

So we moved a mere few blocks down the street and set up shop at The Ramkat, an awesome music venue in Winston Salem. Myself, Jason Ledford and Thoren Claytor (Amazing Assistant Director) followed director Jaysen Buterin around the large location going through the eight scenes we needed to cover there.
In that same day.
The weight of what we had to pull off in such a tiny amount of time hit like a ton of bricks.

We began with a rock concert that is to be a part of a montage depicting Tommy and Eden growing closer. We had a minor issue with lighting in the beginning but got through it and shot some amazing footage. And yes, the director himself played drums.

We moved on to a bar upstairs. Tommy speaks with the bartender (Lee Troutman) and learns about a bachelorette (Christy Johnson) party with Eden and a clown (Shane Terry). We used green and magenta gels on our lighting and I got all my coverage off the job arm. I love giving the scene an extra bit of movement that adds to the emotional content visually.

Tommy encounters the clown for few terse words in the bathroom. Lighting this was fun. A great friend of mine, DP/Gaffer John Quade (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) joined us for part of the day. It was great getting some insight from him. Incidentally he is in the crowd at the rock concert standing right next to the happy couple.
We moved on to the bathroom entrance where Tommy and Eden almost run into each other. Quick scene but took a hot minute to set up. Just one wide shot, no additional coverage.
We then move on to Tommy and the clown having a coming to terms buddy to buddy discussion over several drinks.

Still at the bar we cover Tommy and Eden hanging out until closing time.

That green backlight is so great.
While we set up the lighting for outside, we left Dalton to second unit the clown strip tease at the bachelorette party.

Outside we covered some more dialog between Tommy, Kinky Dinky and Eden.

We did have a pause in production while the entire crew searched for a prop in a bush, but other than that, all went great.

A great moment was when we used a dummy version of Kinky Dinky that I am quite sure Michael Williams enjoyed chucking down the steps. It looked fantastic! Joh Harp and Soraja Davis’s hard work paid off!!!
Our martini shot for the day and for general production was an awesome GoPro POV shot of the poor clown tumbling down the concrete steps.

So proud of this film and everyone that took part in making it come to life!