Screenwriter Blog #7 - Story 6/Scene 9/Dark Horse Studios
Originally, I had intended for every location to fall within (or nearly within) the limits of Nashville. As we drew closer and closer to the beginning of the shoot though, and as accessibility became more scarce, I decided to open up the field of possibilities for locations; a decision I was to find definitely had its merits.
Dark Horse Studios, until you step inside (and still not really even then), doesn’t look hardly anything like you would expect a recording studio to look like. Most studios are sunken underground and insulated by stale air and unnatural light. Dark Horse, on the contrary, looks like a resort. A place that most musicians, engineers, and producers would only find themselves if they had been unwillingly plucked from their aforementioned recording bunkers and placed there by a team of physicians, informing them if they don’t get some sunlight, they’re going to die. No seriously. Die. It’s all wood and fields and horses and amazing kitchens and tire swings. The place just absolutely looks fantastic. Compounded by the fact that I had wanted to utilize a studio as a location, this place seemed the perfect spot.
Dark Horse
Once you get there, it's hard to leave
It just so happened that Tommy, our boom operator, was interning at Dark Horse. Using this knowledge to my advantage, I talked to him about seeing what he could do to make shooting there a reality. And as it turned out he did make it a reality - again and again.
Let me explain.
Studios of this quality and demeanor usually stay fairly well booked. It just so happened, though, that no one was going to be in the studio on the day we needed it. Because of this, we were able to make arrangements to shoot - with one contingency. If anyone did book the studio, we would get bumped.
Up until Monday, no one had booked the studio. Monday was not a good day. Driving back from the Downtown Presbyterian Church, I received word from Tommy that Naomi Judd had booked the studio. We had been bumped.
Well, we had faced difficulties like this before (now we actually had a couple of days to resolve one) and so worry didn’t set in quite so fast. We did what we had to do and set to looking for another studio. Amazingly, in a town full of studios, one can be really hard to come by. We kept looking, but still had no luck. On Tuesday, though, we found out that the photo shoot had been rescheduled. We were now unbumped or debumped or something (I should probably know the correct term by now.)
This was an entirely unexpected scenario. It would now appear that not only was problem creation outside of our control, but so was problem solving. So be it.
We did our best to get everyone off on time this morning. There was absolutely no time to waste. We packed everything and everyone in and headed out. This was definitely the longest distance we had had to travel so far and I was a little worried we might lose some people. We did, but eventually they found us.
Today was going to be a good day. I was sure. The week before the project began, we were still in need of a few more studio slots. After getting the okay to shoot, I offered to talk to Tommy about also getting us in to do actual recording at Dark Horse. Once again Tommy worked it out for us and made it able so that we had a place to record, and record for 2 days nonetheless. It was going to be a good day. This would be the only time in the whole project that both facets of production would meet. We would all be in the same place.
Cast and Crew
When we first arrived at Dark Horse, I went into the main studio to see if I could find anyone. I did find a few people, but they had no idea what we were doing here. The studio is run by Robin Crow, a talented motivational speaker and guitarist (whom I’m pretty sure I saw at a concert at Concord College the night the first Gulf War started,) and manned by a slew of interns. Robin was out on tour. I spoke to a few of the interns, but they still had no idea. I mentioned Tommy’s name and they pointed me in the direction of the other studio on the property.
We walked over to the other studio. As the musicians were getting set up I talked to Tommy. It appeared we probably wouldn’t be able to use any of the facilities in the main studio. We had this studio to work with, though, but it looked like it was going to be pretty crowded (it’s a good deal smaller than the other building.)
I felt myself in kind of a predicament. I had chosen to use a studio for one of the locations and chosen to use musicians as a backdrop, but now I was feeling like there wasn’t enough room for all of us. The musicians were well into setting up and so it wasn’t as if I could ask them to make room for us. Plus, we had just learned that the 2nd day of recording here had just been bumped. There was some tension on set.
We had a few shots we really wanted to get and so I talked to Ryan about seeing how we could work that into both our schedule and music’s schedule. Ryan said he would check for me and as he was doing so I went over to check on Nat and Dominic.
Nat and Dominic were rehearsing the scene and it seemed to be going great. We had originally intended Dominic to play drums during this scene. He had brought his drums, but there really wasn’t any place for him to set them up. Brandon had arrived by now and he had decided to find a solution to the drum problem. After searching around and still finding no suitable place, he got the okay to use the drums already set up for recording.
I talked to Ryan again about getting some shots. The musicians were set up and they were just about to start recording. We cleared all the non-essentials and quickly went to work capturing the shots.
Basically, we needed Dominic to be playing drums as John overhears him. Dominic plays for a bit and then leaves. Pretty simple. Still, a tension was on set. We had to get these shots quickly so as not to hold everyone else up from everything else they had to do; making these pretty simple shots not all that simple at all.
Nat and Dominic
One thing we didn’t have to worry about was Dominic screwing up the drumming. He was a consummate performer and aced every take. We finally got what we needed, cleared the space, and the tension seemed to quickly ease up. We were now able to focus on the meat of the scene.
This scene was split into a few sections - John meets Jordan in the studio, John and Jordan step outside to talk about a song, John hears Dominic playing drums and then has a conversation with him, and John returns back inside the studio.
So that we could release him (and the rest of the Barkaszi family - they all travel everywhere together) we decided to continue shooting Dominic’s scenes first.
He was as great with the script as he was with the drums. Dominic has the ability to deliver lines with an air of wisdom that his years shouldn’t be able to comprehend; one of the primary reasons we cast him and what we really wanted to play up.
We had written in dialogue between John and Dominic concerning Cannery Row (the title we had given the song Jordan was to have stolen) and the impact it had on Dominic’s life. As we were rehearsing the scenes, Dominic kept on referring to the song as “Cannery Road.” We kind of liked the mistake and decided to keep it in, changing the title of the song.
Preparing the shot
After a few more rehearsals, we quickly got down to shooting this section. Unfortunately, we had no dry erase markers with us and were forced to use tape to mark the slate. Just one more thing I probably shouldn’t complain too much about.
As we finished this section, lunch came and we decided to break. I was feeling good. We had gotten our trickiest elements out of the way and the performances so far today were stellar. Also, I kept being reminded - all we practically had to do was turn on a camera and set it anywhere out here and we were going to get a shot that looked great. I felt good.
More prep
As we were finishing lunch, the musician’s began to break. We realized we needed to get a few more shots in the studio and we realized now was our chance to do it.
Once again, it was a pretty simple section. Jordan is preparing to record. John walks in to say hello. Musicians mill around behind. We decided to cast some members of the doc crew as musicians (the musicians were eating lunch) and I cast myself as the producer. Luke showed up on set and I decided it might be better to cast him as such. It gave him a bit of a pause. I totally feel his pain. Acting makes me a bit uptight (I was to act later on in the day - one of the most nerve wracking elements of the entire project.) It’s all about making the unnatural natural. We rolled the scene though and he was great.
Discussing the scene with Luke
We got out just as the musicians were returning. We decided to move on to the conversation John and Jordan have. I was feeling really confident about both Nat and Brandon’s performances and especially their performances when they were interacting with each other. Therefore, I had no worries this section wouldn’t get pulled off.
We had a few tricky logistics to work out (the scene starts with walking-in-conversation down steps, but comes to rest where the majority of the dialogue takes place. We worked with it, though, and got it down pat. Instead of releasing Dominic, we had asked him to stay on. We wanted to have him playing on a tire swing in the background, setting up his appearance later on. Originally we had Dominic just sit in the swing, but eventually we thought it a better idea to include Tony, Dominic’s brother, in the picture. As John and Jordan were speaking, the two brothers would be playing and then run away. We liked the comparison between the two set of brothers and the contrast of the attitudes between them.
Dominic and Tony
We worked the scene through, and even with all its logistical difficulties, were able to get what we wanted relatively quick.
Walking and Talking
In the scene
Brandon leaves
We knew we had one more section to get before we were finished - that of John going back into the studio and watching Jordan sing. To shoot this, we needed a vocal booth. There wasn’t a free one in the smaller studio and so we went over to scope out the main studio. We looked and looked, but couldn’t find anything suitable. We returned to make do with what we could in this studio.
Brandon went to work rigging up something for us, but as he was doing this the musicians finished recording vocals, freeing up the studio. We talked to Ryan about utilizing the vocal booth and after we got the okay we quickly started setting up.
We got the shots and cleared out of there. As we had been shooting, Andrea Politte, our hair/makeup artist, and her husband appeared. I had spoken to Andrea many times over the phone, but this was the first time I had met her. Within a few minutes of her being on set, I could tell she brought good energy with her and I was really looking forward to seeing her work the next day.
We packed everything up and started to make the long drive back to Luke’s.
Dark Horse Studios, until you step inside (and still not really even then), doesn’t look hardly anything like you would expect a recording studio to look like. Most studios are sunken underground and insulated by stale air and unnatural light. Dark Horse, on the contrary, looks like a resort. A place that most musicians, engineers, and producers would only find themselves if they had been unwillingly plucked from their aforementioned recording bunkers and placed there by a team of physicians, informing them if they don’t get some sunlight, they’re going to die. No seriously. Die. It’s all wood and fields and horses and amazing kitchens and tire swings. The place just absolutely looks fantastic. Compounded by the fact that I had wanted to utilize a studio as a location, this place seemed the perfect spot.
Dark Horse
Once you get there, it's hard to leave
It just so happened that Tommy, our boom operator, was interning at Dark Horse. Using this knowledge to my advantage, I talked to him about seeing what he could do to make shooting there a reality. And as it turned out he did make it a reality - again and again.
Let me explain.
Studios of this quality and demeanor usually stay fairly well booked. It just so happened, though, that no one was going to be in the studio on the day we needed it. Because of this, we were able to make arrangements to shoot - with one contingency. If anyone did book the studio, we would get bumped.
Up until Monday, no one had booked the studio. Monday was not a good day. Driving back from the Downtown Presbyterian Church, I received word from Tommy that Naomi Judd had booked the studio. We had been bumped.
Well, we had faced difficulties like this before (now we actually had a couple of days to resolve one) and so worry didn’t set in quite so fast. We did what we had to do and set to looking for another studio. Amazingly, in a town full of studios, one can be really hard to come by. We kept looking, but still had no luck. On Tuesday, though, we found out that the photo shoot had been rescheduled. We were now unbumped or debumped or something (I should probably know the correct term by now.)
This was an entirely unexpected scenario. It would now appear that not only was problem creation outside of our control, but so was problem solving. So be it.
We did our best to get everyone off on time this morning. There was absolutely no time to waste. We packed everything and everyone in and headed out. This was definitely the longest distance we had had to travel so far and I was a little worried we might lose some people. We did, but eventually they found us.
Today was going to be a good day. I was sure. The week before the project began, we were still in need of a few more studio slots. After getting the okay to shoot, I offered to talk to Tommy about also getting us in to do actual recording at Dark Horse. Once again Tommy worked it out for us and made it able so that we had a place to record, and record for 2 days nonetheless. It was going to be a good day. This would be the only time in the whole project that both facets of production would meet. We would all be in the same place.
Cast and Crew
When we first arrived at Dark Horse, I went into the main studio to see if I could find anyone. I did find a few people, but they had no idea what we were doing here. The studio is run by Robin Crow, a talented motivational speaker and guitarist (whom I’m pretty sure I saw at a concert at Concord College the night the first Gulf War started,) and manned by a slew of interns. Robin was out on tour. I spoke to a few of the interns, but they still had no idea. I mentioned Tommy’s name and they pointed me in the direction of the other studio on the property.
We walked over to the other studio. As the musicians were getting set up I talked to Tommy. It appeared we probably wouldn’t be able to use any of the facilities in the main studio. We had this studio to work with, though, but it looked like it was going to be pretty crowded (it’s a good deal smaller than the other building.)
I felt myself in kind of a predicament. I had chosen to use a studio for one of the locations and chosen to use musicians as a backdrop, but now I was feeling like there wasn’t enough room for all of us. The musicians were well into setting up and so it wasn’t as if I could ask them to make room for us. Plus, we had just learned that the 2nd day of recording here had just been bumped. There was some tension on set.
We had a few shots we really wanted to get and so I talked to Ryan about seeing how we could work that into both our schedule and music’s schedule. Ryan said he would check for me and as he was doing so I went over to check on Nat and Dominic.
Nat and Dominic were rehearsing the scene and it seemed to be going great. We had originally intended Dominic to play drums during this scene. He had brought his drums, but there really wasn’t any place for him to set them up. Brandon had arrived by now and he had decided to find a solution to the drum problem. After searching around and still finding no suitable place, he got the okay to use the drums already set up for recording.
I talked to Ryan again about getting some shots. The musicians were set up and they were just about to start recording. We cleared all the non-essentials and quickly went to work capturing the shots.
Basically, we needed Dominic to be playing drums as John overhears him. Dominic plays for a bit and then leaves. Pretty simple. Still, a tension was on set. We had to get these shots quickly so as not to hold everyone else up from everything else they had to do; making these pretty simple shots not all that simple at all.
Nat and Dominic
One thing we didn’t have to worry about was Dominic screwing up the drumming. He was a consummate performer and aced every take. We finally got what we needed, cleared the space, and the tension seemed to quickly ease up. We were now able to focus on the meat of the scene.
This scene was split into a few sections - John meets Jordan in the studio, John and Jordan step outside to talk about a song, John hears Dominic playing drums and then has a conversation with him, and John returns back inside the studio.
So that we could release him (and the rest of the Barkaszi family - they all travel everywhere together) we decided to continue shooting Dominic’s scenes first.
He was as great with the script as he was with the drums. Dominic has the ability to deliver lines with an air of wisdom that his years shouldn’t be able to comprehend; one of the primary reasons we cast him and what we really wanted to play up.
We had written in dialogue between John and Dominic concerning Cannery Row (the title we had given the song Jordan was to have stolen) and the impact it had on Dominic’s life. As we were rehearsing the scenes, Dominic kept on referring to the song as “Cannery Road.” We kind of liked the mistake and decided to keep it in, changing the title of the song.
Preparing the shot
After a few more rehearsals, we quickly got down to shooting this section. Unfortunately, we had no dry erase markers with us and were forced to use tape to mark the slate. Just one more thing I probably shouldn’t complain too much about.
As we finished this section, lunch came and we decided to break. I was feeling good. We had gotten our trickiest elements out of the way and the performances so far today were stellar. Also, I kept being reminded - all we practically had to do was turn on a camera and set it anywhere out here and we were going to get a shot that looked great. I felt good.
More prep
As we were finishing lunch, the musician’s began to break. We realized we needed to get a few more shots in the studio and we realized now was our chance to do it.
Once again, it was a pretty simple section. Jordan is preparing to record. John walks in to say hello. Musicians mill around behind. We decided to cast some members of the doc crew as musicians (the musicians were eating lunch) and I cast myself as the producer. Luke showed up on set and I decided it might be better to cast him as such. It gave him a bit of a pause. I totally feel his pain. Acting makes me a bit uptight (I was to act later on in the day - one of the most nerve wracking elements of the entire project.) It’s all about making the unnatural natural. We rolled the scene though and he was great.
Discussing the scene with Luke
We got out just as the musicians were returning. We decided to move on to the conversation John and Jordan have. I was feeling really confident about both Nat and Brandon’s performances and especially their performances when they were interacting with each other. Therefore, I had no worries this section wouldn’t get pulled off.
We had a few tricky logistics to work out (the scene starts with walking-in-conversation down steps, but comes to rest where the majority of the dialogue takes place. We worked with it, though, and got it down pat. Instead of releasing Dominic, we had asked him to stay on. We wanted to have him playing on a tire swing in the background, setting up his appearance later on. Originally we had Dominic just sit in the swing, but eventually we thought it a better idea to include Tony, Dominic’s brother, in the picture. As John and Jordan were speaking, the two brothers would be playing and then run away. We liked the comparison between the two set of brothers and the contrast of the attitudes between them.
Dominic and Tony
We worked the scene through, and even with all its logistical difficulties, were able to get what we wanted relatively quick.
Walking and Talking
In the scene
Brandon leaves
We knew we had one more section to get before we were finished - that of John going back into the studio and watching Jordan sing. To shoot this, we needed a vocal booth. There wasn’t a free one in the smaller studio and so we went over to scope out the main studio. We looked and looked, but couldn’t find anything suitable. We returned to make do with what we could in this studio.
Brandon went to work rigging up something for us, but as he was doing this the musicians finished recording vocals, freeing up the studio. We talked to Ryan about utilizing the vocal booth and after we got the okay we quickly started setting up.
We got the shots and cleared out of there. As we had been shooting, Andrea Politte, our hair/makeup artist, and her husband appeared. I had spoken to Andrea many times over the phone, but this was the first time I had met her. Within a few minutes of her being on set, I could tell she brought good energy with her and I was really looking forward to seeing her work the next day.
We packed everything up and started to make the long drive back to Luke’s.
posted by Chad at
11:39 PM
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