THE POISONER PRODUCTION REGISTER

  Holy Smokes!  

  It’s been far too long.  The past month has been a regular FRENZY of activity, both on and off the set.  But here we are, at what by all appearances would seem to be possibly the final weekend of principal photography.  We’ve got two days of shooting planned: Today is the day in which we finish up production of and put to use the astounding, hand-forged handguns Sara has been working like a mad horse to create for us!  The process has been intense and extremely labor intensive, here we see the final stages of production, but the majority of the work happened in Wisconsin last week.  Now the name of the game is chasing out the imperfections and mold seams, painting and shooting these little beauties.  Thrilling!

  This weekend I will travel to Michigan with Sean and Brent and a chunk of our set to re-build in a field and light aflame for our FINAL shot.  Stay tuned…

chrishefner:

Catching up a bit!  These are from a fine day of shooting the Sunday before last.  Our wonderful Alderman came by with some generous donations of food and drink leftover from what must’ve been quite a fundraiser BBQ, so we spent our breaks in good sausage and two kinds of delicious beer on tap!  Thanks John!  Luckily, our dear friend Erik was able to join us and enjoy some of the spoils while helping us out with a rather dusty arrangement for one of our scenes.  Poor Meredith.  

chrishefner:

  Last Sunday was a sheer delight.  Mere and I had spent part of Saturday discussing the scene and gathering props together at Lost Eras, and came away with some real top-shelf stuff!  Two gorgeous tabletop radio speakers and a white fox stole.  Sunday morning, Angelica joined us at the set and put together one of the most shockingly luxurious hairstyles I’ve ever seen in my whole life for M.  Angelica’s talent always astounds me, she’s constantly outdoing herself, she makes things of utter beauty in the medium of hair.  Sara had scored the tremendous chrome microphone you see from a bar near her place in Bridgeport for the day.  Andrew and I spent the morning lighting, and the day’s shoot was just thrilling.  Some of my favorite images yet.  The whole day left me feeling galvanized and beyond excited to share what we’re making with everyone.  We were fortunate enough to be joined by Rob Karlic, who spent the day taking photos of the set.  Check out his colossal images of that and other days on the Poisoner set here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgkarlic/sets/72157629909149511/with/7368762316/

   Two packed days of shooting, back to back!  Sara and I went into the space on Monday to arrange for the coming days of shooting and came up with some really satisfying, simple, effective solutions for our set-ups.  Mere’s scene in which she manipulates hair picked from her brush into tiny vials was a pleasure to shoot, so many wonderful images to find there.  Andrew and I worked together using a strictly daylight lighting scheme to draw out some really nice moments, I think.  Ryan came the next day for a brief scene toward the end of a day that had also included a pretty gorgeous washing machine and a whole lot of lightbulbs.  I don’t think its possible to tire of watching Ryan and Meredith silently interacting in a room.  I may very well have struck gold.

   Both nights, after shooting, I went to look at an apartment and did a lot of furniture measuring.  Once again my real life and the fictional reality I’m spending my life making real became almost indistinguishable when I spend both on and off-set time trying to figure out how to arrange different (but very similar) sets of maroon mohair furniture in very tight spaces.  I’m happy to say that I believe both arrangements were successful.  Or will be.  

  Back to photography after a week or so of set re-configuration and picking up a few hours at our respective (paying) day jobs!  Sara and some trusty volunteers (new and old) joined me in the evenings over the past week to rearrange our walls to prepare for the coming scenes.  Herculean, if beer-fueled efforts indeed!  And triumphant ones!

  Felt wonderful to be back in the thick of it with Meredith, Andrew, Sean and Sara yesterday as we shot a couple of pivotal scenes in our brand new Foyer!  I’d like to show you more pictures than this, but we don’t want to start spoiling things, do we?  We don’t.  Suffice to say that, once again, Cyd Smillie at Arts Alive 45 came through and saved our shoot at the last minute the other night, as the search for that god-forsaken front door proved more difficult and lengthy than expected!  As is often the case with our production, the perfect solution wandered up at the last minute, and for free.  

  Though, it’s worth noting that we worry a bit that calling it a “God-Forsaken” door may not be quite as charmingly abstract as we expect.  Given the subject matter of the scene and the persona for whose appearance the door is an absolute necessity; the difficulty of finding the door, and the fact that Cyd’s phone went BLACK and committed suicide immediately upon photographing it for our consideration gives one pause.  And what of the fact that MY day began with an uncannily similar situation as the one I intended to shoot when I was awakened at an absolutely uncivilized hour by the knocking of an ominous character on my real-life front door?  What does it mean?  

  But, again, we don’t want to spoil things…

  Saturday was a long day of shooting, but we came away with some of my favorite images yet!  In the morning Brent and Andrew assisted me in transporting my mattress and box spring to the set, and we spent the first part of the day dressing and lighting the bedroom.  Mere and R.K. soon joined us upstairs and the rest of the crew worked on props and odds and ends on the first floor.

 Once again allowing the film to shift into slight re-arrangements proved extremely fruitful.  Thanks to my stalwart crew, Mere and I had the time and space to discuss the scenes in depth and continue to develop her character, precipitating in an entirely new scene.  Or so we thought, until a few happy accidents brought the whole arrangement full circle, closer to what was originally imagined than we’d thought possible!  A grand, if chilly day.  Luckily Brent provided a few space heaters, with which Meredith fell immediately in love.  May I have the honor of being the first to present Mr. and Mrs. Heater-Miller.

  The 27th was our leading man R.K. Shuquem’s first day on set!  Thanks to Andrew, we were pre-lit when we got to the set and Mere, R.K. and I made up the entirety of the three-person company that day!  We had a fine time navigating his poor character’s being found in a heap in the hall, and even found we’d accidentally (or at least unconsciously) invoked the ghost of Goya in our arrangements!  

  Our second day of shooting and our first at our beloved Lero!  All of our hard work building and dressing the sets paid off swimmingly in a simple, introductory scene involving Meredith at the public phone in the hallway of her boarding house.  

  I was especially happy with the day’s shoot because we had a special guest extra, my dear friend Laura Lippert.  Sadly, Laura was one day away from moving away from Chicago, and it meant the world to me for her to exit the city through our frame.  Laura is a blindingly talented circus performer who often works with the inimitable Aloft Circus Arts here in town (learn more about them here: http://aloftcircusarts.com/Welcome.html ).  She and her colleague Helena, also known as the Ambidextrous Acrobats, can be seen in my first feature, The Pink Hotel and Laura has also contributed to previous short films of mine.  I’m sad to see her go, but the good news is that she’s only leaving because she’s got a contract with her hometown circus in St. Louis, and will be casting her spell on the lucky citizens there this summer. I plan on visiting and I think you should too.  I had the opportunity to catch up with her another night last week and take some photos of one of her gorgeous acts, in which she performs an aerial dance upon a levitating chair.  A dream!  And so I’m including a photo from that session here as well.

Our shoot went quite well, though beyond Laura we found it impossible to secure a second extra!  The cast and crew pointed out that, in my usual work coveralls and carrying one of the boxes of RADIANT LAMPS we were so generously given by the ReBuilding Exchange, I was more or less already in costume to be Laura & Mere’s building electrician.  Not entirely untrue to reality, when you think about it.  So I’m afraid, by necessity mind you, I had to pull a bit of a Hitchcock.  Andrew and I finished out the day pre-lighting for the next morning, when I would have to shoot without him. Those photos will be forthcoming presently.  But first, check out that wicked auger bit in my drill!  One of one zillion gifts from the Lero, found on-site.  Unreal.

  Our first day of shooting!  And what better place to begin than in the cavernous warmth of the majestic Portage Theatre?  Angelica Rivera of Tigerlilie Salon joined us to style Meredith’s hair while Sara and I set up the scene.  Cyd Smillie of Arts Alive 45 (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Arts-Alive-45/271781272833768) contributed some beautiful linens to our prop list when the table we’d been after for the scene turned out to be unobtainable.  

The name of the game this first day was improvising with what was available, which is not only a fine skill but a strong through-line in our production.  I’m confident that as long as we’re solid in the fundamentals and thrust of our scenes, we can allow the specifics to fall into place when and where they may, resulting in a living and changing production which may avail itself of the mysterious forces of coincidence, chance, restriction and the wonders of PAYING ATTENTION.  This first day was a perfect illustration of that philosophy, because as the day went on and we simply allowed ourselves to inhabit the space we’d been given and find our images within it, some great strides took place in terms of re-working certain structural elements of the narrative.  Exciting improvisations, inspirations, necessities and unmitigated enthusiasm colored the first day like a snappy rose-covered tablecloth!

Also, throughout the day my pal Rob Karlic did us the honor of taking photos while we worked.  His eye is a tremendously keen one, we’ve been extremely fortunate to have him on set often, and I hope you’ll have a look at what he’s come up with on our set and beyond at his flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgkarlic/sets/72157629909149511/with/7114919995/

Last but not least, the gorgeous theatre we had the good fortune to work in that day, The Portage, is not only worth your general attention in the best of times, but is also in a moment of great need.  Alarmingly, it is in peril of being purchased by the Chicago Tabernacle Church and stripped of its identity, history and cultural value.  This, of course, cannot be allowed to happen.  Find out more and learn how you can help at the Save the Portage Facebook page, here: http://www.facebook.com/SaveThePortageTheater

   Holy smokes!  It’s been a while since I’ve been able to update.  Production has officially hit and the schedule has been a tight one, allowing for not much beyond the task at hand.  We’ve been moving forward beautifully, though, and I’m excited to share some photos from the past weeks.

  Here we have a look at our first camera test with our wonderful D.P. Andrew Morgan!  I stood in as an extra while Meredith went through the motions of her scene and Andrew gave the lenses we’ve been so generously lent for the shoot by our friend Tom Deater a spin.  After we finished up the test, Mere and I ran some parallel tests of a performance she’s working up for an upcoming theatrical piece she’ll be making in-tandem with our production.  Her project is a re-working of Hamlet, and I’m terribly excited to see it.  We had a lovely time.

After a quick jaunt out for dinner ingredients, I returned to the Lero to meet with Brent and Sharon for an evening grilling and constructing the set needed on Friday.  A long day, but one with excellent results.