Adventures of the Scarlet Rebel: Part 5: Burning Down Places with "Meet Derek"

@TheScarletRebel: The Falcons won, I can get away with anything this Tuesday. #TheKenCosbyDeal

When you are in 508 you also take a editing and sound theory class called 509 and a writing class called 529. My writing professor was Ken Cosby, who happens to be Bill Cosby's nephew, a longtime ghost writer for Law and Order, and one cool dude. He was the perfect writing professor for me due to his hilarious nature (he is also a stand up comedian), his love for comics (he once worked for Marvel as well) and his love for football. At the begining of the semester we made a bet on the Falcons after he said they wouldn't win 5 games. Later I found out we even share more in common as he was in an episode of How I Met Your Mother as a cab driver, and I am inexplicably mentioned in Season 5 Episode 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQiGrw7WcKM

@TheScarletRebel: Thank you @markdanielewski for such an inspirational evening! #REDCAT #T50YS

Each year on Halloween my favorite author, Mark Z. Danielewski, performs a live reading and interpretation of his rarest book live at the REDCAT theater in downtown LA. I am a huge fan of his other books "House of Leaves" and "Only Revolutions". I am such a huge fan of his unorthodox style that I have considered flying out to see this in the past but it was never practical.

A page from House of Leaves.

But now I am in LA and I finally got to go see this. This was so exciting because this book is so rare I have never gotten to read it so not only was I seeing a live interpretation of the story, I was experiencing for the first time all together. Also like I expected I got to meet Mark, but what I did not expect was they had a small collection of his rare book there for purchase. It was $100 (this is how rare the book is) but all the money was going to charity and Mark would sign it when you got to meet him. When it was my turn I talked to Mark about how I was going to USC for film (because he also attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts back in the early 90s) and how I had the same writing professor as he did. After a short chat not only did he just sign my book he wrote a small poem just for me on the opening flap. "To Michael, Who shall find the angle, the light and the shadow, and give it meaning."

So Halloween was now over and now it was November, which meant it was time for Meet Derek. After two heavy emotional films, The Black Mambas were all set and excited for an action comedy. I was the writer/ director, Drue Metz was our producer and editor, and Alana Waksman was our cinematographer. Alana got into the mood of things by wearing my trademark bandana on set. Drue worked like a man possessed getting all the things I was asking for. Whenever you hear about big expensive Hollywood pictures you always think of action films, because the reality of it is- action films are expensive. And in 508 all films have to come in under $1000. Of the 60 films in 508, only 2 were action films and we were the bigger one so we had a daunting task ahead of us. The film required 2 restaurants, a nightclub, lots of guns, fire, 30-40 extras, zombies and a burning building. I could tell our directing professor didn't think we were going to be able to pull it off until the day before we started shooting and we presented our final shooting plan.


The shooting plan for the big shootout scene.

Our first day was the first scene which features several cameos and inside jokes. We got our editing professor, Bob Jones, to play the part of our piano man. This is epic because as I have said before the man is a legend. He is an Oscar winning writer and editor. He has done everything, except apparently act in a film. Afterwards he said it was a lot of fun coming and being in my film and thanked me for letting him experience another side of film making. Our other cameos were made by the lead actors in Alana's and Drue's films.

Grandpa Bob!

Our second day was our zombie scene. Here is where it gets interesting. We shot our establishing shot of the restaurant that night. We then wrapped in the early hours of the morning. This where everyone gets to go home and sleep before we start shooting that night. Except for the effects artist who has to make it look like the restaurant is burning down. That guy is... me.


It took all day.

Luckily our third day was an easy day. An average film should have about 15-20 set ups a day. Day 3 of our shoot had 2. But as fate would have it we nearly lost this day due to lost paperwork and scheduling conflicts on our soundstage. We jumped in and had to help another film breakdown and move out of the stage so we could get in to get our 2 shots. The stage manager, who was not happy with this mixup, gave us a one hour ulitmatum to get our shots. This sounds easy but 2 effects shots (see above picture) in an hour is not easy. We got it done with not a minute to spare.


Drue never gives up, never surrenders!

So after a 3 day weekend full of shooting we had a week of classes leading up to our final shooting weekend. We only had one day left of shooting but it was the big one. The shootout. As I mentioned before, an average 12 hour shoot day will have 15-20 setups. We had our location for 5 hours, and we had 32 shots planned. How does one mentally prepare for this? By not worrying and getting his mind off it so he doesn't stress. I went against everyone's advice and played Skyrim in the final hours leading up to the shoot. The 5 hours went by in a flash. It was a blur but I was in the zone. Planning the gun fight with my stunt coordinator Jason was the most fun I have ever had on set. We ended up dropping a few shots but I think we may have added one or two. Thing is we got in close to 30 shots in 5 hours. We rocked it. The whole teams was top notch and was on their A game. Thank you again to anyone and everyone who came out and made that night a success.