Photo Credit: Brad Daniel
?Love Roulette?s? cast and crew take a moment to relax on set in Mare Island.
Max Shepherd, Staff Writer
October 31, 2012
Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Local, Top Stories
My final project for Cinema 015 was the first short film I ever made. The story was simple: a man had just committed a murder out in the hills, and now needed to transport a garbage bag full of limbs to an undisclosed location.
We used Brad?s camera, a shiny new T2i (which were all the rage back then, but now only cost the number of minutes it would take you to dig one out of a Dumpster behind Fry?s Electronics) and I was forced to play the lead role. I covered myself in fake blood of my own concoction, and Brad and I spent six hours walking the hills of Mare Island in 100 degree heat. The fake blood, composed mostly of Karo syrup, attracted flies, and hardened over my skin like glue. It was uncomfortable.
We traversed rough terrain and did battle with the indigenous wildlife. Eventually after the shoot had finished we headed back, and emerged from the woods into an up-scale golf-course. Old men clad in bright pants piloted carts through winding asphalt trails from hole to hole. Some would cast us inquisitive gazes, as though they found the sudden appearance of a blood-soaked stranger unusual.
Ultimately I was unsatisfied with the film. I showed it to our professor, Meile Ornelas, in the back room instead of playing it on the projector in front of class. Now it lies buried at the bottom of my hard-drive collecting digital dust.
It was also during this semester where I once again encountered Alden ?Alabaster MaGruff? Tatum. One evening Alden and I wrote a screenplay over a fifth of vodka. That screenplay was eventually adapted into the short film, ?Love Roulette.? A man is sent a letter from the woman he loves telling him to meet her at an abandoned building, when he arrives he finds a trap. Gunmen lying in wait.
After an intense shoot-out Tatum?s character is shot to death. ?Love Roulette? was a success. Brad put his After Effects skills to tremendous use, rendering shockingly realistic gun shots and bullet impacts. The short was filmed in a stylish, ?Sin City? inspired B&W with scattered bits of red. I had the honor of being killed twice, as two different characters, dressed in two different outfits. We ran out extras. ?We were drunk as hell when we wrote it,? recalled Tatum. ?Looking back that was the start of many good projects that stemmed from that specific film.?
Daniel had no trouble recalling the shoot. ?Filming in a place you aren?t allowed to be is a great way to get the blood flowing, and that?s just what we did in all of the shorts I was part of,? Daniel said.
I remember the stripped and crumbling buildings we braved to film that short. The ceilings were littered with holes as if the structures were bombarded by meteorites, and tiny jungles of moss and mold spread across the floors and walls like a metastasizing infection. Entire sections were charred black from unknown fires. It smelled like a pond filled with trash and the excretions of vagrants and stray cats, but, as a guerrilla filmmaker, you will quickly acclimate yourself to the pungent scent of the fluids of the homeless (both human and animal). It will be a necessary adaptation in order for you to effectively film in many low-rent locations.
?I had to choreograph and film full cast and crew,? Daniel said. ?In suits and ties, all carrying mock-up firearms, disaster was imminent.?
But disaster didn?t strike. Everything just kind of worked out, mostly. Nobody fell through the floor or impaled themselves on rebar spikes, nobody got rabies from bats in the attic, we didn?t stumble upon a meth deal gone wrong or witness a murder, and we weren?t mistaken as an exceptionally stylish and heavily armed militant group hiding in an abandoned building by the police and then gunned down in a blaze of glory. None of those things happened. Did they almost happen? Maybe. But ultimately everything worked out fine. Sometimes that happens, and it?s pretty cool.
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Source: http://www.solanotempest.net/arts-entertainment/2012/10/31/scc-film-program-a-journey-part-2-55656/
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