May 25th, 2006: Day 4

Yes, we got a lot of strange looks driving around.

Note the truck right behind has Shivers and Ogre in it.

May 25th

Not much sleep, but I’m so wired when I wake up that it doesn’t seem to matter. I hear people are meeting at a pub for lunch, so I head down with Stewie and meet Mun, his buddy, Jacky and Lars at the Washington Street Pub. Fish and chips, not bad.

We talk all sorts of shit. The blow up with Frank.  How Mun dry-heaves at the sight of a public toilet(and when you watch him demonstrate it…hysterical).

I bug out of there and head over to Tuckahoe. I’m first one there. I start burning backups of the audio from the night before, while I copy audio from the backups to a separate hard drive. The audio is now backed up twice.  Wish I could back up the video.

I also contemplate that if I do a Fangoria article for this flick like I did for “Hunting Humans” and “Fear of Clowns”, I will start it with the sentence: “Three days in and I still can’t take a crap.”

I decide that we can make up one of the scenes we missed from the night before—we have to cheat, but it’s an inside shot that we can make look like night so we do. We get it done and STILL start on time.

We setup the small house for the scene where Lynn is sketching when the large clown walks by.

Goofing off at the card came scene in the kitchen

We jump ahead and do a scene where Peters comes in to find Lynn gone. Then back to that scene. Lighting takes a while. I shoot some publicity stills. We have Rob Ziegler shooting behind the scenes stuff, which is very cool. Normally I shoot most of the behind the scenes stuff, so I’m never in it.

Steph has gone back to painting with the stuff Paul used and the clowns look  good. She even did something Paul never did, which is to use a sealant—helps keep the makeup nice longer. Shivers looks badass again.

Wow, we fall behind again. Way behind. We forgot to get the prop belt of heads from Doug, our FX guy. I have to improvise.

 Johnny Alonso shows up for his scene and we start two hours late. It’s his decapitation scene. We set up for all that and work on the fx. It involves a second head attached to his shoulders, which Mark actually hits off with the wooden axe.

In retrospect it’s probably pretty dangerous. "Johnny, run at Mark but keep your chin tucked to your chest. He's gonna swing the wooden axe at the dummy head as you get near him, and as long as he doesn't swing six inches lower than he should, he won't hit you in the face."

Take after take, Mark hits nothing but the fake head. He was probably a pretty good hitter in baseball.

The deal works pretty good. We get a lot of coverage.

Johnny fitted for his 2nd head by Stephanie as Zig rolls camera and Shivers watches

Then we set up for the zirc hits—they’re paintball balls filled with zirconium that spark when they hit stuff, like a bullet ricochet. It worked well. My first time. Tom Proctor shot them—he’s a pro. Hit the mark every time.
Looks awesome.

We try to turn around and finish the scenes, but we miss—it’s getting light. We wrap at 6am again. It’s 7am—another good night in the morning.