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"Die For A Life" Behind The Scenes |
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Film Sets & Locations:
At the beginning, the choices for believable sets
for this type of movie with such a low budget were limited but you would be
suprised as to what you can put together with a little innovation,
a few clever contacts and maybe a little luck over time. Many people
and even organizations are very willing to give you they're time if
you explain what your trying to do. Of course having the local police
department behind you doesn't hurt when it comes to opening up a few
additonal doors either. I got approval to film inside the local
police station with actual officers and was also given the use of officers
with police cars in other locations nearby, and even an ambulance for various
scenes when needed. But then to get that type of approval, be
prepared to get to know your board of directors. Of course if money is no
object, then this is a non issue like most things. Keeping costs down was
not a matter of a choice because there was none. So finding the right sets
and utilizing every resource to come up with things needed to make the
scenes realistic was ten times more difficult for this project.
But with many of those things in place through a ton of research and leg
work, it made all the difference and without them, some of the more
important scenes could not have been accomplished.
One of the sets turned out to
be a dream come true. I achieved the accessability to a 5 or 6 acre plot of land that contained
over 20 factory buildings from a chemical plant that had been shut down
for several years. This place was better than a ready made hollywood
set.(See photos to the left at the top) I couldn't have asked for a more perfect and
fruitful location. And the whole thing came
complete with my own security guards. :)
Other locations included
shooting in the streets of Manhatten and off the observation deck of the Empire State Building
which is how the simulated helicopter arial effects of New York City in the
opening credits of the movie were achieved. Several New York State
locations were used as well. We did shooting at Liberty State Park in
Jersey City and many other Jersey towns such as Vernon, Garrison,
Lyndhurst, Paramus, Newark, Alpine, Hoboken and Guttenberg.
For a special tribute to one of the more meaningful
shoot locations for "Die For A Life", click HERE and read about how the video that was
taken of the World Trade Center in New York turned out
to be a whole lot more than just a scene for the
movie.
Props:
Several props were needed in
the making of this film not the least of which were guns. It's a funny thing, but at the time
the film was being shot(no pun intended), it was impossible to find a toy gun in a Toys R
Us or any other store for that matter. They
had just recently been banned. Today, they're acceptable again and actually
almost revered. Go figure. Ultimately we wound up with BB guns and a
few repainted and reworked authentic looking cap guns. Another important
prop was the focal point item that being a coin die. This had to be
specially made since access to an actual die was not possible. A special
rubber mould was manufactured for the making of this most important
prop.
Then there was the fight scene
between two of the characters, Reese & the French connection. In this scene, a glass table
needed to be smashed and the glass had to look real. For this, we went
back to the old time recipe of sugar glass. Cooked and poured onto
sheets and cut to size. Once dried, it was clear and hard and when broken
made an absolute mess! Catherine Molitor and Jean Louis Pedat will
tell you with conviction since it took nearly two hours to clean
up the pieces from Catherine's apartment floor in her New York flat where the
scene was shot. Among some of the other props were various signs
that needed to be made, an old Army compass and the coin for which the
die was to be a counterfiet of. The coin was a real very rare 1895 Silver Dollar(see photo left) that was actually worth nearly 8,000 dollars on loan to me
by a very trusting friend in the
business.
How the police helped make the movie come
together:
There were many highlight
scenes that made this movie interesting to watch. Some of those included an automobile
chase, outdoor foot chase scenes shot in the wooded trails of Alpine &
Vernon, New Jersey, a climactic fight scene in a New York City apartment
ultimately ending up in one of the characters being killed off and a
dramatic gun shooting scene at the abandaned factory warehouse. But one scene in
particular that I will share the details of with you was the fast
action police car bust that took place on the grounds of the factory
complex.
It was necessary to make this
scene as believable as possible and under normal circumstances, most movie productions have
terrific budgets which makes that absolutely no object. As
mentioned before, that was not the case for this project. This project was
to be nothing more than an experiment to create a platform for the
writing of a music soundtrack. There was no initial intention to put
overwhelming amounts of time into the scenes for this movie. But it became
obvious over time that once the eliments were available, the tools were
there to do a much better job than had first been anticipated. Such was the
case with the police bust scene at the factory complex. In this scene,
we needed 2 police cars headed by a detective's unmarked car to come
barging into the complex just in the nick of time to catch Ray Karros,
the main bad guy trying to escape in his Jaguar. While I would love to
pretend that we had 40 thousand dollar automobiles to destroy for
this film, I have to admit that the sports cars that were used were cherished
possesions of the people closest to the making of the movie. Therefore,
props were set up so that the Jag was forced to crash into a pile
of what were harmless empty boxes stacked off to the side of the vehicle's
path as he avoided the oncoming police vehicles with sirens & lights
blazing. Still, the effect worked well enough. As Karros tried backing out of
the forward assault he was again cornered by the second police car
darting in from behind with wheels screeching. He was forced to surrender
and was placed under arrest at gunpoint.
The 2 characters that played the part
of the cops were in fact real officers using real guns. Unloaded of course. :) As the
Producer/Director for the scenes of this movie, I explained to the
characters playing the parts of the policemen that I in fact wanted them to act
as though it were a real live arrest. I knew that if I told them that, that
they would make this scene turn out just the way it needed to. I was dead
on. Several takes were done with 4 different camera angles including ground,
arial, in car and rear. The result was enough video footage to edit a
scene that worked beautifully. Very believable and exciting to
watch.
Shooting outdoors was a challenge:
Natural environments can be a problem to deal with for any
making of a film. Delays are always coming up due to bad weather
or good weather depending on what the scene called for. Much of
"Die For A Life" was shot outdoors so this was amplified and in some cases
it actually dictated the way a scene would be put together. A
perfect example was for the opening scene of the movie. It was to
be a clear calm night scene and I had the eliments I needed for the
only evening that was available to do the shooting, but the weather
wasn't cooperating. It was rainy and cold. So rather then cancel
the shoot, I decided to let the weather run the show and filmed in the
rain. Turns out that it actually helped the scene. It added more
mystery and suspense to what was to be a very mysterious scene to begin with.
Sometimes things work out that way and for this scene, it worked
much better then I thought it would.
The passing of two winters
during shooting delayed the film for 2 years because of the winter months. Snow was definately
not a part of the plot and was something that I had no control over.
Most of the outdoor daylight scenes needed sun which was another
problem. It was important to try to keep the consistency of the day scenes
because the whole story took place over a short period of time. There
were only so many hours in a day and only so many days available for
filming in certain locations. So it can be said that weather was
without a doubt one of the main reasons why the project took as long as
it did to complete.
Animals in the film:
The use of animals was something that I wanted for many
reasons. They're interesting and unpredictable. And in
"Die For A Life" they play a very key role. My character(Reese), owned a dog that
played a part in tipping off that something was wrong to one of the other
characters in one scene while the French connection character played by
Jean Louis Pedat owned a Cat named "Montana" that played a key role
in turning the tide for Reese in the movie's plot. Deanna played by
Catherine Molitor was portrayed as a bird lover that owned
Cockatoos. The birds played an important and very vital role as an aid in
helping Deanna's brother save her life. Animals are very cool when it comes
to film. They're characters can be as important and at times even
more so than that of a human character. This is why they were an
absolute must for inclusion in "Die For A Life". |
