2003 – Eden #2
We had overdone our stay at my old co-worker’s house. Our planned “evening shoot” had run over. It was past 2:00 am and we were still in her and her husband’s bedroom. The husband was downstairs watching TV, anxiously waiting for us to finish, she was letting off steam in their work-shed. I had overstayed my welcome and we all felt the pressure to get the hell out of there.
Eden and Sara lay in bed. The time pressure was making it hard for me to concentrate. I tossed the sheets about and pulled the top blanket to one side. I had Sara bunch up her pillow and Eden drape her arm across Sara’s midsection. I was trying to visually imply that there had been a lot of bed activity.
I turned to Steve, unsure, “I don’t know. Does it look like they just had sex?”
He was half interested, setting up the camera, sipping soda from a 7-11 cup, “Yup.”
“I don’t know..,” I scratched my head, bunching the sheets some more.
While my co-workers at my IT logistics job were fretting about an imminent layoff, I was hoping it would happen. In fact, I was earnestly making plans for a nine day summer shoot, budgeting money with my hopeful severance package.
It was an overcast day in April when they let loose the dogs through the maze of cubes. They announced a meeting would take place at 1:00pm. I took an extra long lunch to avoid the imminent initial onslaught, so upon my return, I saw only the aftermath. Tears and blood mixed strangely with the normally gray mundane scene as I walked through the carnage. 
We had been slaughtered like pigs. My boss, who was carrying a bloody axe, saw me and asked that I follow him. I did so with a smile on my face.
Then next morning instead of going to work, I ventured out to my favorite coffee shop with a skip in my step. I was unemployed and feeling on top of the world.
Now I could focus on the real work. How would the new Eden story support/progress the detective/serial killer plot? I wanted her to be a protagonist also, so it made sense that she would be trying to solve the murders as well. Perhaps she had an intuitive ability to uncover the mystery behind the murders. But how and what?
With the detective story cast almost exclusively with men, I liked the idea of casting the new story with all females. This seemed to work with my logic (male) / intuitive (female) spectrum I was creating with both heroes. Luckily, I discovered Louann in my gym circuit class who was a local casting director. Upon reading the rough draft of the script she quickly had some excellent actresses to recommend.
We blocked out nine consecutive days in late July. I had to fork over $3500 to rent all the lights, power generators, cords, sandbags, C-Stands, boom, screens, bounce cards, etc. For those nine 15 hour days, we shot nearly half the movie. Steve and I, along with Michael on sound (we were making sure this time to record GOOD SOUND on site), and a friend’s nephews (age 12 and 14) as helpers, we were a motley crew that was unstoppable. 
We fought angry neighbors who complained about our lights, drunken neighbors that made farting noises, my old co-worker who wanted us out of her bedroom, and a party full of Peruvians. When it was late and actors started to nod off, our 12 year old slate boy would slap the slate board extra special.
Our detective story almost had a new location for each scene, which fit the weekend to weekend nature of our shooting schedule. This time, with limited time, I made sure to keep the number of locations to a bare minimum. Having to pick up our large camp of equipment and move would be so time consuming and severely limited how much we could get done in a day.
Most of the nine days found us at a house boat community where my old co-worker, Doug, lived. He was an anti-corporate type like me and had been enduring the cube world 10 years longer than I (he was able to escape a short time later). His generosity knew no bounds. He briefly taught us how to drive his electric motorboat and let us go it without him, “Don’t speed until you’re passed the houses and don’t hit anything.”
A few nights had us working until dawn, which required him and his unprepared Peruvian roommate to sleep out in his boat.
“This is *uckin ridiculous,” he muttered to Doug the first night they spent in the boat.
“This is so awesome!” I excitedly nudged Steve during our fifth 15 hour day. It was 4:30 in the morning and we were driving to Astoria, a coastal town about 1.5 hours west of Portland. A month earlier I had hung around the Astoria port and found a cool guy who would let us film on his boat. We needed to get there early so we would have time to get the boat out of port a mile or so for specific shots just before sunrise.
By day nine we were mostly wasted away, barely functioning. With a shaky caffeinated hand, I made notes on the scenes we were shooting on our last day. In addition to some day stuff, we would need to fight dawn for our night shots around the villain’s house. This is the house our heroine is drawn to in the middle of the night. It is also the house we shot from the perspective atop the water tower across the street in 2000. Fortunately the same people still lived there and were still willing to let us blast their house with lights and make noise all evening.
Our new Eden would be asleep in her car in between our set ups. When ready, I’d wander over to her car in a daze and lightly rap on her passenger window and she’d fly up wide eyed. Yes, it was the same nightmare.
Kristen, who played our new Eden, was a wonderful actress and carried the role better than I could have imagined. She was a low maintenance person and brought her best with her all nine days. And all those days were dedicated to her character, so if she had proven sub par in anyway or become non-committal… I hate to think about it.
One of the final scenes at the housing boat community involved Eden and her mother (played by Lorraine) running full speed along the dock from our creature. At a crucial moment, mom would be shoved hard (broadside tackle from creature) off the dock and into the cold dark river. Weeks earlier we had Lorraine at my gym running along side the pool, trying to figure out ways to mimic a creature tackle that would send her flying into the water. Splash! Splash! Splash! Nothing really worked until my gym trainer had the good idea of using a large rubber gym ball to shove her into the pool. It looked pretty convincing. We could easily erase the ball in post production.
So on the night of the shoot with $500 lights blasting the marina, we had the two women sprint down the dock toward camera. At a precise moment, my gym trainer would step out with his big ball and shove Lorraine into the dark water with a boyish grin. Our second take was perfect. I am in debt to Lorraine for subjecting herself to our craziness.
I vigorously went about editing the new scenes, sliding them in with the old detective stuff. I pieced it together the best I could and put place markers where our yet to materialize creature was to appear. Then, after paying a desperate last minute $150 same day shipping fee, our VHS tape was off to the magical land of Sundance!
Surely they would see past this rough, shoddy edit and the missing creature parts (I inserted black cards that said, “Creature” where it was supposed to appear). Surely they would see through its imperfections, chip through its rough coal exterior to discover the diamond inside and recognize the movie that would mark the beginning of a new epoch in film! At last!!
