Empty Production Notes
Saturday, August 6, 2005
Mission Beach, shooting begins today. Ramon along with Production Assistants Jesse Vasquez and Casper Rangel, also BTS Camera Mirna Vasquez waits for other crewmembers to arrive. Ryan Jurgensmier and Director of Photography Andy Jacques are next to arriving. After a few more minutes Soojin Um arrives along with Actor Chad Zuber. Shooting begins in a public restroom followed by some parking lot scenes.
For the most part shooting is a success and everything stays on schedule even through the tough challenges of shooting in an uncontrollable location like a beach public restroom.
Next a few more members arrive including Christina Vergara and Justin Guisinger who will play background roles. The production moves a few blocks down the beach to the next location. Shooting is challenging with many variables slowing things down. Mainly because of pedestrians walking in and out of the shooting locations.
Sunday August 7, 2005:
Downtown San Diego, Driver Chris Redondo and Ramon meet Andy Jacques to shoot some B-Roll that is needed for the movie. Everything goes well and they later drive to City Heights to continue the day’s schedule.
Crew members later included Producer Brandon Cottrell, Jill Bulger, Jesse, Casper, Mirna, Ramon, Andy, a few background actors and Actors Chad Zuber and Nick Hopping.
The production faces its first challenge and obstacle when shooting outside of Murphy’s Convenience Store is disallowed because permission was not granted prior to the productions arrival. A timely mistake made by Ramon. Production halts but swiftly moves to 44 th Street near Ramon’s house. After last minute arrangements shooting continues at a different convenience store. All is well for the time being and everyone breaks for lunch.
After a calming lunch the crew meets up at the next location outside of Elias Rivera’s house. It is Actor Asmar Muhammad’s first day to the production and he does a great job. Minus a few small challenges and frustrations, shooting goes well and all shots are completed. Hallelujah after the first weekend of production.
Saturday August 13, 2005:
The Vasquez Residence, City Heights, our central location and headquarters, the crew meets up at 5:30pm with a few additions, New P.A.’s Phil and Ashley, and sets up for the shoot in Jesse’s room.
Cast & Crew included Chad, Nick, Andy, Jill, Brandon, Ramon, Mirna, Jesse, Casper, Ryan. And later Asmar & Chardá.
Lighting becomes a problem with the shots taking place in such a small cramped room. A.D. for the day, Ryan helps organize the crew while Brandon overlooks the production and sets up for the next couple of shots.
Later Brandon and Andy setup Actor Asmar’s truck for the following interior scenes. After a small break the crew move onto the truck. This is a challenging process in working with minimal light and tight camera setups for the truck dialogue. Assistant D.P. Jill Bulger works the camera. After handling each actors dialogue, one at a time, the crew wraps for the night after some overtime hours.
Sunday August 14, 2005:
Lemon Grove, CA 3PM. Another huge challenge to overcome. An actor from Riverside doesn’t make it to the shoot and the crew is at the shooting location ready to go. It’s a tough situation but the crew is forced to improvise as best as possible. In the script the character of “Duro” is supposed to be in the scene, this character was to be a side role but as a reoccurring character from another of Vasquez’s shorts. On the spot the crew decides to replace the actor with fellow Actor John Diggs. John was also here to play a reoccurring role from another short. After getting situated and some rehearsing, John does a smashing job in the role to kill any thoughts of ever doing a re-shoot with the original actor.
Cast & Crew included Chad, Nick, (newbies) John Diggs and Andrew Plein, Andy, Jill, Brandon, Ramon, Mirna, Jesse, Rafay. And later Asmar, his brother Bazil and Chardá.
After a final wrap of the scene the crew packs it up and heads back to headquarters, the Vasquez Residence. The scene is to involve Asmar and a friend in a short dialogue scene on the porch. This goes extremely well and the crew moves quickly to the next scene.
Some pick-up shots of Asmar’s truck driving down the street are done. The final scene for the night is to be a van and a bunch of empty boxes setup for the scene where characters Derek and Paul load up from a house robbery. This takes a short time and after this the crew wraps after ANOTHER night of overtime.
The second weekend is complete.
Saturday August 20, 2005:
The crew meets at 9AM at D.P. Andy’s house in Poway, CA for setup and shooting to start at 9:30. The scene will be one of the hardest to shoot in the script, the dining room scene that basically bridges the movie to the end and into the final moments.
Cast & Crew included Chad, Nick, Andy, Jill, Brandon, Ramon, Mirna, Jesse and a few of Andy’s roommates (go Slater!).
First Ramon and Actors Nick and Chad go over the scene beat by beat to get timing and reactions down, in the meantime the rest of the crew starts clearing out the kitchen and blacking windows. After blacking out all the windows and getting the dining room ready, the crew attempts to begin shooting.
Lighting became a bigger problem than they had anticipated and shooting delayed a bit much into the hours. To get proper sound and lighting all windows and doors had to be shut. This was a bit challenging on a hot day in Poway.
Finally by noon or so the crew began shooting pieces of the scenes. Over the next couple of hours they completed the shots required with everyone’s patience and cooperation.
A skeleton crew moves on to a small pickup, then to shoot the robbery scene at headquarters, The Vasquez Residence, before wrapping for the day. This time surprisingly on schedule.
Sunday August 21. 2005:
San Diego, CA the crew meets up and 11AM at the Warehouse location. This is made possible by friend of Ramon’s Jason Stratton. This will be the long awaited warehouse scene where we will see the character of “Bobby” for the first time, played by Actor Laurence Brown.
Cast & Crew included Chad, Nick, Laurence, Chris Redondo, Andy, Jill, Brandon, Ramon, Mirna, Jesse, Casper, 2 of Jesse’s friends to be backgrounds and P.A.’s, and Jason to run the forklift.
The day started with a few pick-up shots of Laurence arriving and leaving in a BMW convertible. The car provided by close friend of Ramon’s Chris Redondo. After a few minutes the crew moved into the warehouse to begin the harder stuff.
The shoot began with shots of the 3 actors, Laurence, Chad and Nick strolling through the warehouse with the warehouse backgrounds. Then they moved on to a few dialogue shots and then pick-ups to end the day.
Overall things went great and the crew wrapped again on schedule. Plans were to shoot another couple scenes later that night but the crew was simply not prepared so everyone wrapped to plan better for the following weekend.
Saturday August 27, 2005:
Poway, CA – Andy’s House, a small crew meets up for the afternoon’s shoot in Ramona, CA. The scene was to be the “Midwest Looking Area” that also bridges the story from beginning to end. Ramon’s initial idea was to drive East on Interstate 8 past the mountains. Ramon and Andy spoke ahead of time and decided to pursue a location closer to home.
Cast & Crew included Chad, Ramon, Mirna, Ryan & Andy.
After loading up on food and water (for the long drive) the crew head for the mountains toward Ramona. After a few miles of driving the crew had to stop near the side of the road because the car Ramon was driving started acting up and showing transmission problems. The crew decided not to waste any further time and they all packed into Ryan’s car and drove off, leaving the other car to be picked up on the way back.
After cruising the Ramona area they decided to head over toward Julian and Santa Ysabel. There they found a nice stretch of straight, flat high way sufficient for what Ramon was looking for.
They began by getting B-Roll footage of the road area and of cars that drove by. After this Chad and Ryan drove off down the road to get some exterior shots of the car as Andy and Ramon shot from the side of the road. This went on for a while till finally they moved on to interior shots from in the car. After getting a few extra footage of the Santa Ysabel Mission, they headed back to pick up Ryan and Mirna to head back home.
After the drive back to Poway, and after picking up the other car, the crew headed to the Clairemont area to get a few B-Roll shots of the freeway. Finally they breaked for a long lunch to later meet up at Ramon’s in City Heights.
After everyone met up at Ramon’s the crew began to setup for the infamous “gun shot scene” which would be one of the more complicated shoots.
Crew at this point included Chad, Nick, Andy, Jill, Brandon, Ramon, Mirna, Jesse, Asmar and Chardá.
Lighting, sound and controlling the back alley location would become tough and slowed the production down a substantial amount. As Brandon would later put it, “shooting at night was an unanticipated slow down that basically took twice as much time as a day shoot, no matter how well it was planned..”
After a ton of takes from every shot everyone prepped and got “fired up” for the final challenge being the blood splatter on Chad’s back from the gun shot. Jill and Mirna had pre-made the stage blood and after a bunch of practice toss at a cardboard box, Jill was ready to “DO IT, DO IT!”
Overall everything went well and the crew spent a couple hours of overtime on a well shot scene. And that was just Saturday.
Sunday August 28, 2005:
Everyone meets up at Ramon’s house again for the first part of the shoot, the Jail Cell scene.
Cast & Crew included Chad, Laurence, Andy, Jill, Brandon, Ramon, Mirna, and Jesse.
The jail cell set had been built in Ramon’s Dad’s garage during the week by Ramon Vasquez Sr., Ramon and Brandon. Over a few days they emptied the place out and painted the set. Then after a shopping spree at Home Depot they put together the other pieces for the set like the bench, the wall and the toilet.
Shooting in the garage was a tough cookie with the heat. The crew employed fans to blow air in between takes to keep the area cool.
The shots were relatively easy to complete and after a few hours the crew packed it up to head to the next location in Carlsbad, CA.
After a long drive from Ramon’s house, everyone met up at the location, a law office provided by Jill’s boyfriend Matt. Matt would also serve as a background role in the office scene. This was to be the infamous “Bobby’s Office” scene. Another scene where the crew would have the actors brandish a gun.
The scenes were lit and shot pretty well with no major problems. Lighting was a bit tricky in the tight office but not too bad. After this the rest of the crew stepped outside to leave Andy, Laurence and Ramon to get the last needed pick-up shots of the bullet discharging from the gun.
The idea was to have Laurence snap the slide back to eject one bullet and then empty the clip, leaving the character with an “Empty” gun, hence the movie title.
After two takes they called it a wrap for the rest of the weekend. This made another successful weekend leaving only one final scene to shoot, the CASINO.
Saturday September 3, 2005
Finally the crew has come to the final day of shooting after a grilling month of hard work.
Mirna, Jesse and Ramon started the setup the night before and then continued early Saturday morning. After making the place look decent enough to start, slowly some extras and others started to show up.
1:00PM to 1:30PM, most of the crew and many extras arrive to begin shooting. It’s almost a full house and the crew gets ready to start. The day began a little tough, because of uncontrollable circumstances; Asmar could not make it until later. This forced the crew to find a series of shots that could be done without Asmar, so as to not waste the time of the extra’s.
Cast and Crew would include Chad, Asmar, Laurence, Nick, Andy, Jill, Mirna, Ramon, Jesse, Casper, Chardá, Rafay and many extras.
They started by filming the conversation between characters Derek and Bobby at the bar. After several angles and many takes everyone started getting restless and bored with the repetitiveness. Also the heat was always a factor that slowed things down. With the use of fans the set was bearable in between takes.
Asmar arrived shortly after this allowing the crew to get more shots of the room to utilize the extras in the room. After getting many wides and mediums of the room the crew moved on to some individual shots of the characters at the gaming tables. After hours of shooting everyone finally breaked for lunch.
During the lunch Ramon and a few crew members set-up to get a quick piece of dialogue between characters Paul, the Doorman and a Casino Girl. This was a little weird with the lighting but after a few takes and 2 angles it was done.
Later the crew completed a few more wides and short dialogue shots that could allow the extras to leave. Later in the night Jill, Ramon and Chad completed a small bathroom scene and an audio pick-up from another scene with Nick.
The entire day was a challenge to manage, which Brandon could tell anyone about, but everyone tried their best. The variations in people’s schedules made for a tough shoot. It became a bit unpredictable at times and shots could not be done in an efficient order. With folks wanting to leave early and shots not completed yet, the crew had to scramble around to accommodate the areas that needed attention first. Because of these challenges the crew was not able to complete all the shots that the scene required. Though enough shots were completed that could cover for others. Overall the day went “alright” with many positives but a few critical negatives.
On to the post-production stage.