The title of this post sounds like one of those pretentious artist-written articles from the late 70's—The End of Photography! Actually, it just means that we concluded principal photography yesterday except for the ending scene which I want to save for last.
Shot Gene in the morning at Eaton Canyon. The weather was overcast so everything has a soft look. I actually like hard light better. Then we went out to the desert and shot the truck driving off into the oncoming storm. We just drove around intuitively getting off the I-15 near Sierra avenue. That way we didn't have to go up the hill which is a truck-killer. We found a new subdivision in progress then drove north and struck cinematic gold—a great street with a big sky + some incredible-looking coffee shops for future use. WIth all the development in the area I suspect the coffee shops will be gone soon. We then headed back to LA where we had lunch at Masa's in Pasadena. Masa's used to be one of those old Japanese family restaurants with leatherette booths, dingy lighting and good tempura. So we were shocked to find that it has been nouvelle-ized and is now ultra-modern with worse food and higher prices. Well, the worse food and higher prices weren't surprising. Here is my joke from lunch. Ben asked if he could order the expensive sushi and I said yes, if he gave me a little extra emotion in the the scenes planned for that afternoon.
Later on we went to the park by my house and shot the car interiors. The park is good because it's easy to get sky and it's usually empty. However toward the end of the shoot a little league game was starting and it got crowded. Curiously, when a car drove by while we were shooting, it didn't look odd. Because of motion paradox, it just looks like the car is overtaking Ben. I was a little worried about these shots but there was no other way to do it; the pick up truck is so small that I have to shoot with the passenger door open. Erik was the official car mover and shaker. I think the shots came out OK though.
I've been thinking about the idea that "you get one gimme." I forget where I read about this, probably in Josh Becker's book. BTW, I saw part of Becker's Alien Apocalypse the other day. It looks exactly like a Hercules or Xena episode with Bruce Campbell instead of Xena along with ant-like aliens. It's really really bad, but quite interesting. When watching it I realized that what makes something look like a TV show is not only the way that it's shot, but also the plottiness of the thing. It's like you're always trying to get from point A to B and it doesn't matter how you get there as long as you get there. Reminds me a lot of the TV William Shatner did. You know, Kirk dispatches an alien with a quick karate chop. The aliens of the week are always easy to sneak up on because you have to get from point B to point C quickly. Or on TJ Hooker, the car sneaks up on the bad guys by driving to an overlooking hill about 10 yards away. Maybe it's the "sneaking up" that's not good in these things. ANYWAY, Becker says you get one gimme. That means you can put one outlandish thing in your film and people will give you that. But if you put any more, they won't go along with the ride. So I was wondering about the car scene, worried that the use of the portable Memex would look too outlandish. Now that I see it, it looks OK I think.
I edited everything together last night. The footage itself is mundane looking which is fine. You don't want everything to be too pretty.
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