Whenever I’m writing a show I always try to think of all of the cool locations that I might be able to get free (or cheap) access to.  ”Hey Girl” was great in that the Executive Producer Mike was originally from a small town in Wisconsin near Madison.  In our early discussions we talked about places that might be agreeable to have us shoot at their establishments and came up with a wish list that could be written around.  I loved the idea of the contrast between Julie’s character in the city and Beckas character still stuck in small town rural farm area.

After writing an outline we scheduled a road trip to scout the potential locations which included a couple of farms, a grocery store and a place where Beckas boyfriend Jason would work. The small town had a bunch of options and one place that stood out was a meat market.  We stopped in and the owner was very nice and gave us the thumbs up and a handshake almost right away.  We stopped by the large grocery store and they were fine as long as we didn’t interrupt business, so we made the trip to a couple farms.  The first one was a horse farm that was very beautiful and had so much natural production value that can’t help but inspire you to come up with better ways to take advantage of it.  Another farm location was a friend of Mike’s from high school and he was pretty laid back.

After returning to Chicago and re-writing the script to incorporate all of the new found potential we loaded into a rented mini van with our equipment and made the trip for real.     We were set to film all of the Wisconsin scenes in only two days so it would prove to be a tough weekend.  Our crew was small and consisted only of myself, Mike, a PA and the two actors.  We lined up a few local actors to fill in the other spots and had a cameo written in for Mike and his two brothers, who were happy to participate.

We started the first day of production at the meat market location with a scene of Jason talking to a co-worker when Becka shows up to complain about her boss.  It was the first scene with the Becka and Jason characters and the casting seemed to work almost immediately.   My favorite part of these scenes was the way Jason tried to pressure Becka to having sex and saying “what are the guys going to think?.”   Production value wise, I loved the slab of meat that was hanging from the hook in the back room and the cooler.

From the meat locker we went to lunch and then to the horse farm location.  The daylight scenes started with Becka saying goodbye to her horse which would be a part of season 2.  Then a scene from season 1 of her feeding the horse which looked amazing.  The first night scene was the interior barn scene with Jason and Becka having sex in a horse stall.  After adjusting to the smell of the horses and blocking out the scene we jumped in.  Deneen Melody who plays Becka has been in a lot of movies and several love scenes was great and made the whole scene very comfortable not only for me but also Kevin Wunder who plays Jason.

 After filming the sex scene we also had to film the argument between the two about weather Becka had an orgasm or not along with the make-up sex scene.  The argument scene was to be set outside of a rural house party.  We knew we wouldn’t be able to get a huge number of extras to make a party look realistic so the plan was to make it look like the party was indoors and  a few stragglers would be outside in the background.  The plan worked but the only downside was that a house in the background that we were going to have in the scene as the party house had been converted into a garage between our scout and the shoot so it wasn’t ideal.  The other highlight was a picnic table Becka and Jason were on during filming collapsed.  Luckily nobody was hurt but we did have to change the shot to frame out the table.

The last scene of the long day was the sex scene in the field where Jason has an opportunity to prove his love making prowess.  We used a jib so we could look straight down on the two of them.  After the “climax” and some heavy breathing,  Becka puts Jason at ease by telling him that he is a satisfactory lover.  We also filmed Beckas horse watching them which was pretty funny but ended up not using it.  One reason why was that the actual horse was a girl and in the script was supposed to be a boy that would hang right over them, playing into Jasons’ insecurity.  The other reason we didn’t use it was that it was after midnight when we filmed the scene and we didn’t have access to enough electricity to light the wider area so it was a little on the dark side.

In the end it was a great day of filming.  We had hoped to go out afterword and celebrate the local night life but we were pretty tired and had one more day of filming in Wisconsin to go.

 WATCH THE EPISODES FROM THIS POST BELOW:  EPISODE 3 “ORGASMIC”

EPISODE 6 “ANOTHER SATISFIED CUSTOMER”

Our new comedy WebSeries  HEY GIRL is picking up steam and production is wrapped for the inaugural season.   The comedy stars Alli Urbanik as “Julie” along with Deneen Melody as “Becka” and Kevin Wunder as “Jason.”

The sexy, relationship comedy chronicles Julies struggles with men in the big city while her friends, Becka and Jason live in a small town and contemplate their own relationship.“Hey Girl” is Mindlight Films / ViralFilmVideo.com production written & directed by David J. Miller and executive produced / co-produced by Michael Forsythe.

I was excited to work on a show that starred a woman after working on my other webseries “Assisted Living” with Dustin for 6 seasons.   Julie’s character had a ton of potential and the script turned out really well.  The main worry that I had is would the actors be able to morph into their roles right off the bat.   I learned about myself that it’s much easier to write for something when I can visualize the actors in each of the roles.  It’s almost as if the characters are talking to each other in my mind.The production was also going to be ambitious as far as the number of scenes and having multiple story arcs, but having a partner to work with made it a lot easier.  We shot several locations in Chicago for “Julie’s” scenes and also in central Wisconsin for the scenes revolving around “Becka” and “Jason”.   We focused on Julies scenes and were able to take our time a little, shooting around peoples schedules and so forth.  Mike’s apartment was transformed from bachelor pad to a girly girls place.  After the walls were painted baby blue and everything was cleaned up we got to work.

The first thing we shot was the scenes of Julie getting ready for her date by trying on a bunch of dresses in her closet, standing in front of the mirror and asking Becka for advice over the phone.  I’m sure it was a little awkward for Alli to have to strip down to her underwear and change dresses on camera twenty times on the first day, but she didn’t show any nerves and after the first time it was pretty relaxed.   We shot with two cameras and the angles were on each side of the mirror so it was really tough not to get the other camera in the shot.  You can see the camera in a few takes but in theory the focus should be on the actor so it didn’t bother me as much as it would in other scenarios.  I ended up blurring a couple shots in post but not too much.

We would shoot the date (much) later so the next thing we filmed after it got dark was her coming home after the date, changing and sitting on the couch eating ice cream.  The shoot moved pretty quick because Alli is such a solid theater actor and it was pretty much her by herself until a little later when  the Mr. Willis character was introduced.Mr. Willis is played by Danny Glenn who I had worked with previously on a integrated web video.  I definitely had him in mind when I wrote his part as the creepy landlord but he wasn’t excited about the role until he read the script and found out how perverted his character would be.  His part of the shoot went really well but I did have to tweak a little dialog to help make his character at least a little likable.  We filmed more with Danny later but one thing I would have done differently in this scene was the blocking.  When he comes into her apartment, Julie walks back into the main room and waits for Mr. Willis to follow.  In retrospect I would have been better off to keep the two of them in the narrow hallway.  It still worked out pretty well though. We also filmed the scenes prior to Julies’ one night stand with her getting into the bath tub and fantasizing about the guy she met at the bar earlier.   Mike picked up some bubbles earlier in the day to leave some things to the imagination, but we still had to blur out the left side of her chest.  In the scene she had to reach to her purse, grab the guys business card out of it so we knew who she was fantasizing about and then start masturbating.   I had asked a female friend who had read the script about the authenticity of the scene and the verdict was that it wouldn’t necessarily work the way it was written so I decided that she would try to get herself off and it wouldn’t work, which would push her over the edge and cause her to call the stranger and visit his hotel room.  My favorite shot in the scene is her feet pressed against the front of the tub as she’s trying to get herself off.  There was conversation as to how much I liked feet and wether I personally have a foot fetish or not but I don’t.  On second thought, I guess feet are alright.It was a good first shoot day and at the end of it we felt like we really had something.  We also got a few awkward moments out of the way so that was good.

 More to come.

WATCH THE EPISODES FROM THIS POST BELOW:EPISODE 1: “SEXTING”

EPISODE 4: “BOOTY CALL GIRL”

Season 6 of our comedy web series ASSISTED LIVING starts with a trailer and Episode 46.

Inspiration for season 6 came after random conversations with Dustin and a bunch of other people about someone auditioning and becoming an actor.  We wanted to introduce Dustins’ character to more people and have a bunch of new experiences to build off of.  Introducing new characters would keep the series fresh and give us new opportunities.  I did however want to have a few characters from previous seasons to the extent that they might be available or interested.A variation of the season 6 script was developed relatively quickly after the completion of Season 5 and everyone was excited to get back into production.After filming one day of production at a comedy club of Dustin performing production came to a halt.  Dustin was a little bit overwhelmed and wanted to take a break so we abruptly stopped filming two days before principal photography was to begin.  After going back to my other projects for a while, I got a call from Dustin saying that he was ready to go so I took a moment to think of what the options would be moving forward.  Reading the original season 6 script  there were a few opportunities for improvement.   I had met a few new actors while helping a friend out with a feature film and incorporated them into the show.  I also had auditions for a few other roles that were developed during the break.  Up until season 6 most of the seasons were between 8 and 10 episodes long and I wanted to make the new season longer.

The first part of season was Dustin with Marge getting back into stand-up and being “discovered” by a casting director to appear in movies.  Marge played by Joette Waters returned to bookend the season and added a little continuity for those who follow the show.  We re-started filming in the fall and felt up against the gun with the weather getting colder.  The first day back also found us filming with my new 5d.   I had been filming before that on an HVX which was fine for most situations except for some of the low light scenes.  It took a while to get used to the 5d but over time some of the benefits came into play with the shallow depth of field and so on.  The first scenes with Marge on the park bench with Dustin feeding the birds content being “retired” until a promoter, Mitch, played by Travis Tack, shows up out of the blue and invites him into a showcase.  Mitch was a new character and it felt a little awkward with him appearing out of the blue but the other option was a little too distracting I thought.  The original idea was to bring back Justin Jackson as the promoter from season 3 and 5 but the last time we say him Dustin had a gun too his head and I thought it would have been a little too complicated to explain.  Looking back I think it would have been worth the risk and might have added more opportunity for comedy if I would have let it.

One problem I have when I’m writing for ASSISTED LIVING, or any web series is that sometimes I don’t focus on every small detail, because I’m writing and filming an entire season at a time there’s opportunities that are missed, because you focus on so many things and some fall through the crack.  One thing that really did work out great for the day on the bench was an improvised scene that we filmed after covering the “Un-retired” episode.  The improvised scene was to be an option for the last episode of the season and we did end up using it.  It re-united Dustin and Marge after the chaos his acting career and was a terrific ending to the show if we decide not to film any additional episodes.