Post-production

The video and sound editing were a team effort by Disco, Adrian, and Achilles.  It was a challenge to cut our footage to fit the 5-minute limit, but we're all happy with the final edit.  The score was played by Jonathan Cestero, who shares a love of both Midas Touch and Miles Davis.  (His score was recorded in my car just before a gig.)

We hope Sam and the folks at Dogfish Head enjoy our collective effort to contribute to their festival.  Cheers!

Production

Because we had a character appearing by video chat (supposedly), we shot his scene first to play it on the phone later.  We went to a parking garage roof so he would appear to be randomly in the sky.

The owner of downtown Orlando's Ichiban Sushi allowed us a few hours, between lunch and dinner on Valentine's Day, to shoot the opening and closing scenes.  She was especially nice to do so, and the setting adds a lot to our scene.

The bulk of the film takes place at a bar in the main character's imagination. We spent many, many hours at Redlight Redlight.  And then, we spent two days shooting there.  It's my personal favorite bar anywhere, and has been the site of much Dogfish Head enjoyment.

The Redlight Redlight staff could not be more accomodating.  Endless thanks for all their contributions.

Pre-production

With a skeleton crew, each of us was treated to multiple hyphens in our titles.  The writer-director is a storyboard artist, who also builds props, and is now a producer.  The other producer is an actor and editor, and teaches at a film school, and so on. 

The storyboards and script shaped production.  Even though they vary from the final cut, their influence is clear.

Some shots were translated into photo-boards, fitting the drawings to our locations, or to test visual effects.

 
One official tap handle was reproduced in plastic to create a row of them, so the main character could surmise he was in a heavenly bar.

Inception

No, not that one.  This is about our film.

The team that put "Wake Up Call" together has been looking for the right project to collaborate on.  With the discovery of the short-film festival held by the director's favorite craft brewery, that opportunity presented itself.

It might seem unlikely, but it's based on a true story.  The first act is pulled, nearly verbatim, from an actual birthday dinner chat.  The rest of it skews a little hypothetical. 

Our script's first draft is dated January 13, 2011.  Over the course of six weeks, the crew would commit to a legitimate production effort: producing storyboards, custom-building props, securing locations and recording gear, shooting, and editing.  Through the generosity of local business-owners, we would be allowed to shoot in a nice restaurant and bar, meaning all our scouting trips would at least taste really good.

Coming up is a summary of the three basic stages of our production.