Quick Note

It was freezing tonight. Finally got a pretty important, 1 second shot for the movie.

Bloopers are coming. I was going to have some up last night, but I held off, and figure we can start the New Year off nicely with a new round of bloopers, so in the next day or so, be on the lookout, buttheads

SUCCESS!

Greetings from the Lawson Laboratory!

It is a little past 4 am and while most of you fans are in bed with dreams of Lawson parading through your sick minds, we here at the lab have been hard at work. Working through the night, not unlike diligent shoe-cobbling gnomes, we have finally perfected the air propelled squibs! What does this mean to you as the viewer? It means exciting, bloody exit wounds! It means mists of blood showering a triumphant renegade officer of the law! Basically it means people can get shot onscreen without having to use any dangerous pyrotechnics, which we aren't stupid enough to fool around with in the first place.

Hopefully the tubing system remains functioning, but so far the past few tests with water have been very positive. Air is pressurized behind a release valve that leads to a hose with water (or fake blood) and a corked hole in it. When the valve is opened the air rushes forward and pushes the water, propelling the cork with a nice spray. If this ends up failing "in the field" don't worry. We have more tricks up our sleeves down at the lab!

Lawson hates bad guys so much.

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy (a scientist)

Full Steam ahead?!

So, after Wednesdays meeting we made a lot of progress. We set down the final plan for the shooting minus the warehouse scenes, and worked out some of the other things that we had to film. We are finally putting the finishing touches into motion.

In terms of the Muzzle Flare debate, we decided that since I have a fair amount of free time, and don't really have anything else for the movie to work on in that free time I would take care of them, weather having someone else doing it for us(we have had some offers and people willing to help us.), or doing it myself if things don't work out. That way, we won't taking away from Barry's time editing, and John and Tommy working on music, as well as allowing me to contribute more to the movie now. When the time comes, I am going to do some additional editing myself, but until that time comes, I can work on this.

We have been pushing the blog and the trailer hard lately, and it is seemingly working, our hits per day to the blog are increasing with each day, as well as our returning visitors. Hopefully, we can keep giving you some great news, as well as some great teasers and footage for you to look at.

If I could vent for a moment

Maybe I am the only one that isnt completely bothered by the fact that there arent flames shooting out of the gun. Considering we've never made a real movie, and this is our first attempt at doing so, I dont think people are necessarily expecting it to be 100 percent legitimate.

If we can get them done, so be it. Yes it would add a lot to the movie, but as I've been taught, all the flashy effects in the world cant make up for a shitty movie. If the movie is good on its own, the stupid fucking flares will be icing on the cake, theyre not the main ingredient.

The movie is already coming out leagues better than expected, and I can fully say that even without the flares, I still think we have a kick ass thing going for us. This is where my original idea of creatively shooting the scene to show the gun shots as little as possible will come in to play so we dont have to have debates over whether the movie will flop because we dont have fire crackers coming out of the guns. Its going to be good regardless, and yes, it would add a little more "realism" to a movie thats going to have peoples heads getting punched through.

Muzzle Flare?!

With the release of the trailer, the biggest concern with the way it looked was everyone felt that the gunshots didn't look real enough, and I would be hard pressed not to agree. So we went out looking for solutions, the first plan was to find someone proficient in Adobe After Effects. I tried Craigslist and all I got were Web Design companies that didn't do anything with video editting looking to build me a web site. Barry also put something up at his school, as well as, Myspace and Facebook. In the mean time, I started playing with After Effects myself. It isn't brutally hard, but gun Flares might have taken a little more time than we had. So I hit google, and said, hey, how do other people do this. I came across a movie "Bullets over Breakfast", done by another start up similar to us named Quantum Petshop The had a detailed tutorial on how to do the effects they had in their movie, which was loaded with gun fire. So, I figured, I would tinker around with it and see if I could get similar results, and currently, the results look promising, I don't have any of the footage from the trailer on me, but when I get it, I am going to run some test. It is definitely a good solution, but a tedious one, fortunately, I know my way around an editing suite, as well as not being the primary editor, I am willing to take this in my own hands and make it happen. Hopefully, this weekend we will have an updated Trailer with muzzle flares, or at least we can hope.

Twas the night after Chistmas . . .

Hey, everybody! I hope you all had a great weekend full of Christmas miracles and Lawson-related fantasies. I am very pleased with the teaser and it helped fuel my Lawson campaign over the weekend. I was able to see most of my family this weekend and whore the movie out. Gathering extras for the end scene and asses in the seats for the premiere. Even my mom will be there which is huge for me, considering this type of movie is definitely not up her alley. She agreed to not walk out of the theatre either. Bonus! I even got a few recommendations on where to find a warehouse. Let's see how that pans out.

Since we did not film this weekend there isn't too much on which to report. I talked to my cousin Jonathan who is "in the biz," as they say, to see if he knew anyone in the Boston area who could help us out with after effects. As much as I love watching the trailer (at least 20 times this weekend) the lack of muzzle flashes coming out of the gun distracts me. He told me he would look into it. I hope we find someone so that the final movie has them. If we don't get the gun flare then we'll just have to load up more on the blood in order to distract everybody. Instead of three gallons for a paper cut we'll use twelve.

Speaking of lots of blood, one of my other cousins wants to be killed and requested that it be extra bloody. "The bloodier the better," he said to me with a big grin. I think we can accomodate. If we make a mini documentary on the effects I think that would make a great title.

The music from the trailer is by Ravage and Barry had the opportunity to show it to them the other night. While this was happening a guy came over to see what we were watching: our first completely objective viewer (I think). He didn't know any of us and he seemed genuinely impressed and excited. He even offered to be an extra. So cool.

I'm going to wrap up these ramblings for now. But I hope you enjoyed the teaser trailer and I hope you enjoy the final movie! And if anyone out there knows after effects or the where abouts of a usable warehouse get in touch with us please. Lawson would want it that way.

Lawson can implode a building with a cold, hard stare but more often than not he would rather use a grenade launcher.

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy

Here it is

That shitty/cheesey voice over is me by the way. I stress shitty though.

Teaser

I have a rough teaser finished and I am in the process of trying to upload it to youtube, but its being a pain in the ass and not loading anything at the moment. In due time, it'll be up here in its full :36 seconds of glory.

We need an after effects artist that can put together gun shots for us. If you know anybody thats any good at it, holla!

Kyle's view

Barry has edited up some of the scenes we have shot so far and put them on his iPod. I was getting excited for the movie last week while shooting with Egan, Abdi and others, and after seeing it on screen I'm getting even more excited. We have some scenes to reshoot and some other minor kinks to work out before we finish but what I have seen so far is blowing away my expectations. The video quality alone makes the movie seem legit, and after Tommy's nominations for the "Asshole Oscar" going to me and Egan, a weight of credibility adds to the movie. On top of that everyone who knows anyone involved or has scene a small clip at work is now just as excited for the movie to be completed as anyone else directly involved. This is turning into a real accomplishment for us, and not just something fun for us to do.

Video

I showed a brief snippet of what we've been doing to a few people, and the reaction has been awesome. One person specifically said, come on, I want more.

So good

bad idea

so I loaded the tape from the past two nights onto my computer, and browsed the other footage..... needless to say, terrible idea. its now 445 in the morning, and ive just spend the past few hours piecing together the scene and seeing what we are missing. needless to say, we arent missing much, and ive put together what i think is a fucking kick ass sequence. i will have it on my ipod tomorrow to show kyle at work, and if anybody else involved in the movie wants to see, give me a hollar and ill be more than happy to show you.

be mindful that its rough, but its fucking awesome.

weekend update

semi stressful shoot over the weekend. basically not sure if we got everything we need or how some stuff looked. first real appearance of special effects, and i watched the footage and we need to reshoot it. at least its a fun shot to work on, but it stinks that we have to take the time to do it again. gotta make it look good though right?

i have all the tapes we've shot so far and I think there are nine of them at the moment. so thats 9 sweet hours i have to throw onto my computer, with more to come. im pretty excited about editing the movie, but at the same time a bit nervous because ive never done anything this huge. gonna be a great learning experience for me, just as the entire movie is a huge learning experience for all of us.

good times had by all, and the warehouse search is still on so if you know anyplace we can call, get in touch

hmmn

I think I have seen more of my friends tie ties and dress presentably during the filming of this movie than I have in the past 5 years. We had another pretty interesting shoot with some fun action scenes that really ramp up the pace going into the end of the movie.

I'm exhausted and excited.
more later
-johnk

blog comments

somewhere along the line, possibly right from the start the comments on the blog have been set to only allow people with blogger accounts to post comments. That is no longer the case. Now anyone can post comments to any of our updates, which could lead to more spam; but hopefully will allow anyone at all to say "hey, you guys are cool."
-johnk

Best Shoot Yet

Last night, we got Glen to do a couple of reshoots with John, so we had a little extra coverage for the opening scene to make it a little bit longer. Went smoothly, he tried to eat six hot dogs at spikes and lost after 4. Good work anyways.

This afternoon though, we wound up having our best shoot of the entire movie so far in my opinion. We reshot something that had been done about a month and a half ago, but since outside looks a little different, we decided itd be best to reshoot. We lucked out and got a beautiful day outside, not like the other day where it was so damn cold. Anyhow, we got our donut shop sequence done, and in the past two days, our first legitimate running chase scene.

The stuff came out superb, and at one point, without spoiling anything, we had to make Chief Coffeestache be in control of the situation, so we had our first physical altercation involving our cops in the movie so far. It was AWESOME. I think the stuff we did today was the most exciting, the funnest, and the most "real movie" type thing we've done. I really cant tell you guys enough how excited I am to get this thing finished.

Speaking of which, I posted on myspace, but I'll do the same here:

ANYBODY WITH WAREHOUSE SPACE, OR WITH A CONTACT NUMBER FOR SOMEBODY WHO CAN HELP US GET A WAREHOUSE FOR 3 WEEKS TO A MONTH, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH ASAP! WE NEED IT FOR THE FINALE IN THE MOVIE. ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

To keep people updated on what is left on our shooting agenda since the Google Calendar hasnt been updated, we have:

Exterior City shots/Montage footage
Parking Garage
Badis House
Police Station
Finale

Those are the last things we have to shoot for the movie. I am pumped beyond belief for once we cross everything off of that list. As I said though, we just need help with the Ware house so the finale can be done sooner rather than later.

Thanks for the support from everybody, this is very exciting

Barry

Lawson: White Heat #2

Gabcast! Lawson: White Heat #2

Too early for steely dan.

brief update

I am going to make this quick since its late, im tired, and we are doing more in the morning.

Thanks to everyone that came and watched/helped. very much appreciated.

Glen was the dude tonight. He was great. First blood in the movie.

Long night, we lost somebody from the case before he appeared, but we covered our bases and as far as we can tell, we got the shit we needed.

Special thanks to the security guy for not busting up the shoot and letting us stay once he saw we werent junkies or bums. Good guy man!

Barry

Hey John

Those are really some great photographs you got there.

Uh, yeah well why dont you just shut up, its an interesting concept to liveupdate from on set, but hard to put into practice when everyone is busy actually trying to make the movie happen. And we will start conference call podcasts here at some point. It is far too silly an idea not to do it regularly.

Tonight got real cold real fast. I am sore as hell and about to pass out for four hours.

Lawson: White Heat #1

Gabcast! Lawson: White Heat #1







So we can just call in at any point with updates, and even do up to one hour conference call podcasts. Pretty cool feature available from gabcast.
-johnk

Fancy that

So the pic messaging thing is working pretty well, there are still some bugs but at the least we can just keep taking pictures and have them post directly to the blog with no titles from my phone and send emails from egan's.

-johnk

Little known fact: Lawson is quite tech savvy.

Company web site

So, this isn't completely related to Lawson:White Heat, but there is big news on my front when it comes to the website. I have been reading up on a lot of various things I have figured out how to set our site up on an auto-populating RSS feed. If you don't know, and RSS feed allows people to keep up with information on your site, without actually going to your site. The Feed contains information, and links directly to them. This will allow people to see if we updated the site and come to the site if this is the case. Most RSS feeds have to be created by an actual person, typed out and then submitted. I have figured out a way for one to be created instantly as we update the site.

Another piece of pretty exciting news is, I found a open source media player for the website. You will be most familiar with it on Google Video or Youtube. Basicly, it will be on for our site so people can watch videos, and potentially display them on peoples myspace and other pages without using Youtube or Google Video. I am going to tinker with the source code once I get Adobe Flash and use our own branding on it so it looks good and fits in with everything else we do.

Now in terms of the movie. I am very excited for the shoot tonight. It is going to be a late night tonight, and an early morning tomorrow, but either way, both scenes are going to be choice. I would say there is more work to go into tonight, but both scenes are going to be sweet. As everyone else said, there were a lot of laughs on practice Wednesday and I am sure they are going to make everyone else laugh. These scenes are actually a very be step in completing the movie, it will allow us to get to major parts out of the way and is good momentum for the rest of the movie.

Well, I have to head out and start getting ready for tonight...I can't wait until everyone gets to see the movie.

New way to keep up with production

I talked with Egan and Tommy a little earlier about the possibility of updating the blog from the set while we're shooting this weekend. Blogger has added some mobile blogging functionality, and we're going to try it out. So keep refreshing this page overnight Saturday-Sunday for some behind the scenes pictures, commentary about the shoot, and maybe even some audio clips.
-johnk

Very Exciting

As Tommy posted, the meeting last night was excellent, with so many laughs and funny things that will be taking place in the movie. We have so many good ideas, so its going to be great to see this all unfold on the screen when the movie is done.

We scheduled a bunch of shit for the next 2-3 weeks which is great news. We are hoping that at the end of December, the actual movie part is finished as far as shooting goes, then we want to take the month of January to shoot the ending three sequences. So if anybody has access or knows of somebody with warehouse space, please get in touch ASAP. otherwise we will browse craigslist and rent a space for it. Bottom line, once we get the next few weeks worth of shooting, which in reality is about 4 or 5 days worth, we are going to be pretty far into the movie.

I cant wait for this to be finished so people can see it and not wonder what we've all been shitting our pants over. So good

The Greatest Movie of All Time

As I'm sure you all know, Lawson: White Heat will be the greatest movie ever made. I get more excited about it all the time. Lawson-related enthusiasm should grow exponentially in all of us as human beings in order to make the world a better place.

We had a good meeting tonight. Egan and Kyle ran through a scene we will be filming over the weekend. It was the kind of rehearsal that had me in tears with laughter, proving the extreme importance of rehearsing scenes before hand. Hopefully we are now prepared for the funny parts and I won't ruin the shots with my giggles or by "remy-ing." For those of you who are new to our movies, we generally used to grab a camera and shoot a movie, making up our plot as we shot it. It made for fun spontaneous shorts, but now we are underway on a full fledged production.

Tonight's rehearsal provided a great look at how the scene will unfold off of the written page (which by the way is our first movie filming from an actual script). Doing the scene several times obviously helps the performance but it also provides the rest of us to come up with new ideas and interpretations. We tweaked little elements of the scene. It still plays out as in the script but is now a "Mike Egan Tour de Force." What was once a standard plot moving set piece is now capable of being a very strong and hilarious introduction to our lead characters, Officer Hathaway and Chief Coffeestache. Can't wait to see it.

Also this weekend will be our first overnight shoot. We have filmed into the early morning hours, but never have we filmed late night and then again at dawn. The night scene should be great and it will mark our first use of blood so far. But don't be worried that we have been shooting for so long without any blood. For every drop of blood in this scene there will be at least one gallon of plasma in later scenes. I have been excited to see this scene since I first read the script so it will be a lot of fun to watch it come to life. Then when the sun rises we shoot the Egan and Kyle scene. I hope we are all awake enough to help make it as good and energenic as it was tonight. We might have to dip into the Chief's coffee supply. Don't tell him.

One more exciting bit of news: According to my sources (Wikipedia.org), "The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film Institute all define a feature as a film with a running time of 40 minutes or longer." That means that Lawson: White Heat will most likely reach official feature length status. We are aiming for an hour or longer but there is chance it will be closer to forty or fifty minutes.

I want to keep rambling about the movie but I'll spare you. Just know this: it will be awesome. Or as John said, "Lawsome."

Lawson can tear a phone book in half with his bare hands. But if he wanted to, he could track down every person listed in it and tear them in half too.

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy

More Behind the Scenes

Here's another handful of production stills.
-johnk

Quiet

Since this has been quiet for a week, I figure I will clue people (all three of you) on what has been going on.

The holiday weekend threw a wrench into a scheduled shoot that was to take place. There were a few small things planned, but they were scratched as people were doing things with family, and a general lack of planning. So it is a weekend lost on the movie, but HOPEFULLY, the upcoming weekend saves that.

We have a very important shoot scheduled for this weekend. I am crossing my fingers that the people we need, will come through for the movie, otherwise, maybe we will have to find other people?? I am not really sure. Bottom line is, we have been very very lucky that the weather is still decently warm, but we haven't taken advantage of that fact, considering we have 2 more outdoor scenes we need to do, and the one upcoming is overnight. Hopefully our luck will continue and we get at least a warm night on Saturday. For anybody keeping track, keep your fingers crossed that the people we need are able to come through for this shoot.

Back mid week with an update from the meeting.

Barry

P.S. once I am through with school, I will be able to put a lot more work into updating this thing with John as far as blooper videos go and shit like that. I also found a digital camera over the weekend, so we can have still shots uploaded from the shoots easier than what we do now which is take screen shots from the video tape. See ya

What a night

We shot our first scene with Lawson tonight. It went much better than I was expecting, not to sound like a downer. But we started setting up about 8:30 ish, and it is now 3:13 in the morning as I am finally home, and about to go to sleep for a few hours before I have to head back to real life and go to work. Bogus.

All I want to do is work on the movie. As messy, and cloudy as the shoot got, it was still all I want to do. All I think about is the movie, when its going to be finished, what we need to do, what are we going to do at the premier (which is going to be amazing if all the stuff we want to do happens).

This is the biggest video/movie project any of us have ever been a part of. Although there are going to be some inconsistencies and small things that could've been done better, this is still going to be a pretty solid piece of work from all of us. Especially since we are a bunch of nobodies, with no money, no real experience, and just a want for having fun, and showing how stupid our sense of humor is. When this is finished at the end of the winter, early spring, you better get your ass there and have a good time with us. I know we all will when we pull up wearing tuxedos in a limo. HAHAAAAAA!!!

update

This weekend began with a lot of promise. We were supposed to shoot an added scene to the script on Friday night, and it would have involved the most characters in a scene yet, but unfortunately, one of the main people needed got called into work, so we wouldn't have been able to start till almost midnight. Usually this isnt a problem, but where we were supposed to shoot it, we had a time constraint and wanted to be finished by midnight so as to not disturb the lady down stairs. Thankfully, it is an indoor shoot, so pretty much on any given night when everybody is available, we can go take care of it. So long as we get all of our outdoor sequences finished by mid December, I think things are going to be fine.

School is finished for the few of us in there, in mid December. This will free up plenty of weeknight time if needed, so we will be able to get much more finished than what we've been limited to now due to scheduling. I cant wait until we are able to breeze through some of the stuff, because right now we are still a fair amount of time away from being finished.

Be on the lookout shortly, because tonight we are working on the teaser trailer which has the possibilitiy to come out pretty cool, so long as we dont try to over do it or over estimate what we are capable of doing. It should be funny, hopefully

Barry

By popular demand

More of Barry's ass

Behind the scenes

We had our first really stressful shoot this weekend. Luckily it was bookended by two hilarious scenes that were fun to shoot. Here's a couple pictures of us being silly on set.
-johnk

So tired

So last night, being Saturday, as was already stated, we had a late night shoot. It started out so sweet as we shot a really funny scene (in my opinion anyways) for a small part of the movie, which we dont want to give away because its pretty damn good and we can leave it as a surprise so to speak. Anyways, during shooting, a couple of friends from work called me in hopes of possibly coming by to watch us in action as far as making the movie goes. I thought that was sweet, but had to tell em it was a bad night, because we werent doing anything too exciting as far as warranting coming to watch. Once we are doing some really good shit, they will be more than welcome though.

Anyhow, after that, we headed out to scope an area for a pretty important part of the movie. This is one of those situations where you learn through experience, how to and how not to prepare for something. We went into the nights shoot with a basic idea of what we needed, but we didnt have anything planned, mapped out, or a shot list. So what in theory could have taken an hour, took close to three. I think we got what we needed, it was just one of those tedious location shoots that takes forever, and since there was no dialogue or funny happenings, people got tired, and fast. As Tommy said, we started taking group pictures of us on location, with our thumbs up and being stupid, and I showed my ass again.

After the nights shoot, Egan, Koziol and myself headed to the 24 hour McDonalds in Quincy, where the car in front of us had a dude puking out the side door, and Egan paying 11 dollars for a value meal and a drink. Sucker.

This morning, we were supposed to meet at 10 again, but since last night went longer than anticipated, we gave ourselves an extra half hour. The shitty thing about today though, is we were supposed to get some driving shots, and neighborhood exteriors for a part for a scene we've completed, but it was pouring out, and we need a dry, sunny landscape. The morning wasnt for nothing though, as we got another important, albeit brief series of shots taken care of, and everyone said it was pretty funny, so I'll take that as a good weekend of shooting.

All in all, a pretty good weekend, although missing the part we scheduled to do sets us back about 20 years. Busy weekend next week too, hopefully nothing has to get canceled because we still havent heard from one of the people we need there. Meeting Wednesday to finalize some more shit, and more updates later.

Barry

Late Nights, Early Mornings

It has been mentioned on this site before that we are night owls, not early birds. But what happens when you try to be both in the same weekend? We'll find out in a few hours. We filmed in Quincy until after 3 AM and it was productive, though a little confusing, and we meet again at 10 AM for some more shooting. The positives about tonight's shoot were interesting locations, a brief but very funny scene completed (which includes a solid gold line from the Chief), general good times, and Kyle's hat. There are more but I forget. The only negative I found was some confusion about the general structure of the scene we were shooting. Sometimes you take for granted how fluid a movie can be from shot to shot and you don't realize how much thought has to go into every camera angle to have the outcome make sense. Although I describe it as a negative I also acknowledge it as a learning experience and every step we take is hopefully a step forward.

One of the "positives" that I forgot a minute ago was when (and keep in mind I am really tired, so this might not ACTUALLY be funny but . . .) we were posing for a picture and John told everyone to say "LAWSON." And then we all said "LAWSON" awkwardly. And I believe there were fists pumped in the air for that as well. I don't know. I'm laughing. Shut up.

Even though I'll be tired I am actually looking forward to getting up in a few hours and going to shoot more stuff for the movie. And I can't really complain since I could be in bed right now instead of typing a bland story about posing for a picture. But I can't sleep so I signed on here to update all you Lawson-holics and Coffeestache-addicts.

If you put your money on the bear in a BEAR vs LAWSON fight I would call you a moron. Why don't you just throw your money away, idiot!

Thanks for reading!

-Tommy

First steps on music

I had a chance to listen to some music that Tommy's been working on for a theme this morning, and it's coming along nicely.

We tend to concentrate on bigtime or mid-range milestone accomplishments around here, but I must say that I get very excited by all these small scale steps forward. Every scene that is closer to being written, storyboarded, rehearsed, or walked through is one centimeter closer to our goal of a finished movie. Every musical note written, every idea for framing a shot and every casting decision we make gets us steps closer to completing this, and showing it to our friends and the world. It's great to feel like there is constant forward momentum, and that all of the major players on the movie are thinking about shots, thinking about their characters, thinking about music and thinking about what post work needs to be done once we finish shooting. We're all becoming a little obsessed, and i think that will be a good thing.
-johnk

Great Meeting

As Barry said, the meeting went very well. We didn't have a scene on the table to practice, so we really sat down and talked about the state of the movie. I will be posting what we have planned for the next couple of weeks on the Google Calender, and you guys can check it out. We are going to need some extras fairly soon, hopefully we will get some people to step up and help us out. The cast has finally come together, we really went over who is in what scene tonight, and it was the first time I felt that our cast was complete. Minus extras, we have people to fill every major role and they are confirmed. I think the big couple of things were adding Glenda to the cast, and finalizing the rest of Badi's posse, as well as another major role for the opening scene.

I really can't wait for the next couple weeks, it is going to very fun, yet very interesting. Hopefully, everything will come together and we stay on track with out planning. We are doing alot of stuff over the course of four weeks. We have done 3 days of shooting over four weeks, over the next four weeks we have about 7 days planned, so we are really coming together, and getting things on track.

Abdi started up a facebook group this week, if you are on facebook, I highly suggest that you join. Lawson: White Heat Fan Club

It seems that everyone is VERY pumped for the movie, I know I am. In four week, I hope to be saying we are 30%+ done with the movie, but we will see.

So much to do

We had a very productive meeting tonight on the movie. Initially, just by glancing through the script and seeing that we've knocked out a fair amount of the dialogue heavy scenes and everything, I figured we were probably 25 percent done with the actual principal photography on the movie. After lining up all the scenes on index cards and seeing all the shit we still have to do, boy was I dead wrong.

There is still plenty of work to do on the movie, not that its a bad thing at all. It just seemed like we were breezing through because we've got some pretty good shit done already. What we failed to take into account is all of the shit that relies more on visuals, and having more people involved in the scenes. Starting shortly, we are going to be working with plenty more people on the movie, and our cast of people involved is so diverse, its really awesome.

I am extremely pumped about the whole thing, but I am just dissapointed that we cant just bang it all out. As I have stated already, I am so impatient, and really wish I could take three weeks or a month off from work, along with the other 8 or so integral people involved, and just breeze through the entire thing and have it in the theatre we're renting in January. As Egan said though, at least we are going to have a fun couple of months ahead of us.

Exciting shit going on as far as what we are shooting coming up too. We are doing our first shoot with Lawson, so we get to see Tommy in action as the main hero, albeit briefly for the part we are taping. Its gonna be really good though, and hopefully pretty impactful. The footage we get from that shoot next weekend, in actuality can possibly be a teaser trailer if we all decide it looks good enough. We will see

random thoughts about the day's shoot

Yo. I'll try not to rehash what's already been said, but please forgive me if I do. I just want to throw a few of my thoughts about today out there.

-I'm very pleased and excited with all the progress on the movie.

-Abdi really nailed the character today. Badi is going to be a great villain. Abdi seemed very comfortable and was able to deliver both humor and intimidation when each was needed.

-As tends to be the case with anything we film, there was plenty of humor injected into the scene today. How much makes it to the final cut and how much ends up on a blooper reel is to be determined. Good stuff.

-Finally casting the lead girl character was a relief, but what was even more of a relief was the genuine enthusiasm she brought to the shoot. I was expecting us (being the ladies' men that we are) having to drag an unwilling participant kicking and screaming onto camera just to play the role. Luckily that wasn't the case and Glenda was really good.

-I woke to the sound of a buzzing clock at 8:30 AM, and aside from my initial confusion as to why the hell I had set my alarm for such an ungodly hour, I actually got out of bed and into the shower, fueled by excitement. Trust me. That's a big deal. I can't even get up early on Christmas morning anymore. So I guess the moral is that "LAWSON > presents + breakfast."

-Hopefully there will be a Lawson theme song on the horizon.

-If movies don't work out for Barry, he has a promising career as a bum

-There is a brief shot that was filmed today that is tied (so far) for my favorite in the movie. First of my favorites is the low angled close-up of Chief Coffeestache giving Reese hell that we had filmed a couple of weeks ago. The new contender that entered the ranks today was of Badi behind the wheel of his Mustang looking absolutely disgusted as he was backing out of the scene. If they handed out Oscars for "extremely brief reaction shots that probably aren't as entertaining to anyone else as they are to me," then I would hope it went to him.

That's about it from me. I'll close by saying that we stopped filming at about quarter past one this afternoon. It is now after ten and I have been thinking about the movie all day while at work. Hopefully this enthusiasm is contagious enough to get some of you guys into a theater or in front of a TV by the time the movie is finished. Lawson eats tanks for breakfast.

Thanks for reading.

-Tommy

The Alley Way

As John already said, we got started early this morning, since Abdi had to be at work at 12. I got up at the ass crack of dawn, or 8 am on a Sunday morning, which was earlier than I've been up on a weekend in who knows how long. So I went with Alicia to Braintree, because we had to pick up her uncles sweet ass red Mustang for the movie. He was completely cool with us using it, because we needed a sweet ride for Badi, as opposed to this rich and powerful drug dealer showing up in a shitbox. It worked out pretty damn good, and Abdi looked like a pimp ass gangsta in the car.

We wound up trying to set the shoot up for 10am, so I got there at 9:58, and Abdi was there ready to go. Kyle showed up next, followed by John, Tommy, and Egan, and by about 10:45, Abdi put in his sweet white contact lens we got, and he looked like a bad ass prick. I got into bum regalia, because I am double dipping in the movie and playing two parts, and the shoot was on. This was the first, and probably only time as far as I can think that we will need a stand in for anybody, so Tommy was RapMaster Reese from behind for a couple shots.

I dont wanna give away too much of that scene or anything, but it was pretty fun, and Glenda from work was able to make it, so we FINALLY have our girl in the movie. The couple people not in the scene but who came to help and watch said things went off pretty well, so I will take their opinion on it, because I am a real negative Nancy and always think I sucked or am worried we didnt get enough footage. Bottom line, we all had fun, we got the footage, and what I think were some pretty good bloopers too today.

We were a little behind on schedule so a small sequence we were going to shoot got scrapped, mainly because Abdi was already an hour and a half late for work, and Egan had to go to Ikea to buy shit for his new place. Thankfully, we were shooting right behind CVS so Abdi was right there, and they knew he was there and were cool about it. All in all, a very productive shooting day, as have been all of them thus far, minus the special effects test shoot.

Updates later on what comes next.

Movie Stills #2

Here's a bunch of screen caps, I tried to get them up as quickly as possibly after today's shoot.
-johnk

Another Sunday Shoot

As the days get shorter and colder, we're trying to wrap up as much outdoor shooting as possible. Today we had an extremely early shoot for us, at 10 am, in order to take advantage of as much light as possible. (shooting over night from 8pm-4am has never been a problem, but try getting any of us up before noon to be productive, and watch out!) With that said, we had another fantastic shoot. Abdi and Glenda both made their first appearances. I was once again amazed at how when people get in costume, on set, they magically know their lines and their characters better than they had during weeks of preparation.

Overall, we got some great shots at another colorful location, and I couldn't be happier with the way the movie is progressing.
-johnk

Hahaaaa!

Good to see we are getting some actual stuff to look at on here. High fives for John Koziol on that one. I am pretty excited about the prospects of the movie. We still have a little while to go on it, and the gun fight sequence we are going to be doing is going to take a little while to finish. It will be well worth it though.

After watching the out take video, RapMaster Reese is still the most obnoxious guy I ever have to be. Hopefully when people see the movie, they aren't completely turned off and want to blow their brains out because of the high pitched shitty voice. Some people think hes so loveable, I am one of them, but I also get the fact that any high pitched whiney voice can be really irritating, (see Chris Tucker in any movie he is in)

Either way, finally shooting a scene with Abdi this weekend. We are getting most of the dialogue heavy scenes out of the way first, and worrying about the action scenes and stuff with guns and everything later.

I wish somebody would give us like 2 or 3 thousand dollars so we can all take a month off from work and still have money to pay our bills. Then we can just breeze through the movie and it'd be done in a month and a half or so. I suppose all the hard work and time going into it will make the finished product that much sweeter for all of us making it, but I am just so impatient, I wanna be done now.

Outtakes #1

Here's a rough collection of outtakes from our first couple shoots. There hasn't been any color correction done to the footage, the audio is a little rough and it's basically just four and a half minutes of us having fun while getting through ten pages of the script. enjoy!
-johnk

Movie Stills #1

We're working on getting some behind the scenes footage and bloopers up here (hopefully sometime this week), but for now here are some stills from the shoots we've done so far.
-johnk

Calendar

Egan and I figured out how to add the Lawson calendar to the site. You can see it over in the right margin. I'm still working out the permissions for it, so all of us can add/edit events without having to log in as THE Lawson. But anyone coming to the blog to check on our progress will be able to see what upcoming events and milestones.
-johnk

The Sunday Shooting Experience

So yesterday, (Sunday), I shot some more footage for the movie. The two scenes we were working on have Chief Coffeestache and Officer Hathaway in the car, discussing shit, and they lead into more stuff, I dont want to get into details and give away plot and all that, but anyways, I shot the dialogue in the car and it went pretty good I think.

We were supposed to start shooting around 12, but it didnt actually go down till about 2. This is an issue that I am sure we will all address as a group, because punctuality, when on a slim enough schedule, would really help move the process along.

Anyhow, all things considered, since we ran into a few problems, the footage looks pretty good, and cut with the other shit its going to be with, its gonna flow nicely in my opinion. While we were shooting, we had the misfortune of getting a sweet location visually, but had airplanes flying overhead, and then had to deal with terrible church bells chiming and interrupting us for a good ten minutes. On top of that, the last part we shot wound up being rushed, because the "fully recharged" batteries I got from school, were anything but. It was literally a race against the death of the batteries, so we had to sort of rush through it, and work with what we could get. After the fact though, I am pretty happy with what we got and it was a very productive day.

I will post some of the footage shortly, possibly cut together a little blooper clip, or even just a screen shot, because as I said, I dont want to give too much of the actual movie away. At the same time though, I cant wait for everybody to see this shit.

The location we wound up using for the second part, is supposed to be outside of RapMaster Reeses house. We found a pretty good house to use for it in my opinion. We just need some more establishing shots of the neighborhood, so people can see that Reese is a gangsta mack and lives in the hood. Good stuff.

One thing I have been debating with myself about, is whether or not I should start editing footage as soon as I have all the shit I need for each scene, or whether or not I should wait until we wrap the "principle photography" and then do it all at once. I see the benefits in doing it both ways, but I also see negatives. One reason I'd like to start early, is obviously to get a headstart on things. It will be an easy way to see if we need to reshoot something sooner rather than later. Not only that, it will be easier for me to keep tabs on the footage since I am not logging any of it at the moment and am just going with the flow on it. On the flipside, a few negatives I have with it, is the fact that I am swamped with other projects for school and I am finally working on the Last Rites DVD to pump that out and clean my drive out. I dont necessarily have time to start working on 12 things at once, as much as I'd really love to. But school, and my shitty job are standing in the way from me actually being productive on the editing front. My last, and biggest concern about editing early, is the fact that I will be sitting on the edited sequences and scenes for so long, I will start questioning my initial edits and be hyper critical about everything I've done, and wind up really frustrating myself in the process. I think I will sit on the footage for a while, and just wait on it. Besides, I plan on taking time off from work once we're finished shooting, for the sole purpose to sit there and have all the time I need to digitize the footage, and get down to business of editing the shit out of the movie. When that happens, good luck trying to meet up with me, because once I am in the groove for it, I will not want to stop until its finished. Its gonna be so good.

More coming later.
Barry