Thursday, February 15, 2007

FILMMAKING - Perfect Sport - Welcome to Set

Having arrived back in Seattle from Rotterdam on a Sunday night, I had less than 36 hours to get over my jet lag and finish prepping my script breakdown before jumping on a ferry to Vashon Island and heading straight to set for an indie feature that I was to be the Script Supervisor on.

The project is called Perfect Sport, and it's a high school wrestling movie. Though there are elements of comedy, including the requisite high school party, the movie is a drama that ends with a burst of violence. The plot: When his single mom goes off to the Iraq war, high school senior Lee is left to take care of his younger sister. A star of the high school wrestling team, he finds a father figure in Joe, a former wrestler brought on as assistant coach who has a dark link to steroids. Needless to say, things spiral downhill, and the discovery that his sister has been raped drives the movie to its final confrontation.

Graduate of the New York Film Academy (the one in Burbank, California), Anthony O'Brien co-wrote, stars in and is directing the movie. He tells me he's going to edit it, too, and I'm sure he did his fair share of the early producing responsibilities. Anyway, he went to high school on Vashon, where he was on the wrestling team, but now lives in LA. He says he is looking forward to moving back to the smog-free beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Most of the key crew members come from LA, including the Director of Photography, the gaffer (the DP's right-hand man), two camera operators, the 1st Assistant Director, the electric department, and I think a couple more. The rest of the crew is filled out with locals (the grips, me, the sound guys, some camera department folks) and a few people from Utah (I'm still a little confused by that connection, but they're good people nevertheless).

It's always interesting to see how the LA and local crews will mix. Or rather how quickly they'll mix, because all crews become family by necessity and close proximity. In this case it was pretty quick, and I think the grip department in specific (Bruce, Garrett and Patrick) impressed them right away.

In my own little world, because I am a self-taught Script Supervisor, I worry that I'm missing basic elements of my job, that my forms are improper, that I'm doing it wrong compared to the LA Script Supervisors out there. After a couple of days those fears pass because, when it comes down to the job itself, I'm pretty darn good at it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Question: Is this movie produced by Mark Sayre and feature music from local rapper Kublakai? (Both of whom are originally from Vashon)

Andy Spletzer said...

Yes, the movie is being produced by Mark Sayre. I don't know about the music, though the IMDb says that Scott Stambler is doing the music. For more cast and crew info, and to look for more names of people who live on Vashon, check out the IMDb page for the movie.