It’s great to be back in Austin working on the creative side of the movie – rather than moving around strips on the production board and trying to figure out how the hell we can get everybody to the right place at the right time. Yesterday, I met with Chase and Craig to go over the details of sets that need to be built and overall production design. The conversation ranged from corrugated metal to which of our friends we could convince to be on the cover of a fake porno magazine. There was also an extended conversation on how best to make a fake Cheetoh’s bag.
We decided to head to Bastrop to check out the warehouse where we’ll be building the sets. Finding a warehouse or studio space has been one of the most difficult aspects of this project. On low-budget movies, you normally don’t build sets. It just isn’t in the budget. I now realize that it’s not really the cost of the sets themselves, but the building you have to find to build them in. My dream was to shoot at Austin Studios, but it just wasn’t meant to be financially. Days and weeks of phone calls later, we finally found a place we could afford (thanks Eric G.). However, the building is in Bastrop (about 40 minutes outside Austin) and it definitely lacks a few important things – like sound proofing and air conditioning.
But, it will put a roof over our heads and give us some space to work. We are going to hopefully minimize some of the downsides by shooting at night, keeping the cast and crew to a minimum and bringing in lots of orange shag carpet and other sound-dampening materials. The big upside is that the building will actually match the exterior location pretty well. We’re planning on using the corrugated metal walls as a design feature. And this movie takes place in the summer… in Texas. People will be sweaty, so we’ll just make that a part of the production design.
Chase spotted this couch on a trash pile behind the building and immediately zeroed in on it. He and Craig grabbed it and it has officially become our first set piece. This movie will be all about scavenging whatever we can get our hands on. In the next week or so we will be putting out the call for donations of assorted odds and ends. Because of the level of detail we want to bring to this world, there’s no way we can do it the traditional Hollywood way – so we will be begging, borrowing and stealing.
We also found this shelf of bones. These are most likely left over from another movie that shot here. Or possibly they were left behind by a serial killer that is prowling the streets of Bastrop. Either way, I took it as a good omen and a nice foreshadowing of the grisly things that will go down in this warehouse very soon.
