Blood, Sweat and Tears: Adventures in No Budget Movie Making! (Part 2)

The Making of "Red Asphalt": Part 2
by Brian Nelligan

Shooting The Film:
The first day of shooting I had all the actors park at my dad's house and then we carpooled to the location. I didn't want to have like ten cars on the set and my dad's house was pretty close by. I had made a shot list a couple of nights before and this made everything relatively stress free as we rushed through the different setups.

After finishing at the exterior warehouse location we moved to the lonely road (which in the movie plays as just outside the warehouse as well). I shot in order of character's screen time, from least to greatest, so the actors didn't have to wait around to shoot a few parts. The main actor was in pretty much every shot so it didn't seem like he had lower priority.

The truck stunt was taking a long time and we were losing daylight so I had to scrap a few shots but at the end of the day I had what I needed and no one got hurt and we weren't arrested.

Still, we had to shoot one more scene but I had yet to locate an interior warehouse location. Sounds simple enough right?

I tried to shoot in one of the studios at UT but after a big misunderstanding it turned out that I couldn't use the location because I wasn't in the right class yet. In the end I actually used the bottom floor of the building where the studio was and since was late at night and no one was around and it ended up looking convincing.

The thing was I was so rushed just trying to find that last location I didn't have time to make a shot list. (I did however go in the night before and kind of block how the scene would go.) I was worried because at the last second I decided I wanted to have someone in the scene get killed, but I had never tried inserting a fake muzzle flash in post before.

I decided to risk it and just go for it because I thought the payoff would be worth it. Luckily, I later found out the process was pretty easy and there are plenty of tutorials online.

The shoot was a little hectic because I was coming up with setups as we went, but we weren't on such a strict time limit so that helped ease the tension. We finished out the night and even though I was completely drained we had finished shooting the movie!

Good Advice or Things I Learned the Hard Way:

1.) It's important to let your actors know WHEN the audition will be well ahead of time. You'll have a better turn out if they have time to arrange to get off of work or out of class.

2.) Make sure you always have at least TWO fully charged batteries before the shoot. At that location where we were outside in the middle of nowhere I was real lucky because I had only one battery and no spare. I ended up only having to use one but if it ran out we would have had to end the day early and endure the nightmare of arranging a time to shoot that avoided schedule conflicts.

3.) Keep all your gear and props in one place before you take it to go shoot. Make a checklist and make sure it's all there. If you just grab stuff as you remember it you will forget something.

4.) Get permission for your locations. It would have been catastrophic to get kicked off of a location half way through shooting, and even more catastrophic to get ticketed for trespassing.

5.) Have food and drinks for your cast and crew. Working on a movie is very exhausting work. It's not enough to feed them after the shoot, you need to feed them during (unless you're just shooting a couple of hours.)

6.) Make and USE a shot list! This will save your life when you have 100 other things to think about on set.

7.) Have a continuity supervisor. This is a very important job. What good is that beautiful shot if you can't use it because it won't cut together?

8.) Always provide very detailed directions for the cast and crew. You don't want to have them lost and late for your shoot.

9.) Read Judith Weston's "Directing Actors" You don't know how detrimental your direction was until you read this book!

10.) Have FUN. Remember why you're doing this. It will also result in more creative choices and a better film.

That's all for me. Hope you guys enjoy Red Asphalt.

-Brian Nelligan

CLICK HERE TO WATCH RED ASPHALT

Blood, Sweat and Tears: Adventures in No Budget Movie Making!

The Making of "Red Asphalt"
by Brian Nelligan

The Story:
Red Asphalt is a short action film that I made to submit to the new reality show on Fox called "The Lot." I also made this movie to experiment with my visual style and develop the story for a possible feature film.

I first came up with the concept for Red Asphalt in late January 2006 while on vacation from school and was excited about doing something so different from any of my previous films. Up until that point, everything that I had produced was comedy (8 movies in all) so making something based solely on visuals and with very little dialogue became an appealing idea. I would compare it to somebody being a writer their whole life and then one day just taking a wild stab at painting. I wanted to make a good impression on "The Lot" so trying something new seemed kind of risky, but at that point I felt like every indie film was either comedy or drama, just a lot of talking heads, so I just said screw it.

So here I was, a college student with no money or previous genre experience, diving head first into one of the most expensive genres to film for a national television show and the chance at a one million dollar development deal with Steven Fucking Spielberg. Did I mention it was only a little over two weeks until the deadline? How was I going to pull this off?

The Stunts:
I wrote the first draft in about two days and a final the day after. The climactic scene of the film involved the protagonist, Danny, getting tied to a truck with chain and being dragged behind it. Before I held auditions I wanted to be able to tell the actors that the stunt was already tested and completely safe so I started to experiment. (Now keep in mind that I'm a Junior at U.T. at Austin with a 4.0 GPA, magna cum laude, and the dean's honor list.)

So I throw on a few old shirts, an extra pair of pants, some old shoes, grab some rope and tie it to the back of my car. I lie down, hold onto the other end of the rope, and then have my girlfriend drive and drag me down the street. (A task I'm sure that many a girlfriend would cherish!)

Well we stop after about ten feet and my back kinda burns. But no worries, I'm a guy, I can handle it. We do two more test runs of about ten feet before I figure we have enough footage and a good idea of how well this method is working.

I head back inside to change into my normal clothes and then I notice the first shirt is completely shredded on the back, the second has some big holes in it, but the last shirt is still in one peace. After I take off my last shirt my girlfriend gasps and tells me to look at my back in the mirror.

Yup, I'm bleeding. My whole back is red and my shoulder blades are all scratched up.

Time for plan B. The scooter.

It took us the better part of a day to build the scooter. Basically it was just plank of wood about three feet long, one foot wide, and one inch thick with four small wheels attached. We had to make very precise measurements to ensure it wouldn't be visible from above when someone was lying on it. What we ended up with was a kind of bottle shape apparatus so the actor could have a headrest.

That night I had some friends come over and I convinced one of them to try it out. So we head outside and I have him lie on the scooter and hold onto the chain.

The first test run goes well, my friend was freaking out a little but no problems.

We're about to do another run when a car pulls up to the house directly next to where my friend is seemingly chained to my running car. Well a guy and his little daughter climb out of their car watching us and at this point my friend starts screaming to them, "Help! Help me!"

What else can I do but drive away?

As far as I know no one called the police on us. And so a successful test run came only at the expense of a little girl's shattered innocence.

Locations and Casting:
I had never done real location scouting. Before, it was always just a matter of who's house or apartment we could shoot at...but for this movie I needed an interior and exterior of a warehouse and a lonely highway.

My girlfriend and I drove around south Austin for a couple of hours making a list of possible locations and found several exterior warehouses but I was beginning to think that a lonely highway was a thing of the past.

Finally, toward the end of the drive, we found a place that could work.

We were very, very lucky that a strip of road about two or three hundred feet long that connected the north and south bound lanes was coned off by a construction crew. However, we were very, very unlucky that it was covered in loose asphalt that hadnít been tarred to the ground. (Just to skip ahead for a second, I ended up going to the road the day before the shoot armed with a shop broom and swept away about half the length of the road. Let me tell you, sweeping gravel with a shop broom over great distances is not an easy task.)

Location scouting also included trying to find a place to hold auditions. I just needed a quiet place with a small enclosed room. I tried to get a place on the University of Texas campus but they wanted a hundred bucks! Where the hell is my tuition going anyway?

So without a place to audition I went ahead and put up "casting call" flyers all over campus. I got a few replies, but not alot. Without my even knowing my girlfriend printed 120 flyers and stood and handed them out to people she thought would be good for the parts. She also got a few replies, but not alot.

By this time there was just over a week until the deadline and with no place to hold auditions I was starting to panic.

That's when my girlfriend came to the rescue and saved my ass yet again.

She waited outside a study room in her dorm building for two hours to get a room and then waited there until I got out of class. I frantically called and emailed all the actors and asked them to come to the audition later that same day. (I can't imagine how much they must have hated me at that point.)

At the end of the day we had three people audition. A couple of people emailed me saying they couldn't make it so I held another audition the next day but only one of them actually showed up. At least it wasn't hard to cast each part!

So with the actors cast and the stunts prepared we were forced to begin shooting even with one location unsecured. Time was running short and we'd have to be creative.

The fun was about to begin...!

Check back in two days for the conclusion to Brian Nelligan's ON THE SET article on the making of "Red Asphalt."

CLICK HERE TO WATCH RED ASPHALT

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