EVILMAKER 2 WAR JOURNAL

6 - 22 - 01
It is just under a week before the cameras start to role on ABOMINATION: THE EVILMAKER 2. I have decided to keep a journal of sorts because I regret that I didn’t keep on the first production, and I wish I would have.

The movie is mostly cast, but I’m a little nervous about the first shoot. There are two women who are supposed to play goth chicks and I haven’t heard from them lately. Starting to get a little nervous. Hopefully I’ll hear from them on Monday.

I feel much better about this production. It’s familiar territory and I get to work with some great people. Kylene Wtherell has been cast as Kathy, the lead. Returning as Rachel is Felicia Pandolfi and new characters are being played by Jon Wilmot, Shannon, Warren E.B.B. and Elana Morgana Smith. More later.

6 - 29 - 01
The two women who I wanted to play the goth women bailed out on me. One just flaked and the other wanted to go to a rave that night. No problem, I can re-cast it and shoot it on a pick up shot.

I should have gotten some sleep today…or at least laid down to rest. But, no can do. Had too much yet to get together. We got a late start today due to some costume issues. Felicia had part of her costume over at her mothers house and when she went over to get it, her mom was gone so she had to brake into the house. We were supposed to be on the road out to the location by 7:00. We didn’t get on the road until 8:15.

We stopped off at a convenience store to stock up on pop and to pick up my sister and something happened to delay us even longer, but it was funny as hell. For most of us anyway. Jon Wilmot who plays Charles in the movie locked his keys in his truck. So, we were all out there laughing while he was getting pissed. With the help of a coat hanger, he finally got in. Michael and Robert (two guys who came down from Portland to shoot a documentary on the making of Evilmaker 2) got it all on tape. I hope it makes the cut.

We finally made it out there, unloaded all the vehicles and got Kylene and Felicia into make up while Joe and Elana (my first Assistant Director) strung the extension cords down to the culvert. By the time Kylene got down there after make up, we were two hours behind. I thought to myself “No problem. We can make it up.” I was wrong.

It had been almost two years since we shot at the culvert and it was WAY overgrown and the water was a lot deeper than in the first movie. So it took a long time to get everything down there (lights, cameras, us, etc). Plus Joe and Kylene had to cross the stream across these rocks to get to the right spot to film. I’m a very clumsy person, so I stayed put and yelled directions out to them. It took longer than I thought. Three and a half hours behind.

My goal was to get all of the exterior night scenes shot in one night. If we managed to do that, I would be happy and we could pick up the other shots tomorrow night. After the culvert scenes were done, we packed it back up to the house and shot all around the area. It’s funny how on the major scenes nothing goes wrong, but on the little stuff you have to do take after take after take. There was a scene out by a shed that involved Kylene, Felicia and Jon and it just seemed to take forever to shoot. Flubbed lines, the giggles, you name it. It comes with the territory. But, we got through it.

We ended at 5:00 AM, four hours behind according to the schedule, but of course, nothing EVER goes according to schedule. I tell everyone we are starting two hours earlier tomorrow (actually later today) and everyone is fine with it. People were beat and Elana (1st AD) was looking pretty worn out. We all put in a first hard night. Some people were staying out on location, some wanted to go home. So, I packed Felicia and my sister up and took them back into town. I was so tired, Felicia kept talking to me to stop me from nodding off…she did a good job. I then drove back out to the location and I’m lucky I didn’t become air born off a cliff and land in a tree. I had been up for 28 hours straight and was wasted.

I come into the house and Elana and Kylene are passed out on a pull out bed and everyone else was watching a movie Joe and just finished putting together. I pulled up a corner of the floor and passed out. We will get on track tomorrow..

6-30-01
Well….I only got three hours of sleep. Normal for shooting I guess. Elana and I went into town today and got more food and then came back out to the location to rest a little. I, of course, couldn’t because my mind was reeling about the shoot tonight. It has occurred to me that there IS NO WAY IN HELL we can finish things tonight. I will have to pick what scenes I want to do and postpone the others. I know I need to shoot as much with Shannon (she plays Madam Vladmeria) as I can because her schedule is so unpredictable.

I sat down with everyone before we started shooting and gave them the news that there would be an extra day tacked on and everyone was fine with it.

Michael and Robert made it out again and they proceeded to interview me. I have rarely done this and it was strange, but I’m getting more comfortable with it. After everyone arrived, it was in the make up chair with Kylene, Felicia and Shannon. Rob is an amazing make up guy. He’s like “how do you want them?” and then boom! It’s done.

Tonight was a little harder than the night before, even though the night before was all outdoor shoots. After staying up for so long the night before and getting hardly any sleep, at about 3:00 AM my brain started to shut down. It was a good thing Joe and I storyboarded a fight sequence between Kylene and Shannon. It was a lifesaver. Joe took over talking to them about how it was going to be shot while my brain took a rest. Joe and I have known each other for so long and we are on the same wavelength. We shot the fight scene and were done for the night.

It was also a rough night because one of the crew members got word that her uncle had not very long to live. I told her to go home, but she insisted on staying.

There were no real problems this time out and I’m thankful. After the shoot we packed up and got out of there. I got to the driveway of my house at about 8:00 AM, turned the motor off and laid my head back. I woke up an hour and a half later, still in my car. I haven’t been this exhausted in a LONG time. I drug my sorry ass into the house and slept some more.

The footage looks great. If the rest of it turns out as well as the first weekend, I think we are going to have a pretty good movie on our hands.

By the way we are 8 hours behind

7 - 5 - 01
I have been calling around to people to see if they survived the shoot okay and got some shocking news. On her way home, Kylene was in a car accident. This was the day after we shoot, so it wasn't due to fatigue. She hit a dear, swerved off the road, got airborne, took out some mailboxes and a pump house. Thank god she is okay, but her car is totaled. Man.

Okay, the up and coming shoot on Saturday the 14th is going to be changed a little due to some unforeseen circumstances. No matter how hard you try, you can never predict what is going to happen in peoples lives. It shouldn’t be major changes, but I will start working on it soon.

7-13-01
Crap, what a week. Earlier a location I was counting on fell through. I hate it when that happens. We were going to go out and shoot in Independence Oregon at a cabin. I had checked with one of the owners and she said she had no problem with it, but she had to check with her husband. He said no. So, some quick trouble-shooting and we are going to shoot the stuff in a hotel room.

Other bad news. Elana, my 1st AD, has a bacterial infection and won't be there this weekend. She is also playing a character, so we have to bump her scenes to a later date. The upside is we are going to get some pick up shots of stuff we missed on the first weekend shoot. One trick. All that stuff was at night and we are shooting during the day, so we have to blacken all the windows out. Have done it before, so it’s no biggie, just another small pain in the ass. (There are a lot of them in making movies.) I hope everything goes well.

7-14-01
My god, I keep putting my cast and crew through hell and they keep coming back for more. Today was a 15 hour day. We started at 7:00 AM and went until 10:00 PM. Things started well and when we started shooting the newscaster footage out on location with Robert L. Sumner as the newscaster. Things were light hearted and I wanted them to be that way. After the shoot two weeks ago, I wanted people to laugh and have a good time. A couple of practical jokes were played on one another. Kylene was doing cartwheels in between takes and Shannon was spinning around like a tornado with all of her vales. Even I got in the action by doing summer salts, which I haven’t done in years and remembered why after I did them. (You will see all this in "the making of" which will be after the feature on the tape.)

Then, the sun came out and zapped us of any energy we had. A lot of us got burned and the back of my neck is sore right now. By mid day we shot all of the outdoor shots we needed and headed into the house. Since Elana was home sick, I took the opportunity to shoot some stuff we didn’t get done the first weekend. While Joe and I went over the rest of the shoot, Michael and Robert blackened out the windows so we could shoot day for night.

Felicia got a good dose today of what it must be like in Hollywood. Her make up was a “hurry up and wait.” She went several hours without doing a thing in make up and then it was her time, and boy did she shine. She is one of those actresses where she gets it right on the mark (character wise). She will ask a couple of questions and then go right into it and do an amazing job. Part two is fun for her because she is playing three versions of her character.

Kylene is awesome and so full of energy. Her and Felicia play well off each other. The afternoon was a long process, but we made it through. It was time to pack up and head into town to shoot the hotel scene (formally the cabin.)

By the time we got there, set up and ate some dinner, it was pretty much dark out. This scene was supposed to happen during the day (there is a scene at the door, so it couldn’t be cheated.) so I did a quick revision on the dialogue and problem solved.

There is very few times when I actually get upset, and it happened tonight. We were at the tail end of the shoot and Jon Wilmot had joined us at the hotel, so he hadn’t been out shooting in the sun and heat all day and had bundles of energy while the rest of us didn’t. I told him to knock on the door three times, pause then do it again. He started to knock on it a bunch of times in a silly way and something snapped in my head.

I sprung up out of my chair and I could hear Joe say “Uh oh…Wilmot is going to die..”. I swung open the door and he looked shocked, because he was expecting Kylene to answer it. I said "14 hours Jon! I'm not in the mood!!!!" I felt bad afterwards and apologized and things were okay. He said he was going to pull a practical joke, but then decided not to do it. Smart move.

It was a long rough day, but I wanted to get all of the stuff shot that needed to be shot so tomorrow can be a little lighter. I am so glad to be home so I can get a little rest.

7-15-01
Today was somewhat of a short day, thank goodness. But, it did involve a lot of smoke and digging. Hell, I even burned my fingers on some smoke bombs. It was interesting, because smoke was supposed to engulf Kylene and Jon. We (or at least I) didn’t take into account the wind factor. So, we were down to our last few smoke bombs and we decided to light them off on a shovel so we could move it back and fourth in front of the camera, depending on which way the wind was blowing. Pretty entertaining. This is the middle of the shoot, the low point for me. You aren’t starting a project so you don’t have the adrenaline rush and your not close to finishing with that large energy boost, you are just moving along.

8-30-01
Man, I feel so bad. Elana was in an accident and broke her foot. She really wants to be in this thing and I want her to as well.

9- 14-01
Tonight we shot the footage with the two goth women and Shannon, only it ended up only being one goth woman. Had to do another re-write, but it turned out okay. Jon Wilmot connected me up with this woman who was interested in playing the part, and it looked like things were going to go fine. But, I made the mistake of telling her it shouldn’t take that long and she was there until 4:00 AM. By the time she left, she was wiped out and will probably never do another movie for me. A lot of action was to be filmed and her back was covered in my make up guys Rob-O-Matic goop. The girl (Kelly) has long hair and at one point she whipped her hair back and got it stuck in the stuff. Needless to say, she was ready to leave. I talked to her a couple of days later and she is fine. It was a long night.…

Another cool thing was there was a major wind and electrical storm that night. The lights would flicker once in a while and I found myself praying on several different occasions "please, lights, don't go out! don't go out..." There was thunder in the background and it really added to the scenes.

9-15-01
Okay, today was an interesting day. Today was the first day I have ever filmed a “sex scene” between two people. It was between Shannon and Warren, and I knew that both of them had to be nervous as well. We got set up, and I just let Joe roll the camera and let things go. (Please note, they did not have sex!). It was kind of uncomfortable at first, at least on my end, but by the time it was all said and done, we were laughing. Of course, that was a closed set. J The rest of the day we shot outdoor scenes down by the culvert with Jon and Kylene. Not problems except the bright sun and glaring, but Joe fixed it. He is the man. 9-16-01
Today we shot a couple of scenes I was looking forward too. In the morning we started with Betty (she played Serena's mom in part one) and I knew there was going to be tons of laughter. There was. It was a short scene and didn’t take that long to film. The funny thing was, we HAD to shoot it that morning because the location had been sold.

In the afternoon I had a total blast. I got to be in front of the camera as well. I had to re-write the hitchiker scene with Elana’s broken foot in mind, so I had to add a charcter and I played him. It was so much fun. We also got to goop Elana up really good. The only downer was cleaning up that room after. It was a mess.

Elana did an awesome job for the camera, a real natural.

10-30-01
Tonight we finished up all the scenes involving the house. Poor Felicia, she went through three heavy make up changes and costume changes. It was a heck of a night for her. We also had to re-shoot some stuff, but it all came off very well. A 14 hour night. I’m shocked I made it home, I don’t remember driving it. Everyone was glad to finally finish with the house. The funniest thing, in June it was FREEZING out there when we were doing all the outdoor night shoots, and in November, it was so much warmer. Go figure.

A couple of bad things though, the front deck of the house was soaking wet and very slippery. Rob took a tumble down them and hurt his wrist. He’s fine though, just a little sore. Kylene was two hours late. She hit another deer!

11-1-01
Tonight we shot all of the hell footage. Man, now that was fun. I had to drop the original location, where we shot hell stuff from the first movie, because they had raised their prices several hundred bucks. Nope. So, once again it was a re-write. I rented out a room from the public library. Little did they know, we were actually shooting downstairs in the parking garage. What an errie setting and it was very cool. Once again I got into the action and was being chased around by Felicia weilding the ax. I told her to come at me full speed, and damned if she didn’t do it. I was running backwards and she came at me like an out of control freight train swinginf the ax. A couple of times I thought she might actually connect. No worries, it was a fake ax created by our one and only make up guy Rob Merickel.

Joe got some great dolly shots by sitting down in a desk chair and someone pushing him along. Awesome footage.

We did finish out the night (or should I say early morning) in the room. I’m not going to tell you what we were filming, but it was great to see the expressions on the janitors as they came walking in as we were filming. A long night, but awesome.

11-2-01
Today was the final day. We started out by shooting at my house and then moved on to an office where we shot some more stuff with Warren. He looked so professional. J Then, for the final shots, we went to a hotel room and finished it off. It was funny, because Kylene was supposed to wake up screaming, so we figured we would shoot that last so if the cops were called, we would have time to get out of there.

She screamed very loud.

No cops came.

Scary.

When I finally said “It’s a wrap”, I felt so relieved and sad at the same time. The filming is over, but when you put a year of your life or better into getting the thing shot, you grow close to people and it’s sad in a way when you know you won’t see some of them as much or at all anymore. Nature of the biz.

We all got crazy and took some candid shots with the film we had left and oh my god, I hope people never see some of them, heh heh. We went nuts.

Someone has already asked if I'm going to do a 3. I’m not sure yet, don’t even want to think about it. I was to relish in the fact that we did an awesome job on the sequel and it’s on to editing. I want to thank everyone who was involved in ABOMINATION: THE EVILMAKER II. You are all incredible.