Blood, Sweat and Tears: Adventures in No Budget Movie Making! (Part 2)

The Making of “Red Asphalt”: Part 2
by Brian Nelligan

Shooting The Film:
The first day of shooting I had all the actors park at my dad’s house and then we carpooled to the location. I didn’t want to have like ten cars on the set and my dad’s house was pretty close by. I had made a shot list a couple of nights before and this made everything relatively stress free as we rushed through the different setups.

After finishing at the exterior warehouse location we moved to the lonely road (which in the movie plays as just outside the warehouse as well). I shot in order of character’s screen time, from least to greatest, so the actors didn’t have to wait around to shoot a few parts. The main actor was in pretty much every shot so it didn’t seem like he had lower priority.

The truck stunt was taking a long time and we were losing daylight so I had to scrap a few shots but at the end of the day I had what I needed and no one got hurt and we weren’t arrested.

Still, we had to shoot one more scene but I had yet to locate an interior warehouse location. Sounds simple enough right?

I tried to shoot in one of the studios at UT but after a big misunderstanding it turned out that I couldn’t use the location because I wasn’t in the right class yet. In the end I actually used the bottom floor of the building where the studio was and since was late at night and no one was around and it ended up looking convincing.

The thing was I was so rushed just trying to find that last location I didn’t have time to make a shot list. (I did however go in the night before and kind of block how the scene would go.) I was worried because at the last second I decided I wanted to have someone in the scene get killed, but I had never tried inserting a fake muzzle flash in post before.

I decided to risk it and just go for it because I thought the payoff would be worth it. Luckily, I later found out the process was pretty easy and there are plenty of tutorials online.

The shoot was a little hectic because I was coming up with setups as we went, but we weren’t on such a strict time limit so that helped ease the tension. We finished out the night and even though I was completely drained we had finished shooting the movie!

Good Advice or Things I Learned the Hard Way:

1.) It’s important to let your actors know WHEN the audition will be well ahead of time. You’ll have a better turn out if they have time to arrange to get off of work or out of class.

2.) Make sure you always have at least TWO fully charged batteries before the shoot. At that location where we were outside in the middle of nowhere I was real lucky because I had only one battery and no spare. I ended up only having to use one but if it ran out we would have had to end the day early and endure the nightmare of arranging a time to shoot that avoided schedule conflicts.

3.) Keep all your gear and props in one place before you take it to go shoot. Make a checklist and make sure it’s all there. If you just grab stuff as you remember it you will forget something.

4.) Get permission for your locations. It would have been catastrophic to get kicked off of a location half way through shooting, and even more catastrophic to get ticketed for trespassing.

5.)Have food and drinks for your cast and crew. Working on a movie is very exhausting work. It’s not enough to feed them after the shoot, you need to feed them during (unless you’re just shooting a couple of hours.)

6.) Make and USE a shot list! This will save your life when you have 100 other things to think about on set.

7.) Have a continuity supervisor. This is a very important job. What good is that beautiful shot if you can’t use it because it won’t cut together?

8.) Always provide very detailed directions for the cast and crew. You don’t want to have them lost and late for your shoot.

9.) Read Judith Weston’s “Directing Actors” You don’t know how detrimental your direction was until you read this book!

10.) Have FUN. Remember why you’re doing this. It will also result in more creative choices and a better film.

That’s all for me. Hope you guys enjoy Red Asphalt.

-Brian Nelligan