It was brought to my attention just a few days ago that, Paul Jack, at DoorQ.com, posted a review of "The Sacrifice" in November, called "The Sacrifice (2005) - The Whipped Cream on your Microbudget Sundae".

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but, um...I think it's good...

At any rate, despite criticisms of the sound and other technical aspects of the film, the review is overall terrific! Paul seems to really "get" what we're trying to accomplish with this film and others we've been working on.

Go here to read it: http://www.doorq.com/blog.aspx?b=62

It's been a busy few weeks. After the crowd scene on the 18th, we went back and did some pick-up shots at the same location, since we'd run out of daylight the first time and I decided there needed to be a couple more shots from within the car, and shots of Jonathan looking at the forest. Jeff Delano also allowed himself to be chained to the wrought-iron fence again (as seen in our trailer), to re-do a shot that didn't come out very well last Winter.

We also did some shooting on a dramatic scene with Mrs. Henniker (Claire Curtis). It isn't done, because we could only shoot the parts that didn't involve a truck. She's working on getting the truck out there, so we can finish that up. It's really only three extremely brief shots.

On the 9th, we got permission from the Manchester police to do a scene in the pavilion at Derry Field Park. Erich and I couldn't actually make it to the location until the afternoon we were going to shoot the scene, so I was pleased to find that it was perfect, in terms of the way it looked, and even had lights , which made our night-time shoot infinitely easier.

Less appealling, was the freezing wind that whipped through the pavillion that afternoon. It was dangerously cold, and blew powdered snow everywhere. Even if we could do the scene without getting frostbite, it was likely we wouldn't have any useable sound.

I came close to canceling, but Rob pushed to do the scene, so we met there after dark. Fortunately, the wind had nearly disappeared. It was cold, but not at all as bad as it had been earlier, and we had no trouble with the sound. The footage from the scene looks really nice, although a bit surreal in the light from the pavilion. At one point, Jonathan is supposed to show Nathan a supernatural ball of fire, sitting in his hand. This effect will be done digitally, but we had to illuminate Rob's hand and Cory's face with an orange light. This ended up being accomplished by using a super-bright LED, wrapped in an orange Easter-egg-shaped gel, meant to stick to a window as a decoration.

This past weekend, we returned to the Dover Middle School - now an office building - to shoot a scene in which Laura drops Jonathan off at school, then the police show up. Since this is directly across the street from the Dover police station, and Kevin was wearing a real police uniform that we ordered online, we again got permission, to avoid any accusations of impersonating police officers. By now, unfortunately, our police car magnetic details are looking a bit shabby, and tend to barely hang on the side of the car. Few people would be fooled. But one by-stander was last year, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

The footage looks good, but again we had problems with wind. This may be the only scene we've filmed so far that needs dialog replacement. Ugh.

We're nearly done with all of the outdoor Winter shots. There are some night shots left and a few brief scenes in the parking lot at the clinic, which can hopefully be framed so we don't see the fact that the snow is melting rapidly. If we're lucky, we'll get one more good storm, before the Spring really sets in. Everyone else in New Hampshire will hate us for wishing it, but, hey - this is art!

After the location for the roadblock scene fell through last week, for various reasons, we were starting to get a little worried. This is a major, if not very long, scene in the film, and involves a lot of people. Rob had rounded up a good number of extras, so canceling would have been a major problem. Fortunately, Claire was able to do some scouting around for us, and eventually negotiated the use of a long drive through the woods, leading to the house of her friend, Lydia.

The new location was even better than where we'd originally planned on filming. The only catch was, I'd never been there (although, I had a ROUGH idea where it was), and Claire had to be in Northern Maine for the day. People started showing up in Dover around 9:30am, so it looked, at first, as if we had a chance of launching on time. (I'd planned on caravaning over around 11am and beginning filming shortly after that.)

It didn't work out that way, of course. By the time we had everyone together, including some stragglers, it was past noon. The first attempt at a caravan ended up with me and about half of the cars pulled over on the side of Henry Law Ave., waiting for the second half, which had been stopped by a light. Unfortunately, when the light turned, those cars proceeded to go forward and miss the turn onto Henry Law. Eventually, I took the half I was leading forward, while Erich went back to find the others.

I blew right past the entrance to the drive on Back Road, and had to call Claire on her cell to figure out where I'd missed the turn. That wasn't too complicated, and we found it fairly quickly, after that.

However, the others, having eventually found their way back to my apartment, and met up with Erich, were having problems of their own. They set out, but managed to get split up yet again - I think at the same light that foiled us the first time. Some found their way back to my apartment, but Rob's brother, Chris, and his friend, Sammi, were off in the Outback for a while.

In the meantime, Mark Landry showed up. We already knew he'd be late, due to work, but his arrival at this point just added to the confusion. By the time everyone was finally rounded up and at the location, it was close to 2pm.

In this area, at this time of year, the sun sets around 5:30pm, and really, the lighting starts to look dramatically different about an hour before that. So we had about two hours to get the scene shot. As it was, we went a bit longer than that, so the final shots have the sun a bit low in the sky.

Apart from getting lost, things went relatively smoothly, although the drive was so slick with ice, several of us fell down. Not me, personally, although I had a few close calls (while carrying the camera, no less!), but Kevin Barrett gave us a very dramatic and, I have to say, very funny pratfall while getting out of the "police cruiser". It's all on tape, so viewers will be able to enjoy his suffering in the outtakes. (No, he wasn't actually hurt.)

Rob also brought along his friend, Mike, who's been studying film at school. He ended up being my impromptu Production Assistant for the day, and he was immensely helpful. After the equipment he's been trained to use in his classes, our guerilla setup must have seemed crude, but hopefully he learned something from being on location with us. I certainly wouldn't mind if he joined us again on future filming days.

The footage came out great, although I was dismayed to see that the camera still introduces occasional digital artifacts. It will have to be serviced, if we can track down where to get that done. Fortunately, we still have the Canon XL2, as a backup.

After some juggling of schedules, we finally got Cory, Darin, Lily and Ken's jeep together in Rollinsford on Sunday, to film the Tollend Road scene.

When we'd first scouted out this road, it looked ideal - out of the way, no traffic. But we soon discovered a problem we hadn't anticipated: dogs. More specifically, people walking their dogs. Apparently, everyone for miles around considers this road to be a dog park. We couldn't believe how many cars started pulling into the area under the railroad trestle. They never let up, the entire time we were there.

Fortunately, the cars weren't actually driving down the road, because it would have been impossible to work around that. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Once I'd gotten over my initial despair at the amount of people milling around, we were able to go ahead and film, anyway. The biggest concern was not flying around the corner with the jeep and running some poor dog over, but we managed without any mishaps.

Technically, we ran into some snags. The jeep had been in a collision a couple weeks earlier, so the passenger side door couldn't be opened, which made it difficult for me to get in and out. Also, the back seat couldn't be pushed all the way down, so laying Lily down flat was impossible. And in general, the space was just very cramped to film in, with a lot of background noise from the vehicle.

Lastly, it started snowing pretty heavily at times, so the camera lens kept getting streaked with melting snowflakes (otherwise known as "water").

But despite these minor problems, filming went relatively smoothly, and we got some great footage. When I edited it together on Monday, I was really happy with it. The acting is good, and dramatically I think it works really well. My half-assed attempt at digital effects didn't work out brilliantly, but hopefully that can be remedied.

Kymra and Rob got together with me this weekend to wrap up the last of the scenes in the Derry House front upstairs bedroom - the one we've been using as "Jonathan's room". This was partly so that we could return the paintings Chris Kersey (Rob's brother) loaned us, and partly to allow the room to be used for visiting guests, without having to keep disassembling it. But also, of course, we just wanted to get it done!

Mostly, what was left was the scene in which Laura brings Jonathan back from the clinic, groggy from being drugged - I won't say why, in case there's anybody out there who doesn't already know about this plot twist. She has to tuck him into bed, basically, although there are a couple bits of dialog and action in the scene that are important to the story. Then we did a quick, two-shot scene between the two of them, and that's pretty much it for that room.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get to Laura's other scene in the back bedroom. That would have finished up our use of the upstairs. But we'll get to that soon.

I also had Rob pick up toy that sends a blast of air across the room. We're going to use it to try to blow out the flaming hand, when the robed figure walks outside. (Although, when I edited the footage we have together, that shot didn't look too bad, as it stands.)

On Wednesday, we finally managed to get Rob, Ximon, Kymra and Cory together at Precision Body Arts ( http://www.precisionbodyarts.com ), in Nashua, to film the final clinic scene. I say "finally", because on our first attempt a month ago, we were hit with a blizzard, misplaced our costumes and our syringe, and had to call the whole thing off.

We still haven't found our costumes. Rob and I drove down to Heroes in Lowell, MA., and got a replacement lab coat for Dr. Marshfield, while Claire managed to scrape up a new syringe and some scrubs for Nathan. (Unfortunately, I didn't notice that the scrubs were just tops, until we got there. We had to film all of Cory's shots from the waste up, more or less.)

Precision Body Arts was more than accomodating, allowing us to completely re-arrange one of their rooms and stay until 11:30pm, when we'd tentatively told them we'd be out of their way by about 10pm. The room was small, so I lit it by bouncing the light off the ceiling, and filmed the scene with the camera basically standing in the doorway, except for one shot through the window leading to the next room. But the results were good.

This was a tough scene, with most of it being carried by a frantic Laura and a cooly professional Dr. Marshfield, but the cast pulled it off well, despite being very tired and stretched thin these days.

My one concern is that we got some more digital artifacts in the footage. Again, it wasn't enough to ruin any takes, but obviously, running a cleaning tape through the camera didn't solve the problem. We'll probably have to have the camera serviced, which will cost not only money, but time. Fortunately, we do have the Canon XL2, as back-up.

I haven't made and entry for a while, but we've had three days of filming outside in the snow since the cold weather hit: one just before Christmas, and two this past weekend. (We nearly filmed another major scene, but a snowstorm hit, and driving became so dangerous,I called everyone on the way to the location and cancelled.)

Two of the days we were out in the snow were fairly nice days - mild temperatures without too much wind to kill our sound. The day we filmed Jay Cross driving around on back roads and pulling up to Jamie Picon's house looked beautiful, although the roads were pretty slick. We have several takes in which Jay stops at an intersection, then attempts to pull forward, but ends up spinning his tires. We also discovered that our tape recording heads were dirty on the DVX100 (which is hardly surprising). This caused bizarre digital lines to appear in some shots, but fortunately not often enough to ruin the bulk of the footage. After running a tape-cleaner through the camera, we haven't seen the problem re-appear.

This past Saturday was another nice day, although thankfully overcast. (I'm trying to keep all of our "real life" scenes somewhat gray and muted, to provide a contrast with the brightly colored dream sequences. So far, this has been working well.) We were actually re-doing several shots from last Winter that I wasn't happy with, as well as adding a few new ones. Since the back of Robert Stiefel's house, which we used as the abandoned Corwin House (the one in town; not the one in the woods - there are two now!), doesn't have a bulkhead, we had filmed Rob Kersey being helped out of the bulkhead by Kevin Barrett and Mark Landry at the Derry House, hoping it would be believable that it was the back of the Stiefel house. It wasn't. So we did a bunch of shots at the Stiefel house, framing it so you couldn't tell whether there was a bulkhead there or not. Then we went back to the Derry House on Sunday and did just a couple shots of Rob coming up out of the bulkhead, framing it so you can't see the HOUSE, this time. I haven't edited it yet, but I think it worked well. We'll see.

Apart from the bulkhead shots yesterday, and one miserable shot we had to film after dark, we were able to stay indoors for most of the day, which was good - it was freezing cold outside. The windchill was awful.

Instead, we did several indoor shots of the mysterious robed figure (Kevin Barrett), holding the burning hand of glory. In case I haven't mentioned it before, the hand of glory was a nasty magical invention of the Middle Ages. You take the severed hand of an executed criminal, soak it in wax and light it on fire. (There's more to it than that, of course.) It's supposed to render whoever carries it invisible, in some legends - which is what we're using it for. In other legends, it simply rendered people immobile.

Our hand of glory wasn't made from a real human hand, of course. Ken made it out of plaster of paris, painted appropriately brown and dessicated-looking. We coat the tips of the fingers with rubber cement, which burns very brightly (and smokily) for about ten seconds. This means that our shots have to be done quickly. It also means that the house reeks from it, and the nearby fire alarms have to be disabled. There's also the danger of catching the black robe on fire, since Kevin couldn't see a thing, with the hood drawn down over his face.

The final shot of the evening was the biggest pain in the ass. Kevin was supposed to walk from the front door towards the camera, holding the burning hand. Just as he neared the camera, a gust of wind was supposed to blow the hand out. Well, unfortunately, once the fingers start burning, they don't want to stop, so blowing them out is a challenge. I had Rob standing off to one side, frantically waving a board (our Ouija board prop, in fact) at it. Unfortunately, he sometimes blocked the light we had illuminating the scene, and Kevin had a tendency to list to the side (being blind, and all), causing Rob to chase after him, right into the camera frame. We only got one passable (but not great) shot, before we declared it way too cold out and decided to get back to it some other evening.

After a long period of inactivity, due to illness and other things that came up, we finally got back to filming this past weekend. The scene was meant to be shot during the peak of foliage season, but that ended up not happening, because of a schedule conflict.

Fortunately, we were able to get out into the conservation area before we'd completely lost the season to shoot one of our last three dream sequences. The sun wasn't very cooperative, slipping behind the clouds more often than I wanted, but overall the footage looks good.

On the downside, we had a lot of trouble with sound, due to the fact that I couldn't get the microphone close enough to Rob and David, for a number of shots, and we encountered the same problem with crunching leaves we'd run into in the first film. I had the boys record their lines when they weren't moving, in case I can use that for dubbing, but it may not prove useful.

The other issue we ran into was the fact that the camera batteries didn't last as long as I remember them lasting - perhaps because it was pretty cold. So, we ended up rushing more than I felt comfortable with. But I think we got everything, and the performances were good.

October 1st

"Pick-ups" is the term for shots that need to be re-done later, either because they didn't come out right the first time, or because they were missed. One of the day-time scenes Rob and Kymra and I shot ended up having some problems, largely because I failed to notice that green grass was showing through the windows - the scene was supposed to take place in January!

Fortunately, it was only a couple shots of Rob. Kymra's shots were all fine. So Rob and I spent the early afternoon re-doing them, then threw in a couple new ones for good measure.

Scheduling conflicts are slowing things down a bit right now. We're over the half-way mark for the film, but we need to make sure we get all the shots we need in the Fall, before we lose the foliage.

September 17th

I found out the week previous that my mother had been admitted to the hospital with a very serious condition involving blood-flow to her left foot. There was even the possibility that it would have to be amputated! So Erich and I drove down to see her.

Fortunately, she was doing much better, when we got there, having had some surgery to improve the blood-flow, and was now recuperating at home.

Monday evening, however, as I worked with Kymra and Rob to film the remaining scenes in the Derry House dining room (the housemates are itching to paint the walls), I felt like crap. Initially, I tried to brush it off and concentrate on the scenes, but by late evening, I had a very high fever. I ended up spending the rest of the week out of commission with some kind of flu and a fever that kept peaking at 103.

We did at least finish the scenes we needed to, although Kymra now blames me for passing the flu along to her!