Part of our production plan was to give ourselves much more time than we had on the pilot. We figured an episode a day was doable but we also wanted to shoot some promos. Our plan was to release the promos a few weeks in advance to try to score some viral marketing. So we started day 2 with these promos, but it was a rough start. The first promo was something I wrote and really liked but we haven't released. There’s a ton of dialogue and I didn’t get a chance to rehearse any of it with the actress. And let me just reiterate that she had a lot of dialogue.
The plan was to shoot a fake infomercial. The first problem was that we couldn’t get the wide shots I was going for so it didn’t really look like an infomercial. Still, I was willing to work with what we could do. After the fact we also realized that I had accidentally written “V.O.” before one of the blocks of text that should have been filmed. We could have probably worked around it but we basically forgot to shoot an entire section. Whoops.
And the final nail in the coffin came when the actress hadn’t memorized her lines. In all fairness I only sent the final script a few days in advance but it was a real struggle on set. We didn’t have any time to work on performances because just getting a clean take was enough of a challenge and by the time that happened, we had to move on.
So in the end, the infomercial was not what we wanted and we decided not to release it. Maybe we’ll re-shoot one day. Well, probably not, but I still like the script. Needless to say it was a pretty grueling morning for the crew and morale was pretty low. It felt like we’d worked our asses off but hadn’t really got anywhere.
That’s when we dropped Ballz! Our main cast showed up mid-day and just totally rocked! I hope you’ve all watched Ballz by now because it still cracks me up. I wrote Ballz in about an hour at a Starbucks after work before one of our rehearsals and it just flew out of my brain. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise because there’s not much to it, you can make a million “ball” jokes and get a laugh. I showed it to the cast and they really ran with it. The only probably I realize now is that a lot of the jokes are based on the characters so if you haven’t seen the show, the jokes don’t hit as hard. And if it’s a pre-release to get interest in the show, that doesn’t really work. Live and learn I guess.
So after a tough morning we shot “Ballz” and the energy on set just shot through the roof. It was hard to get through a take without the crew laughing and Josh and Quentin really nailed it. They have to get credit for a lot of the lines that people loved – Quentin throwing out an extra “Ginseng!” or Josh’s “Drop some Ballz today.” That was just the guys running with the joke. Tons of fun.
And the rest of the day went smoothly after that. We started shooting episode 2 and finished the day with everything we wanted on time! Yeah, that’s right, we wrapped on time!
Then we had a nice week break to…go back to work at our real jobs, not much of a break. But then the next weekend we got to shoot more! I don’t remember a lot about Day 3 for some reason. I think we had our flow down by now and just cruised through the rest of episode 2 and grabbed a few scenes from episode 3. I’m pretty sure we had a couple shots or scenes scheduled at the end of the day that we’d grab if we had time, but if not we’d just load them onto Day 4. Amazingly enough we got through all that too.
And remember that thing I said about scheduling shooting so you don’t have to make actors wait around? Well I kind of did that to Shanae. We decided that the best way to get through it all was to shoot all the guy’s scenes for the rest of the episodes while we had the camera in that direction. Then at the end we’d turn around and shoot all of Shanane’s stuff, which of course meant Shanae had a big break from being on camera and just read lines. I know that probably wasn’t the most fun for her but she was a total trooper and never complained. Thanks Shanae!
I’ve said it already but I really attribute the speed at which we shot to our amazing crew and to our cast (and our rehearsals). And it’s a good thing we were cruising because the next day was our final day of shooting and not only was it a big day but it presented us the biggest challenge yet: outside!
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