didn’t have a working Grease gun (a Grease gun is an American submachine gun) because it got fouled up after our last night shoot.

The day wrapped up early, and everyone left happy.


DECEMBER 18
Day 6
St. Clair, MO

Once again, smooth sailing.(other than the fact that we had planes, trains, and dogs in almost all of our takes. ADR, anyone?) We shot a lost-in-the-woods sequence before lunch, then packed up the warming tent and moved to location number two, a concentration of foxholes.

This was our first day with extras. We had about 12 or so filling out the American Positions.

Unfortunately, the foxholes were full of cold, stinking, muddy water, and the Production designer and several grips had to bail them out and throw leaves, logs, and whatever else into the bottom of them to save the actor’s feet.

I was walking around the area, looking at shooting options when I decided that a log was going to be in the way, so I started laying into it with an axe. That done, I proceeded to chop down a small sapling. At the first swing of my axe, a branch jabbed me in the eye.

OH MY GOD, I JUST PUT MY EYE OUT!!!!

At least, that’s what I thought. When I opened my eye a second later, it was still there, but my contact was missing. Shit. I’m as good as blind without contacts or glasses. Alas, my glasses were safe and sound in my bathroom back home.

I spent the rest of the day stumbling around with one eye closed, nursing my sore back.

SIDE NOTE : MY BACK
At the best of times, my back hurts. Too many car wrecks, fights, and bad decisions in the past. Back in August, I began having trouble with pain in my left leg. I thought it was the sciatic nerve, and decided to ignore it.

By November, I could hardly walk.

I was in so much pain that I finally gave in, and went to the doctor, and got an MRI. I had two bulging discs in my lower back. They wanted to do surgery, I said hell no.

I went to a Chiropractor instead. The entire treatment package cost $2,500.00. Being as the alternative was blinding pain, I agreed to start treatment, and got on the easy payment plan.

To make a long story short, the Chiropractor has thus far helped considerably, but I still can’t bend down or pick things up without groaning and/or screaming in pain. In addition, any wrong or sudden movements tend to send lances of misery through my legs, back, and gut.

This has also led to a widespread movement among the cast and crew to not allow me to touch any pick, shovel, axe, rake, or any object that weighs over five pounds. In the odd time or two when nobody is looking, I try to sneak in a few minutes of honest labor.
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Lunch threw us out of whack as far as the schedule went, and we had to scramble to get all of our shots for the scene we were working on.

In the end, One of the lead actors hurt his back running down a hill, and the DP took me aside after we wrapped and told me that he felt that we had insufficient coverage to really sell the scene.

The day finally ended in a knock-down drag out fight between myself and the head of the Wardrobe Dept. (who happens to be my wife) We were both tired, cold, and cranky, so these things happen.



JANUARY 7
Day 7
St. Clair, MO


The holidays are over, and now it’s back to work. All of our locations are located off of backroads. Having grown up in a somewhat rural area, I’m familiar with the peculiarities of backroads. Mostly, this translates into the fact that alcohol+redneck+backroad=disaster.

On the morning of our return to shooting, some redneck drove off of the road and into a telephone pole. Normally this would not greatly affect me. However, this road was the only way to get to the set!

I sat behind a fire truck for about an hour (while the crew piled up behind me) and waited for a tow truck to drag the idiot’s car off someplace else.

I felt like this was a bad omen.