Love Conquers All production blog

The First Shoot

wrapped shooting for the day, the most exhausting day of my life. sam raimi eat your heart out. or eat my heart out. please, eat my heart.

TODAY’S CAST
• Lee Johnson as Speedie Ryan
• Donna Lynn Johnson as Speedie’s mom
• Olivia Byrnes as Abbie Crayn
• Jason Sine as Sammy
• Rosemary Byrnes, Jake Kintner, Marlee Layh, Vanessa Query, and Molly Thornton as Abbie’s friends
• Kurt Miyazaki as Speedie’s boss

TODAY’S CREW
• Direction by Vanessa Query
• Camera by Vanessa Query
• Boom operation by Ashley McNeely
• Catering by Karen Russell and Corrinne Bayraktaroglu
• Alternate camerawork by Lee Johnson

TODAY’S LOCATIONS
• the homes of the Johnsons, the Byrnes’, and Lee and Maddy
• Betty Hughes “the little” Park
• Emporium Wines and the Underdog Cafe
• Tom’s Market
• the streets and sidewalks of Yellow Springs, Ohio

TODAY’S SHOOT
• scenes 1, 2, and 12 with parts or most of the 3, 5, and 7 montage scenes
• 10-hour production day, 92 video clips, 1 hour of footage (due to montage insanity)

A VERY SPECIAL THANKS to Steven Bognar for the lend of the boom pole, the mic, and the BeachTek.

It was weird, getting used to being “the director” again. Ordering others around, having others do stuff for me… especially toward the end of the day when my feet stopped working. “I can only direct for 4 hours a day,” I said, way over 4 hours into the day.

The rain freaked me out in the morning but it cleared up and was nice as I didn’t have to deal with the sun and shadows and stuff. The whole day went really well, except for the inevitable everyone-sits-around-waiting-most-of-the-time except-for-the-director-who’s-running-around-like-a-maniac, especially-the-director-wearing-8-hats. To direct and do the camera work was really hard, but not doing both would be crazy, too. Ashley my boom operator aka occasional-conjoined-twin was a wonderful trooper and I love her dearly. All my actors—principles and otherwise—were spot on, both in performance and in their willingness to work and have fun and their perspective.

Hard work though, wow. I tend to be used to expelling myself either physically or mentally, but rarely both, to this degree.

We’re going to aim to shoot (no puns there, anywhere) scenes 4, 8, and 10 this Sunday.