Jared:
Man, this was no fun at all to shoot. This was my final movie shot for SDSU and not a lot went right.
On the plus side, the actors were all fantastic. It was the first time we put a lot of effort into auditions and rehearsals and all that went pretty well. Sure, after several auditions we only ended up casting one person we hadn't worked with previously, but that one person was Jon Zilka, and Zilka's just awesome. Great voice and the patience of a saint. Patrick Wenk-Wolff is an old friend from Palomar and one of the most talented people we've gotten to work with. He'd split time rehearsing for this movie and a play that went on immediately before our shoot. Noelle Balfour had worked with us on a couple movies before and she's always put in more time and effort on any shoot we've had her on than a lot of the crew while having the best attitude. My dad pops up again in a brief cameo because why the hell should I go find some other big huge scary guy to play the big huge scary guy? Finally, Matt Steirnagle delivers my favorite performance ever in a Mongrel Pictures movie as Justin, the intern/beverage.
As for every other aspect of the production, things weren't so rosy. Location-hunting went nowhere, but producer Erin Lyles let us use her house and (along with her boyfriend) did a good deal of the painting and set design to make it not look like some college student's house. Keiko Jinno went way above and beyond as director of photography, nabbing us some good crew members, great deals on film and best of all, free catering. I'd never had coffee out of a box before and to this day I haven't tasted coffee that good. It was like a little box of heaven. Daniel Greenberg helped record sound and shove around our massive dolly rig. And all of us pitched in our meager college moneys to co-produce.
The shoot was torture, ran way over-schedule and I had to cut nearly all our coverage on the spot. There wasn't enough film to do any more than one take of every shot, so yeah, no pressure at all on the actors, you bet. I had a lot of competition this time around, but I think I still did the best job of screwing up the movie. Probably the least enjoyable production any of us had partaken in. Not all that thrilled at the end result either, but I still dig the performances and a few bits here and there, so the shame of it is tolerable.
Worst thing about this movie? Ten minutes in the same damn room. Even if we had the variety of shots we'd intended originally, it still would've been too much time stuck in that room. That'll teach me the value of brevity.
Best thing ever about this movie? The magic coat. I feel there is a very good symbolic interpretation to be applied to our most glaring fuck-ups in the movie. Maybe we're just saying that politicians are often full of continuity errors. Maybe we're smarter than we look.
Maybe we're also prettier than we look.
Quinn:
Again, I wasn't involved in this one but I did read the script and I thought it was great. There are some really impressive elements to this film, my favorite being the creepy occult book that the character thumbs through in the beginning which Jared drew himself. It was shot on film which is a landmark for Mongrel Pictures and I wish I was involved. This was Patrick's first time in a Mongrel film and he did great. This one's important because you can start to see the Mongrel crew forming. With the exception of me you've got a lot of key Mongrel crew in here: Patrick, Noelle, even Lance behind the scenes. We would continue to all work together in projects to come.
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