GILLS | 2nd & 3rd Shoots

Everything for Gills is shot, edited (mostly), and waiting on animation and soundtrack. Our schedule had us working 9pm - 4am on the last day. It took me about 4 days to recover because I am wildly out of practice of staying up late. I used to be so good at that. 

Chunk of skin (I mean prosthetic) 

Even though we ended up being on a really tight schedule, we tried not to rush. Having started out with the 48 Hour Film Festival, I definitely have a tendency to feel a sense of impending deadline. This shoot was an exercise in slowing down. I really appreciate that everybody involved was willing to work so late into the night. We worked well into the hours where your body starts to get "wobbly" tired. 

Gettin' sweaty

This was our very first time working with prosthetics, let alone any kind of make-up. For me, at least, waiting for makeup was always a welcome snack break. Adam did a really great job.

Also, a word of advice: eating junk food between the hours of 2am - 4am is not wise. Your body will not appreciate it. 

Adam giving Pilar some "haggard level 3". *Not pictured: Keara neck deep in a bag of pita chips*

Hands and gills

I had the opportunity to make some fake frog eggs. They were disgusting and awesome. Tapioca pearls, jello (red, green, blue) and water apparently make perfectly gross and slimy eggs. The blue and red helps to tone down the radioactive hue of straight up green jello. The first batch I made was way too solid and way too neon and made for some pretty hilarious test shots. Plus, it tasted pretty alright (that is a lie I just told).

Wiggle, wiggle

That thing that I never prepare for and always happens, of course, happened. The house we shot in is over a hundred years old and has had little to no re-enforcements made to the decks and stairs outside. We shot on one of these decks and were somehow surprised that they shook. Due to our rigging, we didn't always have the ability to use our 7" monitor. These shakes are sneaky ninjas that aren't always visible on a standard view screen. I know it's easy to say, "It's not that bad, I'll just edit around it later." YOU ARE A FOOL, PAST SELF.  We actually really lucked out and it didn't have much effect if any on the pacing, however, you are not always that lucky.

That porch: "The Shakiest Thing That Ever Shook"

Next up: cleaning jello out of my carpet.

GILLS | Building the Set

I spent the larger part of the day emptying out my study so we could get started on making the set for Gills. The smaller part of the day I spent watching Cupcake Wars because I'm on a diet and I'm also a masochist. 

So many banana boxes.

We managed to get just a lot of banana boxes from the QFC down the road. I think we only used about 3 of them in the end.

The sun decided to come out and made the apartment hot and uncomfortable so I procrastinated and wandered around while playing with the camera. I was beginning to feel the same brand of stress that comes with moving. I have way too much junk and I don't want to get rid of any of it. Space be damned.

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Avoiding work and playing with exposure

My day was made exponentially better when my friend left this sweet little plant on my doorstep. It also gave me a good excuse to take more pictures.  

Beautiful new plant friend from beautiful old human friend. (disclaimer: she is not actually old)

We ended up substituting cut up paper bags for most of the cardboard we were planning to use. The banana boxes we got had a series of large holes throughout them which was no bueno. I watched 8 consecutive episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Later that night I had nightmares about banana spiders. 

"Jabroni" 

This is more or less what the set ended up looking like, minus some more embellishments on the walls. I'm really good at making real messes, so I was surprised by how difficult it was to make naturally looking "fake" messes. I'm still pretty pleased with the way it turned out. 

Nearly done

Next up: Actually shooting the thing!