OPEN/CLOSE FILM SHOOT - PHOTO ALBUM

"FINISHED!.....But Not Quite....."

....Is the title of this first photo (and Alex definitely earned his cat nap!). It was taken on Sunday, September 19th, at 11:30pm, after our martini shot (the last shot before the shoot wraps). It's "finished....but not quite" because we still had to finish breakdown, reset the room with its original furniture, and load out our things from the location (a school that would be back in session the next day). Although we had already broken down and loaded out most of the set by then, it would still take another three hours for the small crew of six that could remain to finish. (We had a total of 13 crew members and 3 actors.)

"DREAMING ON LOCATION"

This was our first planning visit to the room we wanted to turn into the cafe set for OPEN/CLOSE. We had done a scavenger hunt for a location we could rent on a small budget, sending out announcements and talking to everyone we knew.

FGKids@yahoogroups (a networking tool for parents and people working with kids and families -- This one is for Fort Greene. Many neighborhoods have their own group email) turned out to be a great resource -- we got three location referrals. We choose a wonderful location with smiling staff -- the Brooklyn Free School www.brooklynfreeschool.org, which is in a lovely, rambling house that reminded me of being in California where people move with a greater sense of ease and space. (We started meeting in the room a couple of weeks before school started and before BFS had set the room up as a student lounge. BFS rents space to programs and individuals for after school and weekend activites - Alan is the director and contact: 718-499-2707)

OPEN/CLOSE is the story of a once successful, but now blocked New York writer, Carita Locke, who is frightened for her future. On a wintery night she has a life changing encounter with a Serbian immigrant who is the waiter in the cafe where she likes to go to write. Present were some of the student crew, the cast of three, plus me the instructor-director (at left in black beret). We decided that though the cafe was popular with a diverse group of New Yorkers, it was owned by a Serbian and there should be little touches that spoke to his Eastern European background. We started to envision how we would create a cafe and made a list of set and prop needs. The blue tape was how we marked off areas where we wanted to put furniture.

"FILMBIZRECYCLING"

In addition to conducting a scavenger hunt for what we needed on email lists and blogs and among friends and neighbors, we also went to www.FilmBizRecycling.org in Long Island City. It's a green non-profit that recycles set and prop material from film, TV, and commercial shoots. They rent things out really cheaply to low budget shoots. As an individual you can go and buy some really great one-of-a-kind things for yourself or as gifts (holidays are coming!)

Audrey (a BYFC student who is now a board member!) is holding up the poster she found at Filmbizrecycling that became the inspirational for the naming of our fictiuous cafe (see below for the name we gave our cafe!) We also found some wonderful dishes that we could use for our food display and knick knacks for the built-in wall bookcase (photos below). For the cafe furniture we got a great deal from PropsNYC http://www.gotprops.com/ , which is based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.


"MOVING THE SET IN"


Friday, September 17th, after class let out at Brooklyn Free School, we started moving furniture and set, prop, and catering bins into the space. We rented a driver and van and picked up equipment and materials from four primary locations, all in Fort Greene. It took us two hours to get everything to the location -- imagine how long it could have taken if our pick-ups had been spread all over Brooklyn! (For an inexpensive local driver w/van we recommend Angus, 347-405-1258, a student working his way through college. We also found him thorough FGKids@yahoogroups )

"WHERE DOES IT ALL GO?!"

"THE TRICK OF MAKING A TABLE APPEAR"

As director, I wanted the main character to initially sit at a square table to visually emphasis how edgy and at odds she initially feels from others. Because we could not find a square table the size we needed, we had a piece of wood cut and covered it with contact paper to make it look like a table top and then secured it to a base.


"KIDS FROM BFS VISIT THE SET"

As we turned the student lounge into a cafe set, BFS students and staff came by to witness the transformation. One student, Ari (on the right in brown shirt) worked as a production assistanton the set.

"DRESSING THE SET"

Students help to dress the set. Platters are from FilmBizRecycling, as are those yummy-looking chocolate cream pie slices that were bitten into many times --- They're plastic (!) and everyone wanted to pretend they were eating it. The rest of the food is real! We got it from Djerdan www.nymag.com/listings/restaurants/djerdan , a restuarant in mid-town serving Eastern European food. (We all agreed that their burek is the most yummy spinach pie we've ever tasted! ) The small flags on the wall were made by Carmen, a BYFC student who downloaded pictures of flags from former Yugoslavian countries. She printed them on cardstock and then affixed them to sticks. She also downloaded pictures of famous Serbian buildings and put them in $1 frames.

"A HUMAN TRANSFORMATION"

Laura, a BYFC student, Clinton Hill resident, mother of three, and a truancy officer with the NY public schools, was cast as "Alex", a sexy Sex-And-The-City Samatha-type CEO. I knew Laura has the presence to play a business-like CEO, but the "sexy" she needed some help working on. Carmen got to demonstrate her make-up abilities and fashion knowledge.

...ALEX ENTERS THE CAFE

Laura has already promised the wig to her girls to play with!


"PREPPING TO SHOOT"

"ALL QUIET!"

Tai- Kanyarat Rodhatbhai (second from left), an emerging Cinematography/Gaffer/Editor with an amazing sense of light and good speed on set-ups, headed our technical crew, www.taikanyarat.com

The gorgeous garden painting in the background was one six painting loaned to Brooklyn Young Filmmakers for the set by artist Natasha Harsh www.natashaharsh.artspan.com . The paintings helped to raise our production values, adding to the "mood" of the cafe, and at several points provided visual punctuation to the story.

"NATASHA'S SCALLIONS"

The sketch on the pad is of Carita, the protagonist of OPEN/CLOSE. Audra, a mother of two who we recruited through FGKids@yahoogroups , went to Central Park and paid a sketch artist to do a drawing of her. It is suppose to be a drawing done by Dragan, the waiter and Serbian immigrant, who when he gets angry with Carita tears the sketch up. To allow for different takes, we made copies of the drawing and pasted them to pages in the sketch book.


"JAIL JANKO CAFE"

The Jail Jack poster we found at FilmBizRecycling into door sign for our Jail Janko Cafe. (It originally was a protest sign create as a prop for a film about Jack Kevorkian, the Dr. who medically assisted suicides of sick people)

"THE BOOK THAT MADE HER FAMOUS -- FOR A MOMENT"

Carita Locke, 40 year old protagonist of OPEN/CLOSE, had written a successful novel when she was 25 -- and nothing since. To drive home the pain of her frustration, we had another character confront Carita with the book she had written 15 years ago. Solomon, a BYFC student, created this original book jacket. The title, Everything Essential, came from a quote in the script from the mock book. The back jacket photo of the young Carita was supplied by Audra, the actress who plays the 40 year old Carita.

"WHEN I WAS YOUNGER....."

FROM THE OPEN/CLOSE SCRIPT:

"In the end everything essential comes in a limited context. Even the sun, which I now go out to catch and absorb before the dark comes again."

- Trayce, BKLYN TAG