Mr. Lee

There's nothing like a captive audience. - - - MR. LEE is the second feature comedy from director Lolo Loren. It follows a group of starving filmmakers who decide they've had enough - they're going to get their break if they have to break it themselves....

[mrleethemovie]

Blog Entry #2 (02/10/2014)

So, we had another full day of shooting yesterday. A slightly easier start - we began shooting at 11am with a couple of the simpler scenes. Some dialogue scenes in a hallway between just two characters, the kidnapping of a hapless pizza boy - everyday stuff. Right?

Then evening came and it was time to film the climactic end-of the movie scene. I won't tell you who gets shot in it, but I WILL tell you of the no-budget blood bag escapades. 

So. I took a ziploc baggie, and filled it with homemade fake blood (corn syrup & food dye, can't go wrong with that) and duct-taped it to our actor's stomach, underneath his white shirt. Worked great, couldn't see it at all. I then poked a hole in the plastic bag near the top, and told him to just press it kind of up when the time came so the blood would ooze out and stain his shirt and VOILA! Bleeding that he could control the speed of by how hard he pressed. Perfect.

Or so I thought.

We got set up, put everyone in place, rolled cameras and sound and started off great - gunshot, actor grabs his stomach and falls back against the wall dramatically, clutching his stomach. His face is contorted in pain as he looks down to his hand - the camera pans down his body to show where he is looking - and to our horror, on his hand we see - 

...no blood. Not a single drop. 

This results in some cussing, some laughter, and the decision that we maybe need to tear the bag instead of just poking a hole in it. 

The corn syrup had congealed somewhat by this point, which probably wasn't helping either. 

So, we tore some holes in the bag and tried again.

This time there was some blood, but not nearly enough. We basically just got a little pink stain on his shirt, like he'd dropped his strawberry ice cream cone on it.

Still hilarious. But a little nervewracking, because if we screwed this up too much we were gonna have to shoot again a different day - our actor only had the one white shirt, which I would've had to spray-n-wash before we should shoot again! I don't know why that blood was so determined to not come out of that ziploc, but lord it was hilarious.

But we gave it a third go and an adequate amount of blood came through this time - enough to look like blood, finally! - so we carried on and then left our actor there, pretending to be dead on the floor while we shot the rest of the scene around him. 

At which point ALL of the blood decided to finally come rushing out of the ziploc - onto the red stone floor where you couldn't see it at all.

Ah, well. You win some you lose some.

It looked good in the end. :)

Until next weekend,

Lolo

[mrleethemovie]

The boys playing on a balcony railing on set in between takes.

Patrick Poe, who plays Ryan the Director is on the rail.

Artem Bagdasaryan, who plays Noah the Player is under him in the fourth picture.

And John Bickers, who plays Xavier the Waiter is threatening to push them off onto Anne Haines, who is taking the pictures.

[mrleethemovie]

The 18 Hour Shoot Day

We had our first 18-hour shoot day this month. January. 2014. I'll be honest, I don't remember the date - we only shoot on Sundays (we work day jobs the rest of the week) and those Sundays are already starting to blur together (but in the best way possible!). 

We started off the day bright at early at 6am at the Green Room Burgers & Beers in Kansas City (www.greenroomkc.com). Much of the cast spent the night at my house the night before so they could carpool there in morning. So, we were out the door a little after five am. Our sound man works as a bouncer at a bar, and as such had not actually been to bed yet. One of our lead actresses waits tables. She hadn't been to bed yet either. And most of the rest of us were running on about four hours of sleep.

We knocked out two scenes there - wrapped by 10:30. There don't seem to be any photos floating around from that shoot though....possibly because we were all half asleep...? We had to finish up quick because a little after ten the restaurant staff started arriving to open the place so we had to skedaddle.

The above photos are from filming at our second location (which we only have photos of thanks to the lovely Anne Haines), the house of my very kind, very tolerant father, who has been a very good sport about having his living space - bedroom included - taken over by a bunch of crazy filmmakers. Thanks dad! We knocked out I don't know how many scenes. A lot? Amber Joy, (the girl in the photo second from the bottom), was only in town for two shoot days, so we had to get ALLLLLL her scenes done speedy-quick. And we did it! Barely...she's not in every scene, but she is one of two actors in a dramatic closing scene that is kind-sorta-hugely-important...sure hope the footage looks good, 'cause there's no re-filming it!

We filmed several scenes with the kidnapping victims in the basement - including one where Buster (bottom photo) decided they needed to hide the evidence and burn all the witnesses, and poured gasoline (don't worry, it was actually just water, guys) on all the kidnapped executives. The actors we had playing the executives were incredibly good sports - it's winter right now, in case you didn't know, and winter in Kansas City is evil cold, and of course there's no heat in the basement where we were filming. So, thanks guys! Forgive me someday...?

It was an interesting shot day also due to the "Sophie Cam" footage we shot. Em Loper (blue kimono, holding a camera, pictured above) is playing the camera woman in our movie - yes, playing, its a movie about filmmakers - she can't really film - but since her character is camera obsessed and always documenting her life, Loper got to run a camera part of the day, while she herself was on camera, being filmed. So confusing...She did really well though! And, for me, it's incredibly strange and exciting  - I can get my close ups and my wideshots at the same time, because I can have the CHARACTER Sophie onscreen, filming, while my real cameramen get the wide shot.

It's awesome. 

We finished out the night filming the kidnapping of the last executive  at our cameraman Chase Stewart's house. We began shooting this scene at 8pm, after a pizza break. It was cold out, to cold to bother to take set photos - sorry guys! Stills will be forthcoming - and our poor actress playing the executive had to get dragged into a car in a short-sleeved dress. In the winter. In Kansas.

God I want to move to Belize. 

I was gonna say Florida but that didn't seem far enough south.

We wrapped filming at 11:30 that night, packed up the equipment, drove the half hour back home, unpacked the equipment, and crashed. 

And then got up and went to work the next morning.

I love making movies. I live sunday to sunday.

Perhaps someday I'll be able to live day to day.

Until then, we do the best we can.

Look for another update next week.

Lolo Loren

[mrleethemovie]

Our fundraising campaign has gone live! Help us fund our film, and we'll send you cool shit. ;P

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mr-lee/x/1923325

Spread the suspense. #doyouknowmrlee

[mrleethemovie]

[mrleethemovie]