We planned on shooting the video over three days beginning October 19th and wrapping up on the 21st. It was perfect timing since Halloween was upon us so there were a lot of options when it came to purchasing a costume for the seagull. Making the costume was TJ and Chad's responsibility. I had been keeping tabs on their progress.
"Chad went to the costume shop today and purchased a couple of things," TJ told me over the phone.
"Cool," I said. "I can't wait to see it."
"He bought an orange, spandex suit and a mask," he said. "The spandex suit covers his entire body. It's like the Green-Man suit, only it's orange."
Interesting, I thought.
"What kind of mask did he buy?" I asked.
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| Designing the costume |
"It's a white mask with a long nose," said TJ. "It looks kind of like a beak. Anyway, we're going to paint the nose yellow."
A little while later, Chad began sending me photos of the stuff he bought. This is going to be much better than I imagined, I thought to myself as I saw the pictures. In the beginning, I thought we would only have something that looked roughly like a seagull. I imagined we would use white trash bags for the wings and some sort of homemade mask. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever expect we'd have something like looked so good! Remember, we call our little "production company" No Budget Productions! In total, Chad spent about $50 on the costume, which was a way bigger budget than Hell Street where we only spent $7!
Chad and TJ decided we were going to make the wings out of cardboard. Chad had a bunch of it around his place. After a band rehearsal, Chad showed me the cardboard wings he'd made. They looked good but then again, it was just cardboard.
"Where are the feathers?" I asked.
We were sitting in his living room and TJ grabbed a pillow he brought over. He held it up and said, "Inside this down pillow. We're gonna tear this sucker apart and glue them on."
"What do they look like?" I asked.
"I don't know," said TJ. "I think they're duck feathers. Let's take a look."
He unzipped the pillow case and pulled out some feathers. They didn't exactly look like seagull feathers. I pointed out that fact.
"That's nothing some spray paint can't fix," said TJ.
He was right about that!
I was happy the costume was coming along nicely. It was one less thing I had to worry about. Now I could work with Lippa and plan the video knowing the costume would be ready to go for the shoot.
We spent many long hours planning the video in Lippa's basement. I love working with him on videos. On my own I can come up with some pretty good ideas but once you a little Lippa to the mix, look out! We're unstoppable!
Lippa and I work very well together. I'm more of a "big picture" kind of guy and Lippa is a detail-oriented person. We sat in his basement and talked our way through the video. Originally, we were only going to have a couple of chase scenes with the seagull. Time was our enemy, we only had so much of it to get all of the footage we needed. We had other challenges too like battery-life on the camera. We learned from filming Hell Street that if we shot in high-definition, the battery on his camera only lasted for about twenty minutes.
"What are the other setting for your camera?" I asked.
"Well, there's VGA, which, according to the manual, the battery should last for two hours if we use that mode," he said.
"Perfect," I said. "Let's use that setting. Do you think it will work?"
"Yeah," he said as he pulled up a file on his computer. The month before, we took a little road trip up to Bridgton with my son and hiked up Hawk Mountain (it's an annual tradition that my son and I climb the mountain). He brought his camera along and snapped a few photos. "Check this out," he said. "I took a short video while we were on the mountain. This is what it looks like on the VGA setting."
He played the video for me and it looked just as good as the high-definition setting. It was one less thing to worry about during filming.
"Okay, VGA it is," I said. "Now for the chase scenes. Here's what I'm thinking. We have three all together plus the dream sequence and the parking lot scene."
"Parking lot scene?" he asked.
"Yeah, me and Bubba will drive up in my car to the Willard Beach parking lot," I said. "We'll have a short dialog. Bubba will tell me about his crazy dream the night before where the seagull is chasing him."
"Maybe you guys can be eating french fries and Bubba starts throwing them out the window and Chad, as the seagull, starts picking them up," said Lippa.
"That sounds good," I said. "Bubba doesn't notice him though. At the end of our conversation, which isn't going to be too long, he notices the seagull from his dream and it starts chasing him through the parking lot. That's when the music cuts in."
"Cool," said Lippa. "How are we going to use TJ in the video?"
"I don't know," I said. "We could feature him playing guitar in the studio."
Lippa stroked his chin and smiled. "What if TJ walked on to a couple of scenes playing a guitar? You know, like in the background."
"What if he was a blind guitar player?" I suggested. "Put some sunglasses on him and have the seagull chase Bubba around him and TJ doesn't really know what's going on."
"I like it," said Lippa.
"We will have him in every chase scene," I said, "as the blind guy."
Note: After Lippa filled TJ in on the plans for him in the video, TJ bought a horse mask and told us he would wear that instead of the sunglasses. It was a stroke of creative genius as far as I'm concerned!
"Let's have him in the dream sequence too," said Lippa.
Immediately an idea caught me. "Yeah, because if he's in the dream, maybe the whole video is a dream. We can keep the audience guessing. At the end of the video, after the shit scene, we can have Bubba wake up and the seagull is staring at him through his bedroom window."
"Or the seagull could come out of a closet or something like that," suggested Lippa.
"Okay, let's call that an alternative ending in case we don't have time to film it," I said.
Then we went back to planning the chase scenes.
The first day of filming was a short one. We went to the studio around noon time and began setting up. When TJ bought the horse mask, he also bought a strobe light for Halloween so naturally, we decided to use it in the video. I had this image of a dark room with a strobe light just on TJ"s guitar as he played along to the beginning of song as soon as the music kicked in so we filmed it. After, TJ said:
"You should get a shot of me playing the guitar for a couple of seconds and then freeze it and I'll put on the horse mask and then freeze it and I will be normal again."
We shot some weird footage with the horse mask and then moved on to Bubba. We had him lip sync in front of the camera with the strobe light in his face. I used quite a bit of this footage in the final mix. Then we had him play drums while lip syncing.
One of the scenes, which we ended up deciding not to film included Bubba riding on a tandem bike with the seagull. We had it all planned out. We knew the different camera angles and everything but there were two problems. The first one was Bubba had never rode a tandem bike before and he would have to support all of Chad's weight. The second problem was the wings on the seagull costume. The way the wings were designed, Chad wouldn't have his hands free to hold on to the handle bars. All I could picture was Chad getting hurt doing the scene although Chad insisted he wouldn't get hurt. After a quick ride on the tandem bike with Bubba to the corner of the street and back on the day of filming (I was the guinea pig who rode on the back), I decided it wasn't worth the risk. Somebody would get hurt.
"We gotta cut the bike scene," I said.
"What are we going to do in it's place?" asked Chad.
"Don't worry, I have a Plan B," I said. "We'll just film a different chase scene. Maybe we'll go to the lighthouse or something."
"There's plenty of places in South Portland where we can film," said TJ.
"We'll go to the beach as planned, film the dream sequence and then wing it," said Lippa. He paused. "No pun intended."
Before I go any further, I must tell you that we worked like a well-oiled machine. Everyone was on their A-Game during the whole shoot. We had a couple of obstacles to overcome, the first one being that we had to cut a major scene the day of filming. The second obstacle was we had to bring along my friend, Cap, for part of the shoot.
We planned on being up at the ass-crack of dawn and getting started at nine o'clock in the morning. I set my alarm and got up around six thirty. I got out of bed and took a shower. The door to my apartment was unlocked (an oversight on my part) and my friend, Cap, walked in around seven. I didn't hear him because I was in the shower. When I got out of the shower, I went into my room and got dressed. I heard someone stirring in the kitchen. Since my girlfriend was sleeping in the bed, I knew it wasn't her. I went into the living room after throwing on some clothes and Cap was sitting in the chair.
"Holy shit," I said only half-surprised. "You scared me, man. What are you doing here so early?"
"I came to see what you guys were up to," he said.
I could smell the night before on him. It smelled like beer and cigarettes.
"Not too much at this hour of the day," I replied. "Listen Cap, I'm getting ready to shoot a video today for Bubba and the Government Cheeze so I'm gonna be heading out in a few minutes."
"Oh, like the one where Bubba dressed up like the devil?" he asked.
"Kind of," I said.
"Cool," he said. "Can I join you?"
I hesitated at first but then I said he could come along. I warned him that it might be boring because we were real serious about filming the video.
"Do you have any beer?" he asked.
"I think there's a couple of Coors Light in the fridge," I said. "Help yourself."
"Don't mind if I do," said Cap as he grabbed the two beers.
I squeezed him, Lippa and Bubba into my Chevy Cobalt (the same one as in the video) and it was off to Chad's house to start our day. Amazingly enough, we were right on time.
We went to Willard Beach first and shot the dream sequence. Chad stepped out of TJ's car in full costume. It was hilarious. We ran into a few people on our way to the scene and I wasn't too surprised by their reactions. It was a mixture of 'What-the-fuck' and 'are you guys really doing this'. I suppose it helped that we were carrying equipment so people knew we were shooting a video. A couple of passer-by's wanted a photo of them with the seagull. Chad was happy to oblige them. Imagine if you were out walking your dog on the beach and you saw a man in a giant seagull outfit bright and early on a Sunday morning. What would you do? I'd want a picture with him too!
At this point, the vision Lippa and I had for the video morphed into something greater. The one thing I've learned about directing and producing is planning only takes you so far. It's the talent that makes it all work. Everybody had ideas (even Cap threw in one or two) and we worked it all into the video! It was during filming that I realized how valuable it is to listen to everyone's ideas instead of just bulldozing them with mine. My ideas were good but when you put our five heads together, our ideas are great! Maybe even Legendary!
Since we scrapped the tandem bike scene, we knew we had to come up with some other footage. We walked back up to the cars, shot some additional dream sequence footage on the pathway and then we shot the scene where Bubba is eating lunch near where we parked. We knew about the lunch scene but we weren't sure exactly where we were going to film it until I said, "What about right here?"
"It's got a bench," said Lippa. "This spot is as good as any."
After we filmed that scene, TJ suggested we walk around the corner and film a scene at one of the old fort sites at SMCC (Southern Maine Community College). We planned that scene on the fly and filmed it.
"What's next?" asked Bubba.
"Let's go to the lighthouse at Bug Light and film there," TJ suggested.
"Sounds good," I said.
We loaded up the cars and drove to Bug Light. As we drove to the parking area at the lighthouse, I noticed two porta-potties were set up.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked Lippa who was riding with me (TJ, Chad and Bubba were riding with TJ).
"Yes," he said.
I pulled the car over and parked. A second later TJ pulled in behind me. Before I could say anything, TJ said, "We gotta film the porta-potties."
"We'll have Bubba come out of one and the seagull will come out of the other," said Lippa.
"Oh and I'll have some toilet paper hanging out of the back of my pants," said Bubba.
"I'll put on the horse mask and stand between the two toilets," said TJ.
"Perfect," I said.
We planned the scene and filmed it in one take. Then we walked up to the grassy hill and planned another scene. The weather was perfect. It was a sunny October day with only a few clouds in an otherwise perfect blue sky. There was a couple flying a kite. We had Bubba run past them. The people barely noticed we were there!
Afterwards, we decided to go to Millcreek Park and film around the gazebo there. We ran into a young couple and their friend who asked what we were doing. We quickly explained what we were doing and asked if the girl wanted to be in the video. She said yes and then we went about our business of filming the chase scene in Millcreek Park.
On our way back to the cars, we noticed a bus stop. I don't remember who but somebody suggested we film a scene there. Why not? We were way ahead of schedule! So we filmed it.
We wrapped filming around noon (the Patriots were playing in the afternoon so we had to break for the game). We reconvened later that evening to film the infamous shit scene. I wrote a few lines for the scene and then Bubba and I improvised the rest (Bubba has a difficult time remembering lines).
While we were shooting the conversation between Bubba and I, our little "fireside" chat, TJ and Chad were mixing up some fake seagull shit, five gallons worth so to speak! We put a bag of oatmeal, a few cups of flour and a whole bunch of water and mixed it up in Chad's kitchen. TJ took a maxi-pad, applied some ketchup to it and threw it in the mixture.
"That should gross Bubba out," laughed TJ.
"Let's do this scene," I said as we headed back outside to film the grand finale.
The shit scene was so funny, I started laughing as soon as TJ started pouring the bucket of fake poop over Bubba's head. I'm laughing right now as I'm writing about it! After Lippa yelled "Cut!", we all brought out in roaring laughter! I knew this video was going to be great as soon as the seagull shit started pouring over Bubba. Epic. Isn't that what the young folks say?
TJ wanted to edit my laugh out but I said we were keeping it. If Bubba ever got shit on by a bird and I saw it, I'd laugh my ass off! That's how I figured it. My laugh was authentic. I would've done that in real life, you know.
After we wrapped for the evening, the shit scene was the one scene we wanted to watch first. We were all dying to see it. We didn't film any of the video with sound (we used Bubba's phone, which you can see clearly in the last scene on the table between us, to capture the audio for the video). We filmed it that way to save on camera battery-life and to hopefully make the files smaller for editing. Watching the shit scene without sound was still funny. We all laughed like schoolchildren as Bubba got "shit on". It was so fucking funny!
The next day, we were at it early in the morning. At nine o'clock, Chad and TJ met Lippa, Bubba and I at the Willard Beach parking lot where we filmed the opening sequence. Chad arrived in full costume driving his blue station wagon. Bubba filmed a shot of that for the "Behind the Scenes" video we put together. Since Chad was already in costume, we decided to film the scene in reverse. We started with Chad picking up the chips Bubba was throwing out the window and then went to the chase scene around the parking lot. We added the part with Chad jumping off the top of his car on the fly, winging it so to speak.
Once we filmed the seagull scenes, we filmed the scene with Bubba and I in the car talking. I wrote the dialog for the scene and tried to get Bubba to memorize his lines (remember, he has problems with that) but it wasn't working so we wrote them down in a notebook for Bubba to read from. I held it in my lap so it was out of view of the camera. We filmed the scene with him talking and then, because we only have one camera, we set up the scene with my lines. Finally, we filmed the scene of Bubba and I driving in to the parking lot last.
When we were finished, I suggested to Lippa that he film some filler shots of the beach so we did that before we left. By the time we were finished around eleven o'clock Monday morning, all of us were tired campers. Bubba was exhausted from all of the running we made him do.
"My muscles are all sore," he said. "I think I lost a few pounds."
It was true, the old Bub'ster got quite the workout over the course of two days.
We tried to film the end scene with Bubba waking up from a dream but at that point, we were all to worn out to give it any effort. The shot turned out like shit and it was the first thing we cut in the editing process.
"It looks like shit," I told Lippa. "I didn't even bother."
"I was fucking tired by that point," he said. "My feet were burning from standing up all day. I think I went home and crashed right after you dropped me off."
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| Chad took this photo and I used it in the video |
Once filming was complete, all that was left to do was edit the footage. I was anxious to get going on the editing process. I knew exactly how complicated it was going to be and I knew we needed to get a head-start on it quickly in order to have the video out by November 15th, a date we arbitrarily set as a goal. I was confident it would be done much sooner because once I get engrossed in a project, I go all out until it's completed.
We didn't use any sound when recording the video. Instead, we decided to use the microphone from Bubba's iPhone to record any audio we needed for the video. For the scenes with sound, I had to sync them with the audio files Bubba recorded on his phone. I also had to find a couple of sound effects like wind, seagulls and the dream sequence intro noise. Adding sound and sound effects were the most complicated part of the process so I did that part first. Since we were all waiting on pins and needles for the shit scene, I put that one together first. (I added the sound of fire crackling later though.)
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| The end result |
I showed everyone the shit scene as soon as I finished it. It was by far my favorite part of the video! Even when I show it to people now, I still wait with anticipation for this scene! I've been even known to shush people when the music stops and everyone thinks it's over! 'Wait a second,' I tell them, 'there's more!'
While I was tooling around with the opening and ending scenes, Lippa was hard at work editing some of the chase scenes. He'd never used Windows MovieMaker but when I showed him some basic editing tools, he was able to pick it up right away. He edited most of the chase scenes and the dream sequence on the beach (all I did was add sound effects and the Benny Hill music). I was impressed with his editing skills though I was not surprised. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew once I showed him a little bit about editing, he would do an awesome job. It worked so well with the two of us editing that we had the video done more than a week ahead of schedule!
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