N O V E M B E R   1 1 ,   2 0 0 2

THAT'S REALLY A WRAP
This weekend we shot the scenes for the Claustrophobia prologue and epilogue. Once it's edited together it should add at least five minutes to the movie's total length. Shooting went well, despite the terrible timing (the first major rainstorm to hit Southern California since February decided to roll in during the very weekend we started filming). On the wet Friday night we filmed actor/filmmaker Phillip Darlington (who survived wetter and more abusive conditions working for James Cameron on The Abyss), playing a newscaster featured in the epilogue. A drizzly Saturday was spent recording voices for a call-in radio show to be heard in the car at the beginning of the film, as Grace (Mary Lynn Rajskub) drives to the fateful Claustrophobia house.

Sunday was the busiest day, when we filmed the prologue. Thankfully the sun came out and made life easier for everybody. As did Judy O'Dea, who played the hapless first victim in the string of violent murders that the film's story revolves around. Judy was a super great lady, not only because she was so game for anything, polite, talented and professional - but also because she starred in the original Night of the Living Dead! Is that cool or what? No, no need to answer: It is cool. Watch that movie and you will agree.

Basically it was the kind of filming I enjoy most: a small crew, everybody feeling like they're participating, fun times for all. It was probably the least stressful shoot day I have ever had. And the funny thing is, we shot and recorded all this footage at my editor Marc Wade's house. So as we were recording one part of the film, he was down the hall, cutting together another part. In any event, I've got all the sound and video I need at the moment. Now it's all about the editing. Don't expect much more news from me until that's done.

BACK FROM THE DEAD
Greetings. Yesterday I returned to my home in Los Angeles for the first time after two and a half months abroad. I explored everywhere from St. Ives to Salem, from Washington state to Washington D.C., from San Francisco to Edinburgh, and many parts in between. During that period I calculated that I slept on no less than 23 different beds/couches/whatever. That's a lot of bedbugs. I drank Bath water; consumed several H&H bagels; went to the second smallest post office in the United States; enjoyed the lovely WaterFire in Providence, RI and endured the horrible "World in Miniature" in Goonhavern, Cornwall; had oatmeal at the U.S. Supreme Court; learned that it is a bad idea to ride Air India; ditto taking the train to Scotland instead of flying; and visited the extraordinary Fonthill.

In short, I had a fabulous time and, though I do look forward to forging ahead with Claustrophobia (as well as with this web site, believe it or not), in truth my return to L.A. has been somewhat depressing, mainly because soon after my arrival I was told that I need to cough up some hefty cash to pay for reputed "damages" to the house where Claustrophobia was filmed, and at the moment I also do not know when (not if) my landlord is going to boot me out of my house. He wants to remodel his own house (on the same property) and it may be so drastic that I'll have to vacate the premises. Which would rightly suck as I have been here for nearly eight years and I love the place. At the moment I wish I could just go on traveling, where my biggest worry is wondering how much to tip the waiter.

Be that as it may, I'm eager to complete Claustrophobia and we will in fact be shooting a couple of extra scenes (without the principal cast) in mid-November. Editing should recommence shortly as well. And, in due course, I am finally updating the site!

THIS SITE GOES PUBLIC, I GO MISSING
Today was the day that I was going to "officially" launch this site to the public by sending out my usual spam to the hundreds of people on my mailing list, but as I am leaving tomorrow for two and a half months of traveling (to the Pacific Northwest, the San Francisco Bay Area, the East Coast and England, if you must know) I got so wrapped up this week in tying all my loose ends together that, alas, I couldn't finish the major part of this site, which is the section dedicated to my new film Claustrophobia. But then I thought it would be stupid to alert the world the day before I go incommunicado for so long anyway. Besides, the public has mostly discovered this site by now, so the "launch" is not really news at this point.

A little update on the making of Claustrophobia: my editor and I have now cut together about 30 minutes of the picture. Unfortunately we've gone through 40 pages of script. For those of you who don't know, one page of script is supposed to equal one minute of screen time. So 40 pages of script should amount to 40 minutes of movie. Not so in this case. Which makes me worried because the script is only 82 pages long! I would rather not have a 60-minute film when I'm done, so unless the second part of the film (which has a lot more suspense than the dialogue-laden first part) takes up more screen time, I am already considering some possible additions to the film, namely a prologue and/or epilogue set in a different locale with possibly different characters. Just so I don't have to go through the mess of renting out the one house we used for the location again, or tracking down the three busy actresses who starred in the film. I guess I'll have a better idea once we finish the first cut of the picture, hopefully in November.

Meanwhile, though I can't promise that I will be able to update this site until my return in late October, you never know. Maybe you can live without them, but I actually enjoy writing those movie reviews and Lists of 9. So we'll see what I can manage. Until then, keep your noses clean.

[INSERT SHOPWORN VEGAS CLICHÉ HERE]
I went to Las Vegas for the first time in my life last week. I avoided it for so long as I perceived it to be little more than a cesspool of desperate losers. It took business to drag me there, in this case something called the VSDA Home Entertainment Expo, essentially a convention of video retailers and distributors who meet up to hawk their wares and buy same. You also get companies who make their livings connected to the home video industry - from those who make DVD display cases to those who sell popcorn in video stores. PEZ (yes, the candy company) was even there!

So why was I there? Well, the VSDA decided to give struggling indie directors like me the opportunity to pitch our films directly to video store owners, eliminating the middle men (distributors, boo). They chose a baker's dozen of films this year and we all wound up in Vegas trying to do our best. I was representing Foreign Correspondents, as was that film's intrepid producer Julia Stemock. Although the expo was held at the hip-and-happening Rio Hotel in Vegas, Julia and I chose to stay at the venerable Sahara, a once-legendary Sin City landmark, now a modest but tidy hotel, host to $1 blackjack tables, the cheapest buffet in town, and Charo.

Anyway, despite my misgivings, I actually enjoyed my four days in Vegas. I met a lot of really nice people and even managed to sell a handful of copies of ForCor so if you poke around your local independent video store, you just might find it. Other than that, I can sum up my experience in Las Vegas as this: slot machines are depressing and anti-social; the hotels pump oxygen into their rooms to keep you awake and alert (so you can keep gambling); VSDA award recipient Sylvester Stallone looks like Matt LeBlanc from "Friends" after suffering a stroke; the Mandalay Bay was the prettiest hotel/casino I visited and Circus Circus was just a miserable place, practically a Third World country.

On a completely unconnected but significant note, my editor and I started cutting Claustrophobia on Sunday.

IT'S A WRAP
Here's the official poop: Principal photography has now been completed for my second feature Claustrophobia, a horror/thriller shot handheld on PAL DV in one Los Angeles house and starring Melanie Lynskey , Sheeri Rappaport and Mary Lynn Rajskub. It was a chummy set, as several crew members worked with me on Foreign Correspondents, Mel and Mary Lynn had acted together on the Reese Witherspoon comedy Sweet Home Alabama, and a quarter of the crew were all good buddies from New Zealand.

Other than that, it was the usual hell of production: trying to film everything within a very limited amount of time (nine 12-hour days, with the weekend off), having to deal with technical difficulties (setting up more lights than I thought we'd ever need, microphones that didn't always work, avoiding telltale boom shadows), personal difficulties (our sound recordist had an impacted wisdom tooth on the first day of the shoot!), location difficulties (limited parking choices at the house where we filmed, homeowners who would freak out over every smudge left on their walls and floors), noise difficulties (construction on the building across the street from the house, garbage collectors, L.A.'s notorious police helicopters), etc. Though I'm happy with the results, I only wish we'd had more time to film, so that I could have collaborated more with the cast rather than just telling them "stand there, walk there, we gotta get this shot before the guy across the street turns his leaf blower on." But they put in fantastic performances and the crew was amazingly professional and talented as well. It was so moving to see everybody working so hard on my tiny little horror flick. I got a big, big bang for my buck. To put it in perspective, I saw Insomnia during our weekend break and, knowing that film's budget, concluded that I could have made over 1,600 Claustrophobia-sized films for the price of one Insomnia. And say what you will, there's no way Insomnia is going to be 1,600 times better than my film! Now comes the post-production process. I can't wait to start cutting all this footage together. My editor and I have a lot of great stuff to work with. So for all of you who worked on the film in some capacity: Thank you. I am truly grateful.

Copyright © Mark Tapio Kines 2008