The season finale!  But don’t worry, the isn’t the end of The Idle Quest!  Stay tuned for details about forthcoming episodes.

Check out our season finale!

Check out Episode 4!

Check out Episode 3!

Watch Episode 1.

Check back tomorrow for episode 2!

I think this requires a little explanation about the nature of production. On big studio productions, which have millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal, the average day consists of shooting 2-3 pages. On independent productions, which have thousands of dollars at their disposal, the average day consists of shooting 5-6 pages. And those productions make sacrifices to be able to pull that off. During this weekend of production, where we basically had tens of dollars, we were shooting 9 pages one day and 7 on another. And, of course, I didn’t want to have to make any sacrifices, especially because these were some of the most important scenes in the whole series.

So with that pressure bearing down on us, we headed into Saturday, which was the 9 page day.

Saturday had five scenes, which means five costume changes, five different lighting set ups, and five different looks for the room. We also had to transition from day to night. The first scene of the day was shot at night. We then had to blackout all the windows in my living room, which there were many. The blacking out period took longer than expected, and for the first time during the entire production, I began to worry on set. I usually worry a lot before we start shooting but am fine once we’ve begun. I guess the weight of how much we were trying to shoot was wearing me down. Fortunately, Will is a great AD and assured me we were fine and we were going to be able to do what we needed to be done.

By the time the blacking out of the windows was done, lunch was ready and we broke for lunch. After lunch we came back with a vengeance and we tore through the scenes. The cast and crew were just clicking better than we have the entire shoot, and it really paid off. We wrapped early. We managed to shoot those 7 pages in 9 hours, and I was very happy with what we got.

But the scene that really had me worried was still ahead.

Sunday had less scenes and they were all (mercifully) set during the day. However, they were all set in my bedroom, which is a pretty small room. Basically, it got crowded fast and people, myself included, found ourselves jamming our bodies into corners so we weren’t in the shot or blocking the actors from moving or cutting any light or creating shadows. It was a little rough, but not unmanageable.

Once we got accustomed to the room, we were able to move pretty quickly. We shot two scenes and broke for lunch. Everyone left the room and I returned to an old habit: while the cast and crew ate, I sat by myself in the room. That’s how I knew I was intimidated by the scene we were going to shoot after lunch. The scene was the first scene of our fourth episode. It’s about a five page scene that involves a lot of dialogue and dynamics between three characters, Max, Stuart, and Doyle. After a while of sitting alone in the room, thinking through the scene and trying to visualize it, I decided I had beat myself over the head enough and I should go eat something.

Once lunch was over and we began shooting the scene and I had something to concentrate on and keep my mind busy, so I wasn’t worrying so much. And as we went through the scene, we were able to find the moments, the delicate moments that balance the emotions in the scene, the moments I had been worrying about getting. And that is sort of what filmmaking is all about.

You are always going to find those moments, because filmmaking is not a singular activity. It is a collaboration. It is a group of creative people offering their ideas and skills to help tell a story they believe is worth telling. And as long as you manage to surround yourself with talented and passionate people, as I was fortunate enough to do, you are always going to find those moments that make the story honest.

So as I look back on the production and sit in post-production editing the footage, I am confident that what we have is something people will watch and enjoy, and I can’t wait to give it to them.

Saturday required a bit of running around.  A skeleton crew assembled at my house consisting of Kaitlin Walsh, our DP, Sam Ejnes, our sound mixer, Shawn, Ian, Alex, and me.  We were going to head out to a park near my house a shoot a few scenes before meeting up with the full crew later on.  It should have been a quick, easy scene to shoot.  The camera angles weren’t difficult and it was a relatively short film.  However, we ran into two problems: a basketball game and the sun.  We were shooting outside of a recreation center, which happened to be having a youth basketball game at the same time we were shooting.  This meant buzzers would go off in the middle of scenes and parents would walk by with their kids dressed in basketball jerseys.  But that was only an occasional disturbance and not something we had any control over so we worked around it.  If a buzzer went off, we shot again.  If a family walked though frame, which only happened once or twice, we shot again.  It really wasn’t a big deal.  The sun was a different story.

Los Angeles is a typically sunny place.  And it is usually warm.  But the day we shot this scene, it was a blazing fireball in the cloudless sky that relentlessly shone down on us.  It didn’t help that we were standing on asphalt, which only drew in the sun’s heat, making it even hotter.  The heat was bad.  It was early morning and the temperature was already in the nineties.  Now, this may have been unpleasant for us, but it was destructive for our camera.  The camera had no protection from the sun and began to overheat and shut down.  We had to take the camera into the shade for 5-10 minutes so that it could cool down enough for us to shoot another take or two before it would overheat again.  It was frustrating to say the least.  But we all just had to stay calm and focused and not let the heat get to us.  We managed to get through the scene but we were behind schedule.  The rest of the crew had arrived at the other set and were waiting on us.  I called my 2nd AD Janet Rojas and told her to have the crew start lighting the kitchen for the next scene while we headed over.

Little did I know that we would get stuck in an unexpected motorcycle parade.  I’m serious.  That happened.  We were delayed for another half hour as traffic jammed up on streets all around the parade on our way to the second location.  Once we finally got there, we fortunate enough to not find a disgruntled crew.  Instead, we found a scene that was completely lit and ready to shoot and lunch ready to eat.  We had lunch so that we could all get refocused and then began to shoot the two kitchen scenes.  But it was still very hot and we had a bunch of people inside an apartment with the air conditioning turned off and the windows closed so we could get the best sound recording possible.  This made it very hot inside and our camera began to overheat again.  Fortunately, it was as often as it had been earlier.  The camera would overheat once or twice an hour instead of every five minutes.  Also, we had a refrigerator to put the camera in to help it cool down faster.  The crew was, as usual, great and patient with the process and we all had a good time shooting the scenes.

Alex and Ian had a great time performing in the kitchen scenes.

In fact, we all had a great time watching the kitchen scenes. It was hard not laugh during the takes.

Sunday had less motorcycle parades to contend with but had a lot more scenes to shoot.

We began Sunday outside again.  Fortunately, it was in my back yard so we didn’t have to worry about a basketball game.  Unfortunately, it was still incredibly hot outside.  This time we were aware of the danger of the camera overheating, so we battled against the sun by keeping the camera in the shade when possible and holding an umbrella over it when we couldn’t.  It seemed to work pretty well as we managed to shoot the three scenes involving burning things in a fire with the camera overheating only once.

Shawn Dempewolff as Doyle holds his painting and contemplates the scene.

Janet kept everything up to date, recording shot changes, reorders. and eliminations, as well as marking down takes.

Alex, Ian, and I spent a good amount of time talking about the emotional dynamics of this scene involving a rug. I know. But trust me.

Natalie became or resident potions master as she figured out how to make a potion magically mix on screen.

With the fire put out, we moved inside and began to shoot Doyle’s introduction scene, which is a very long scene with a lot of dialogue.  But Shawn, Ian, and Alex were up to the task.  They sat in the chairs as for several hours as we shot the scene over and over, from different angles and trying it out different ways.  They were awesome.  The crew and I couldn’t help but laugh after every take.  A lot of the time, I was trying hard to hold it together during the scene.  They really took the material and ran with it and the results were hilarious.  Once we finished shooting this scene, the crew headed home for the night.  Well most of the crew.  Kaitlin, Sam, and I still had two scenes to shoot with Shawn and Alex.

Shawn had a several key motions with his hands that he worked out.

It was still daylight and we needed to shoot these scenes as night, so we got frozen yogurt as we waited for night to fall.  Once it was dark enough, we piled into my car and drove around Los Angeles at night to steal some shots.  We managed to shoot a short scene of dialogue between Doyle (Shawn Dempewolff) and Stuart (Alex Salem) in front of the Hollywood Bowl during a concert.  It was pretty thrilling moment and I am so excited that we were able to get the shot and how it came out.

It was exactly the right way to end the weekend to get me excited about shooting our last weekend, which would have more material than any other weekend we had shot.

We had gotten our feet wet with the first weekend.  We had managed to overcome some pretty significant adversity during the second weekend.  But this weekend was set to be our most difficult to date.  There were just a lot of logistics to figure out.  We needed to spend all day Saturday shooting in an office, which we had tenuous access to, and all day Sunday shooting in a comedy club, which we didn’t have any access to at the start of the week.

I’ll start with Saturday.

I work in an office building during the week at my day job.  When we got pressed for a location, it seemed like the logical place to go.  I arrived before everyone else to find several fire trucks parked in front of the building and fire alarms blaring as fire fighters taped off parts of the building.

However, the parking garage beneath the building wasn’t blocked, so I drove in with all the equipment loaded in the back of my car.  Fortunately, my recklessness paid off and the alarms stopped soon after I parked my car.  There had been a false alarm from the restaurant in the lobby of the building.  The advantage of this situation is that the building was disorganized.  Combine that with a construction crew working on one of the floors and no wondered why I was carrying a bunch of equipment through the lobby.  Nor why I was letting around twenty people up into the building.

At least not until almost everyone had arrived.  Then security stopped me.

They had realized we weren’t part of the construction crew.  I informed them of what was going on and that we would be confined to the office that I work in.  Some calls had to be made.  The crew members in the lobby looked at me and I told them to go up to the office.  I stayed with security as calls were made.  I stood there, not knowing what I would do if we were told to leave.  Fortunately, the higher ups in the building gave us clearance to shoot.

So we were off and running.  Almost.

Danielle hadn’t shown up yet.  She was caught in traffic and we were already starting to fall behind schedule.  But that wasn’t a hard task to overcome.  We shot around her.  There were several shots that only required Alex, so we shot those first.

But right after Danielle showed up, I got a call from my boss.  He was stepping off the elevator.  He had unexpectedly planned to come in on Saturday to get some work done.  This was the worst case scenario.

I met my boss in the hallway and began to explain the situation.  I don’t know if I blindsided him with the information or what, but he didn’t say anything and we were able to keep shooting.

Then, from that point on, it was mostly clear sailing.

We shot everything that had to take place in the offices of the magical government.  Which included Max (Ian Wallace) and Janine (Danielle Reverman) meeting for the first time and every scene involving Gerome (Andy Ahrens).  Though the beginning of the day was filled with trouble, we had a rather successful shoot.

Here are some photos from the day.

Our Art Director Ellen Jaworski looking over the set dressing of Janine's desk in the office.

A fantastic to-do list that Ellen made to dress the office with.

Danielle and I talk over the scene where Janine and Max meet for the first time.

I gathered up the props for the scene where Janine and Max meet for the first time.

Andy Ahrens as Gerome (left) and Alex Salem as Stuart (right) rehearse a scene in which Gerome throws Stuart out of his office.

Kaitlin, Alex Lizotte, and I setting up a shot of Gerome's desk and having a good time of it.

Will and I discuss scheduling in between takes to make sure we are on track to make the day.

The red hoodie Alex wore had a motto I kept in mind for the duration of the shoot.

While this day was difficult, our most logistically difficult day of the shoot was set to be Sunday of this weekend.

The reason Sunday was such a big day was because we were shooting several scenes set in a comedy club.  This meant a lot of camera set ups and a bunch of extras, which means a lot of variables that could go wrong.

We started the day much later than usual.  Not because of any disaster, but by design.  We need to shoot a few night exteriors so we decided to start shooting our interior shots in the afternoon so that when we finished shooting those scenes it would be dark enough for us to shoot outside. This also allowed for Alex and I to be interviewed in the morning by the Jellyfielders Podcast, based out of London, England.

Anyways, we arrived at our location and began to black out windows to make the interior dark and feel more like the atmosphere of a comedy club at night.  We also decided to lesson the amount of variables by shooting everything that took place on the stage first.  That way we could cut down on the amount of time we would need with the audience members.  Also, Domenic and Alex Lizotte did an amazing job of lighting the entire space so that there was very minimal changes from set up to set up.  That really helped up move fast.  However, it took longer than planned, so we began the day nearly an hour behind schedule.

Alex and Domenic made sure to check their lighting constantly during set up to make sure we could move the camera and not have to move lights.

However, after that set back I figured we would make up the time, but I was wrong.  Because five takes into the day, we began to experience a plethora of audio problems.  First the SD card we were recording to said it was full, even though we had only recorded five short takes.  Turns out I had messed up when I offloaded the files the night before.  I had removed the files from the card but didn’t delete them, so the card still thought they were there.  Fortunately, our sound mixer on the day, Nicole Levay, was able to figure out the problem and fix it.  But then the batteries began to die and we didn’t have any to replace them.  We rectified that pretty quickly and then we were really off and running.

Domenic put on some shades to help him evaluate the lighting in the comedy club.

After our initial problems, Sunday actually went very well.  Without having to set up new lights every time we moved the camera, we were able to move very quickly.  Danielle and Ian really had the scenes down, which let us run the scenes in a bunch of different ways even though we were pressed for time.

Danielle was awesome. She totally came out on that stage and owned it.

Will has scheduled the day well so that the extras began to show up just when we needed them for the wider shots of the club, which also happened to coincide with our dinner break.  Sean Carlson, our caterer, provided a fantastic meal of gnocchi, both in a cream sauce and spicy tomato sauce, beef skewers, roast pork, and salad.  It was a really great way to welcome the actors playing the audience to the set.

Since Alex wasn't in the comedy club scenes, he had a fun time running slate for the day. I gave him the challenge that he had to use only Academy Award nominated films to name the shots.

I’d never directed that many people in a scene before, but they were a great group that were really receptive to what I wanted to try.  So we were able to get through those shots pretty fast and get out of the comedy club and out onto the sidewalk to shoot our last scene.

Our awesome comedy club audience relaxing in between takes.

We set up on the sidewalk and were able to get that scene shot before the traffic built up too much on the sidewalk or a cop pulled up to ask us what were doing.

So the most complicated weekend had been shot.  And we had wrapped Danielle from the production.  As well as Andy.  Next weekend, we were set to start working with a new actor for the first time as we introduced Max and Stuart’s new roommate, Doyle.

The Monday before we were supposed to start shooting, we lost our restaurant location.  We now had four days to find a new location to replace it.  Given how tight our schedule is on this project, there really wasn’t a way to move that day.  Believe me, my 1st Assistant Director, Will, and I tried to figure a way to do that.  There wasn’t one.  Alex and I began to plan ways to re-write the scripts.  Ian, Alex, Will, and I began pounding the pavement and dialing numbers to see if there was anyone who would help us out.

On Wednesday we found a place that would let us shoot all our scenes there.  Which was helpful because we were starting to makes plans for shooting for an hour at a time in different locations, which would have been awful.  But Cafe Gratitude was very kind to us.  Then, the same day we got our location we lost our sound mixer.  So now we had the location, but we were going to be making a silent film.

Sam Ejnes, who had done sound on the first weekend, began calling around to find someone to fill in for the guy that dropped out.  Meanwhile, I began to impinge upon the kindness of friends.  I asked friends that I knew had packed schedules if they could come help me out of a bind.  And they agreed when they saw my back to the wall on this.  Fortunately, Sam found a replacement on Friday night, and I was able to call my kind friends and give them back their freedom.

And after all that, we still had a shoot that was scheduled from 10pm to 5am.  In reality, we didn’t start until after 11pm, because the restaurant was still very full.  It ended up being kind of funny, as I sent Natalie in to begin dressing an empty table with props.  When she was finished, I sent Domenic in with lights so he could start setting those up.  All while people were still eating their desert two tables away.  But they eventually cleared out and we got to work.

Danielle and Ian sat down at the table and we began to rehearse the scene. They were pretty great.  After running the scene two times, we were ready to go up for our first shot.  And that is how it went for the rest of the night.  I never really had to make a big change to the scene.  Mostly, I just needed to find ways to adjust certain moments in the scenes.  That was a big relief to me, not because it was easier on me, but because they had really good instincts about the scenes, which are the most important in the whole season, in my opinion.

The scenes came out great with both cast and crew working very hard and very late to put it together.  Here’s a look at that night.

Danielle and Ian running their lines outside while we set the scene up inside the restaurant.

Our amazing cook, Sean, waiting outside in the parking lot while we shoot the first two scenes.

Kaitlin and Alex Lizotte figuring out the lighting for the dinner scene.

Domenic tests out the light, giving Kaitlin option for the scene.

I check the frame of the shot before going up for a take.

Pete Olivo, our sound mixer this weekend, gets into place as Will gets ready to call the roll.

The crew working late into the night to get these scenes.

Sunday was a little kinder to us.

First of all, we weren’t starting shooting when most people are starting sleeping.  That’s already pretty helpful.  Also, we had a fair amount of control over our two locations.  So this day went by with far fewer bumps.

We started off at Ian’s apartment, shooting a scene that involves the insidious nature of a rug.  Trust me, it will make sense when you see it in the second episode.  It was a lot of fun to shoot.

This is us getting ready for a take of the rug scene.

Next up, we booked it over to our location for the In Case Of closet.  This scene was probably the biggest surprise of the shoot for Alex and me. We thought was funny when we wrote it, but, seeing it realized, we found it to be far better than we could have hoped. And a huge part of that goes to Production Designer, Natalie Groce, and Art Director, Ellen Jaworski.  I couldn’t stop grinning every time I looked at the set.

Ellen adds Manticore to the list of things to be prepared for in our In Case Of closet.

Kaitlin looks over the set, getting ready to shoot.

Domenic unloads a Kino to start lighting the set.

Kaitlin grabs some additional lighting for the scene.

Alex, Ian, and I rehearse the In Case Of closet scene while the crew preps the set.

Ian getting into character during our rehearsal for the In Case Of closet scene.

Alex Lizotte and I check out a shot to make sure the frame looks good.

We also shot two more scenes that involve an interrogation and a magical battle, but I don’t want to go into too much detail about those because they would spoil some pretty fun surprises.

I offer a bit of guidance to Alex during his magical battle.

So once again, we ended with a successful weekend, even given the problems we faced.  In fact, I think the finished product will be better for it.  It’s part of the process.  A part which I actually enjoy at the end of the day.  Of course it stresses me out when it is happening.  But it is in those moments when everything goes wrong that you are forced to be more creative, and that always makes for a more interesting final product.

And there is plenty of opportunity for that to happen in our third weekend, as it is our hardest weekend from a logistic stand point.  I’ll let you know how it goes as we continue on with The Idle Quest!

So after over a year of work, the first weekend of shooting finally arrived.  I had written the scripts, rehearsed with the actors, and held a party to raise money.  Now came the time to step on set and direct.  And I was nervous.

It’s been a while since I’ve directed something.  So I was worried about being rusty.  Also, The Idle Quest is definitely the most ambitious project I have taken on.  Given the length of the scripts, it is equivalent to directing a feature.  And I’m working on a much shorter time frame than I normally work on.  Given all that, I was a little rattled.  Fortunately, there is an incredible cast and crew working on this project.  Once everyone arrived to set, it became clear that the only thing I was going to have to worry about was watching the actors and guiding their performances.

The first day we shot several scenes that took place in the Living Room of Max and Stuart’s apartment.  I thought I would share some set photos with you all, which were taken by our grip/amazing set photographer, Kosuke Haga.

Kaitlin Walsh, our Director of Photography, and Domenic Yovina, our Gaffer look over a shot.

Kaitlin and Domenic, along with our 1st AC Alex Lizotte, are my eyes on set.  They had some challenges to overcome on this day, like how do you block all the daylight in a room that is almost entirely made of windows.  But they did it, and they did it well.

These are the people that keep me in line. My 1st AD Will Rhodes and 2nd AD Janet Rojas.

Will and Janet made the first day so easy for me.  I didn’t have to worry about things happening on time.  Any time I did, Janet informed me that she had already taken care of it.  Will was there to push me along on the ambitious first day of shooting, which we finished ahead of schedule.  Something we would go on to repeat during day two.

Lunch. Got to keep the crew happy and fed.

When you are working on a low budget shoot for free, the food better be damn good.  That’s been my philosophy.  I’ve never been able to provide food like this before.  On the first day, our awesome cook Sean Carlson provided a bounty of food that was incredible for next to no money. This included burgers for lunch which he handmade and seasoned and bagels for breakfast, which came with cream cheese mixed with chives and lemon zest. As the only vegetarian on set, Sean made me a grilled eggplant burger that I devoured greedily.

Natalie Groce, the Production Designer on The Idle Quest, studying the blank walls, determining the best place to hang posters and photos.

Natalie and I worked together a lot during pre-production, where I would give her some vague direction about a prop and she would create something that was exactly what I wanted.  Basically, she read my mind.  On the first day of production, she came to a set that was nothing but blank tan walls.  She transformed it into a space with colour and personality in virtually no time.  It felt like I stepped out of the room to toast a bagel and get some orange juice and came back to a beautiful set.

Max (Ian Wallace) gives Stuart (Alex Salem) some bad news. He does not like hearing it.

Then, of course, there are the actors.  My two leads, Ian and Alex, came to the first day ready to go.  They had plenty of energy and were happy to talk about the scene and try different takes on it. Also, they were willing to smoke an awful lot of herbal tobacco.

For our second day of shooting, we ran all over the greater Los Angeles.

We shot underground in a parking garage in Burbank.  Which I thought would be a challenge, but I did not anticipate the guy in the white Honda that would park next to where we were shooting and blast really loud hip hop while he just sat there.  For no discernable reason.  Presumably he just parks there every Sunday afternoon to have a one man rave.  After a little while, he left and we managed to get what we needed and were on to the next scene, which we shot inside a moving car.

My car to be more exact.  I thought this scene would be one of the more difficult ones.  It’s really hard to shoot scenes inside a car when you can’t afford to close down streets or use stabilizing mounts.  But Kaitlin shot the scene beautifully and we finished that scene in less than 15 minutes.  It was pretty incredible.

Then, on to North Hollywood, where we met up with the rest of our crew that were setting up lights and dressing the set.  Our Production Designer, Natalie Groce, couldn’t be there that day, but we had the work of our Art Director, Ellen Jaworski.  When I got there and saw Ellen’s work I was very pleased.  She really brought the set to life.

You can see her work in these set photos:

I give Danielle some final notes before going up for a take. Ellen is sitting in the background making sure a poster doesn't fall on Danielle.

Kaitlin frames up a shot of Danielle.

Danielle and I talk over the phone conversation in this scene.

Danielle plays Janine in the first season of The Idle Quest.  She met us at the location in North Hollywood and we got to work shooting a phone conversation.  Danielle nailed the scene and we headed out of there to our last location.

We headed to West Hollywood and shot an altercation in an alley.  I’d go into more about it, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

The first weekend was a complete success.  I can’t wait to continue shooting with this fantastic cast and crew.  However, this was the easiest weekend.  They only get more difficult from here on out.