"Boxes"

So here I am, slightly sore and a little bit rested after a 7 hour night shoot for the short film "Boxes." All my stuff is done, so I don't have to come in for night two, but I thought I'd blog the experience for my particular section.


"Boxes" involved five shoppers fighting over the contents of a series of boxes in a small store. There's the cashier, played by my good friend, Robert Linden.

Here he is getting some food in the break room and being a badass behind the counter in between shots.  He had to be there most of the night, from 7pm to roughly 2-3am.  Lucky bastard, all he had to do was sit around and look cool.

Shopper 1 (Stan) and Shopper 2 (Simone) were finishing up their scene together, which is the first kill. It involved a pretty gunshot to the head of Stan, who is playing a blind man.  Here's video of the shot itself (keep track of a chunk of gore).

Next came my interaction with Simone's character, who I stab in the back with a nice little knife (it's in the first picture).

Here's the awesome effects guy attaching the blade to her back.

At midnight, both Stan and Simone had to take off, and it was good that they both finished their parts right at the stroke of.  Next came the fight between Shopper Four (Jamie/James) and myself. Here's before the carnage.

We shot a few wide-angle master shots of the fight, sans blood/injuries of course.  Those came with the sub-masters we shot once we ran through the fight for the camera a couple of times.  James was really wailing on my back during the tackle, which got some worried questions from the crew, combined with a bit of "that was cool" subtext.  Here's the fight rehearsal we had on Tuesday to give you an idea of what we were up to.

Slowly, but surely, we got through the fight one section at a time.  The make-up effects were brutal-looking and this fight was pretty damn fun to film.

We finished all of my stuff (and everything for the night) an hour early, so it was time for all of us to head home.  Frankly, this was both tiring as fuck and fun as hell.  I've uploaded some other photos of the shoot to my Tumblr account, so check those out.  

Once I get a copy of the short, I'll be sure to post it here.  Time for a late breakfast.

--D