The Nashville 9 Blog

Songwriter Blog #10

2009-02-25T11:48:00.007-06:00

RED WHITE BLUE PART II - HEARING THE SONG - SO ALIVE

Waking up today was different. There really wasn't any pressure on me anymore. The film guys had already left to go and work on the last scene. I kind of just slowly walked around the wreckage of my house and tried to take in all that had happened. I took a pretty long shower- it was nice to have hot water. I decided that I would resist any urge to start cleaning the house. Even though I was done writing, we still weren't done with the project. I decided that I'd head over to Vibe 56 studio to see what Mark Heimermann and Red White Blue were doing with "So Alive."

Before I left I spent a minute with Vega and Mike - our dogs. I sat on the floor and let them come over and awkwardly pounce on top of me. They have a funny way of helping me take stock of things- I guess they in some ways act as my constant. I looked at Mike's leg and noticed that it hadn't gotten worse in the last 2 days of the project - perhaps the Doggy Prozak was actually working.

I got in my car and quickly scanned the house. I took a second to record a quick flip camera video.

The Writing is ALL DONE!

I started heading over to the Vibe 56. I was really excited about seeing Mark Heimermann at work doing his thing. Jenn and Jenny mentioned they were going to try and stop by the studio - this will have been their only chance to do so. So I stood outside the studio and got ready for the last time!

Outside Vibe 56 Studio.

Once I got in there, it seemed like everyone had a complete handle on things. They had actually progressed much further than I thought they would. Then again, I guess I should have assumed that. Mark and the Red White Blue guys are pros.

Ryan Pruitt made an immediate crack about how I gave the Red White Blue guys a CCM song. I smiled, considered a second slap, and moved on. The band and producer just seemed to dive right in and they seemed to have a great working relationship. It was a really nice fit.

Mark has a ton of energy in the studio. He projects a very distinct confidence but has a way of keeping things moving without pushing. Honestly, he's like a big kid. It was really cool to watch. You just kind of have immediate faith in him.

The Red White Blue guys were super relaxed. They weren't in the least nervous about tackling this project. They just kind of went at it. The first thing that stood out to me was that Beau started out the song with this really cool bass riff. When the vocals first come in, the entire band drops into the groove together. It was definitely one of my favorite moments of the entire album.

In the studio with Red White Blue.

I kind of smiled when Mark asked Josh and Beau who was going to sing the vocal. They both kind of looked at each other hoping the other would say "I'll sing it." Then, they just decided to both do it. In retrospect, I can't imagine the song without both vocalists. That simple quick decision became such a defining factor in this tune. I would later hear a rough version at the 12th South Taproom and would then fall immediately in love with it. Everyone nailed it. I don't just mean Mark and Red White Blue, but I mean EVERYONE that worked on this music. There's not a weak spot on this album anywhere.

Daily Vidcast Day 9 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.
The Last Video Blog.

I decided to head out and get ready for the wrap party. It was a Sunday, so the pace here in Nashville seemed in stark contrast to the frenetic pace of The Nashville 9. I thought about heading home, but Jenny suggested that we hop over to Broadway Brewhouse to grab a quick drink and catch the end of the Titans game. I obliged.

I sat in the booth and thought "Wow," this is how it all ends. It seemed so anticlimactic. It seemed so normal. Then I remembered, this is just the beginning...

Screenwriter Blog #10 - Story 9/Scene 3/Sony

2009-02-06T19:33:00.003-06:00

Last day.

A year of planning was nearly over. A bittersweet moment. I was excited about finishing and excited about what we had accomplished, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready yet for it to end.

Regardless, there wasn’t much time for thoughts either way.

The weather had turned cold the past couple of days. This was November weather. For the first 7 days we had been basking in what felt like an Indian Summer. The chill and the gray and the wind of this day was more what I had been expecting. But the frigid load in and load out, there was little cause for concern, though. We were shooting almost entirely inside.

It was to be an odd shoot for me today. My regular job is at Sony Music Publishing. I work in Royalties. As I was scouting locations, Sony had always been on my list of potentials. The Tree building, one of the buildings I work in, has a long, storied past in the history of Nashville and the music industry. I had wanted to incorporate a conference or board room, focusing on the business side of Nashville, but hadn’t known just where.

Once again, Sony was always on my list of potentials. The Tree building has a great conference room - all wood, fireplace, long table, and best of all - I knew the people who controlled access to it. As it came down to putting the finishing touches on the locations, I contacted Angel, our HR representative, and she got me the okay to shoot.

To take a week off from work required me taking a vacation. That "vacation" was the Nashville 9. On Monday I would be back to work officially, but here I was now, on vacation, yet still at work.

Once again, we had a very secure location with minimal setup. I was feeling pretty confident. The actors in the scene today were 3 people who had already served much time with the Nashville 9. This was a Jordan scene, which meant Brandon. We also needed label representatives. We had decided to go with an A&R person and a label head. We decided to cast Missy as the A&R rep and Doug as the exec.

We had met Missy when we held auditions in March. We knew almost immediately we wanted to work with her. When the 48 hour project came along, we had gotten our chance. We had cast her, along with Michele and Brandon. The dynamics were great and so we were very eager to work with her again.

Unfortunately and fortunately, Missy had been tied up for the previous 8 days as part the story gathering team. As story gathering was over, we thought now might be the perfect opportunity to utilize her talents as an actor.

And then there was Doug. Aside from our surety that he could more than adequately play the part, I’m pretty sure we cast Doug for ulterior reasons; not wanting him to miss out on the nerve-wracking stress we had all experienced as actors. It’s amazing, you work under constant pressure and time constraints every day and don’t blink an eye. You get completely thrown for a loop and have to change a situation constantly and don’t blink an eye. You have a crew of people depending on you to make this movie happen and you don’t blink an eye. You have to say a few words on camera and that’s all you can concentrate on for the rest of the day.

Yeah, I think we wanted him to join that fraternity of pain.

We packed and headed off for the last time. There was an excitement in the air. There was a feeling we had accomplished something good.

I was a bit nervous as we arrived at Sony, though. At most of the other locations, someone had been there to let us in and to take care that the location was in order. That was my responsibility today. Sony has an alarm (which I never have to turn on or off) and I was just praying I wouldn’t set it off by mistake. I wore my Sony sweatshirt in case the alarm did go off; thinking it might help the credulity of my story as I told it to the police.

We arrived, though, and found that someone was in the studio and had already turned the alarm off. We entered and started setting up.

We only had one basic set up, but still had many problems to deal with. There were reflective surfaces encompassing most of the conference room. The huge table was glass, one entire wall was windows, and the marble fireplace showed just about every movement in the vicinity. Our angles were pretty much dictated for us, but we did what we could and prepared to shoot.

As stated, we really had Doug working overtime today. If he wasn’t getting into make-up, he was moving lights. If he wasn’t running lines, he was focusing shots. Still, he seemed adept at compartmentalizing and multi-tasking and if Doug ever wants to use me as a reference, I would be glad to say that to any potential employer.

Finally, we were ready to shoot. We rolled through several takes and everything seemed to be going well. We noticed, though, that Missy tended to inadvertently move her chair (they spin and roll very easily on the hard wood floors) a lot. To rectify the situation, we posted Nat on the floor, both hands anchoring Missy’s chair in place. Also on the floor, was just about anyone else in the room; trying their best to stay out of any reflective surfaces. We kept shooting.

We were nearly done with the scene when lunch arrived, brought by my parents. Although they had been here for the entirety of the 9 days, I had gotten to see them very little and any time spent was good.

We loaded the food in and then, as they had to drive back to West Virginia immediately after lunch, we said our goodbyes.

After lunch we went back to places to finish the scene. As we were setting up, we realized this was our last opportunity to tie up any loose ends. One item we were especially concerned with was how Sally went from Art Gallery patron in scene 2 to Executive Assistant in Scene 4. I think Tracy, one of the doc crew members (who had risked her life earlier in the day by taking a ride with Brandon on his motorcycle,) suggested we maybe have a phone call from Sally to Doug, her dad.

I thought it was a great suggestion and we went to working up the exact details of the conversation. It was decided that Doug (this had to be a one-sided conversation since Sally wasn’t on hand) would reference that Sally had spent her rent money on a piece of art and was desperately in need of more money. Doug would not offer her money, but would offer her a job with Mara Greene (the exec from scene 4.) It made perfect sense that a man in Doug’s position could pull those strings. It also complicated everyone's relationships a little more. John would now be involved with the daughter of the head of Jordan's label. Cue the organ swell.

This was great to me. This was exactly what the Nashville 9 was all about - solving problems and infusing loose ends with meaning.

To help with the validity of the phone conversation, Nat offered to get on the other end of the line. This worked great until Nat decided to change his reason for needing money to his/Sally being pregnant.

What was great was that none of us knew he had said this (in fact none of us but Doug could hear anything Nat was saying) until Doug burst into laughter, effectively ruining the entire take.

We let it slide and nailed the call in the next take. We decided then to move outside for our last shots - Brandon arriving on the motorcycle.

If you’ve never ridden on a motorcycle, you should. If you’ve never ridden on a motorcycle with Brandon, you definitely should. Brandon provides just enough skill and confidence to make you think there’s no way you might die, but takes enough risks to make you rethink your previous thoughts.

The first shot we needed was of Brandon arriving in the parking lot. As I watched Brandon leave on the bike, I noticed, to get into place, he drove the wrong way down a one-way street. My first instinct was to stop him, but I was soon informed he was only driving down the sidewalk.

Brandon drove in and we got the shot in one take. Our next shot was a medium shot of Brandon getting off the motorcycle and taking off his helmet and jacket. It was really cold. The coldest day of the shoot and we were all anxious to get back inside. It took us two, maybe 3 takes to get this one right.

And then we came to it. The last shot. Everything we had been building toward.

The last shot was Brandon walking into the building. Nothing dramatic. No fighting. No dialogue. Just walking into the building.

We got in in one take.

I remember, after calling the wrap, hearing Doug scream for joy and then myself being picked up and carried around by Nat. It was a good day.

It was cold, though, so we went back inside and started to pack up. As we got everything loaded we drove back to Luke’s. I dropped off a few things and then drove home - somewhere I hadn’t been in what felt like a long time. I was alone too. The first time since I first walked into Luke’s house at 5:15 on Halloween night. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure how I felt. I felt tired. I felt accomplished. I felt excited. I felt sad.

I drove home, took a nap, took a bath, and then headed out for the wrap party.

Songwriter Blog #9

2009-01-30T22:18:00.004-06:00

MEGHAN KABIR PART II - HEARING THE SONG - KILL A MAN

On this day I woke up fresh. Today was going to be my last writing day. Besides, I was writing for Red White Blue and was very confident that I could write something good for them. We were almost done with all the writing. First though, I was absolutely dying to hear what Meghan Kabir and Paul Buono did with this song. There was a bit of a change to todays feel- I think Ryan came in to the studio a bit tired while I was feeling upbeat. Paul Buono and Meghan Kabir's day of recording required a lot of traveling. Let me tell you a bit about that first.

The recording day began at Helsinki South, Paul Buono's studio way out on the other side of Franklin. The plan was for Paul, Ryan, and Meghan to meet out there, watch the video, throw down some rough bass lines, drum tracks, vocals, etc. They would do most of the "song crafting" there.

Then, once they finished that up, they would drive out to Dan Needham's studio. While there, they would dump down the files and have him record the drum track. Dan is an amazing drummer and he's played on so many albums. I've said this before- guys like Dan make recording music unfair for the rest of us. He's just so good, so quick, and so consistent. He was great to work with.

After that, Ryan, Meghan, Paul, and all the files (complete with fresh new killer drum tracks) traveled over to Jerry McPherson's studio. To say Jerry is a great guitar player is understating it. There are so many great guitar players in Nashville that being great in this town is being average. Jerry somehow rises rises above even all that. He's one of the nicest most humble guys you'll meet- but man, he can play that damn guitar. He immediately took to the song with an amazing energy. His excitement really was contagious. He layered several guitars and really brought an amazing character to the track. All these things, of course, I was find out later...

Right now though, I've got a tired looking Ryan Pruitt with a rough mix of "Kill A Man." The rough cd was labeled "Killa Man" which would later provide much debate. Should this song be "Killa Man" or should it be "Kill a Man." Did they put it that way because they thought it should be that way or just in fun. I digress...

I have yet to be so excited/afraid to hear a mix. As the CD slid into the drive, Ryan looked at me and said "they made you look like a bad-ass!" I turned everything up...

My biggest fear with this song was that Meghan wouldn't be able to embrace the content. I felt very tied by that content and as a result was forced to go somewhere with this song that I wouldn't have gone to otherwise. Still, this wasn't like the other songs where that happened. This was pretty dark. I was hoping they could run with that. It only took me about 10 seconds of song to realize that Meghan wasn't scared of this song in the least. It didn't intimidate her at all- she owned it!

The song opened up with a really dark acoustic thing along with some ambient electric. Then, BANG, it immediately just kind of tears into you. The moment Meghan began singing, I was like "yes, that's perfect." The way she says "crush your heart with my own bare hands" just does it perfectly. She really seemed to get into the character of the song. She managed to add the perfect amount of disdain in her voice at all the right places.

Once we got to the chorus it just rocked. At the end of the second chorus, Meghan changed the vocal line "a wrong will have to make it right" to add a bit more drama. Just awesome.

I think my favorite part of the song came at the very end. They were doing the chorus outro and they added this "Ka - Ka - Ka -Killa Man" part. It just made the song for me. I was so proud of how this came out! To this day I can't listen to this song without remembering how much it pushed me to write it. It will always be special because of that.

Paul's production was astounding. He had so many different obstacles with all the time he was losing with travel. What a great way to watch a song being built. It's so Nashville the way the song was recorded. I just can't say enough about Paul on this one. It seemed like the moment they watched the story, they felt responsible to really do something with this song...and they truly did.

RED WHITE BLUE - PART I - WRITING THE SONG

Red White Blue

Tonight I'd be writing with Reed for Red White Blue. I was excited because I really felt like I could write something good for them. I was bringing Reed in because I thought he'd fit perfectly stylistically. Plus, this was going to be the last one I wrote. It was kind of poetic in a way- I wrote the first one with Reed, I'll write the last one with Reed.

Here's how we got Red White Blue...

Right before Next Big Nashville, I got a call from Ryan Pruitt. He said "man, we really need to try and get out to some of these shows and find some artists." I was up for it but was really busy during most of it. So I got out to as many shows as I could. Chad was checking out some bands at some of the venues I wasn't able to get to. While at the Rutledge he saw Red White Blue. He called to tell me that he thought they were great. I looked them up online and put them down as an option. I wasn't initially excited about them because I felt like we already had too many artists in similar veins. As we progressed however, they turned out to be exactly what we needed. Plus, me, Chad, and Brandon already knew one of the guys - Josh Taylor.

This is a friend of ours - Josh Taylor

We've known Josh for a while. He was in several bands that we'd cross paths with. Also, he plays guitar for Mike Logen sometimes. Josh is a really talented artist and we were excited to get a chance to work with him. We also knew Beau Burtnick. Brandon and our good friend Justin Benner spent some time on the road with him when he was touring for some artists. Red White Blue is a special band. They are those players that are as good as the studio players, but don't do that studio thing. They chart their own path. It seems like in some ways, they've all been involved in or part of projects where they felt suffocated. I really wanted to be sensitive to that and not give them something they were uncomfortable working with. They needed a producer who knew what he was doing. This was going to be tricky - who would produce them?

They already had a producer that they had worked with in the past. He really got their sound and so we tried to get him. Unfortunately, he was so booked up that he just couldn't make it work on the one day we had available. So we decided to look elsewhere...

At this stage, we already had most of our producers. I was at Arrington Vineyards talking to Lyra (our intern) about our dilemma when she suggested Mark Heimermann.

Mark Heimermann

Lyra knew Mark pretty well and thought he'd be great for the project. I was very familiar with his work. When I was in college, DC Talk's Album "Jesus Freak" was a huge deal. Mark produced that album along with about 10 other albums I listened to all the time. I loved his stuff and was a little intimidated about asking him to be in this project.

We really needed to know pretty quickly if he could be an option. I had to get in touch with him right away. Lyra gave me his cell number so I called. I got his voice mail and did my rambling best to explain the most complicated project ever in the history of projects. So after 2 minutes of rattling off incoherent info, I hung up. Mark called me back, which I missed, and told me he was in Florida on vacation with his family. I felt like an idiot for calling him on his family vacation, but I called him back anyway. He was really really cool about everything. We agreed to give it a go. I was absolutely stoked.

Back to now...

We were about to watch the stories. Going into this night I had a couple of concerns. I was nervous that Red White Blue and Mark Heimermann weren't going to be a good match. They were both SO good at what they did, but Mark is really good at recording commercial and polished albums. Red White Blue is really bare bones and unpolished. Also, Red White Blue does not do christian music. Mark Heimermann is a well known christian producer. How would this work out? I needed to make sure that "content wise," I stayed away from anything christian- that way, we'd avoid the issue all together.

With the previous thoughts in mind, we watched the stories. The one we chose simply couldn't have been more religious/spiritual in nature. It was about a woman who directed a church choir and while feeling the "holy spirit" lost her wig. Great story. Unfortunately, this put me in a place I didn't want to be.

Immediately, after watching the story, I was drawn by the storyteller's mother. She seemed to be so alive. I felt like I wanted to go in that direction. I was hoping to use the religious terminology from the story (the holy spirit in me, the choir, sitting in church, new beginnings, etc.) without making the song itself "too religious." I listened to some of the songs on Red White Blue's myspace and their song "Washed in the Blood" caught my eye. I listened to it a couple times and really paid attention to the lyrics. They didn't seem afraid to use that "terminology" so I decided to run with my idea.

Josh had told me that he'd love it if I went in a direction like their song "daylight." So, thinking in that vein, I began coming up with ideas. Reed wasn't here yet, but I wanted to get something going on it for when he arrived.

By the time Reed came in, I had a really good start on where I thought the chorus should go. About 1 minute after he sat down we were pretty much locked in. Reed's playing style added tons to the feel of the song. I loved the line "it's not something I need, it's just something I want," for a verse. We started putting the whole thing together. Honestly, this song came together very easily. We finished this and put a demo together all in about 2 hours.

After Reed left, I had a couple beers and got to hang out with the guys. I was so excited to be done writing. The rest was up to Ryan, Mark Heimermann and Red White Blue. I lay down on the same couch I'd been sleeping on since night one. As I lay there I vaguely felt a stinging concern that Red White Blue wouldn't like this one. It nagged at me that they may think I wrote them a CCM song. Still, based on the story, I was really really proud of what we came up with. Besides I knew how good Mark Heimermann was. I knew he would put together something really special. I couldn't wait to pop in to the studio the next day. Vega jumped up beside me on the couch. I fell asleep.

Screenwriter Blog #9 - Story 8/Scene 5/Sambuca - Story 9/Scene 3/Sony

2009-01-28T23:50:00.003-06:00

For the entirety of the shoot I felt we had been very lucky with our locations. This may sound strange considering we had been kicked out of one and almost another, but that’s not what I’m talking about. We had been very fortunate to not have to deal with the bane of many a filmmaker - the public. No crowds of curious pedestrians. No police officers inquiring about permits. Nothing like that. While scouting locations, I had done my best to ensure this would be the case. I knew we would have enough to deal with without this extra burden. And, believe me, I know what I’m talking about. One of my first jobs as a PA entailed stopping regulars from entering a bar in South Boston. And then keeping them from making any fuss about it.

Sambuca was absolutely no different. In fact it was even better in some ways. Not only had Sambuca given us free reign in their restaurant, but the restaurant was actually shut down while we were shooting. We wouldn’t have to worry about keeping anyone from barging in. There was one catch, though. We had to be out by 3:00. No worries. Unlike some of the other constraints we had been put under, we knew well ahead of time what kind of schedule we were working with.

In fact, I really wasn’t worried at all today. This was primarily a dialogue driven scene, once again, with few setups. I felt really confident in Brandon and Nat’s abilities to carry the scene and I also felt really confident that, with our closed set, we would have no problems getting the shots we needed and wanted.

I felt we had some great material to work with, also. A really powerful scene. As you may have read in my previous blog, I hadn't always felt this way. I was feeling great now though.

As an addendum to the scene, we decided to include a portion where Nat and Sally could set the stage for their date. We had somewhat done so in scene 4, but felt the date still needed reinforcing. I called Sally and asked her to show up, saying she didn't need to arrive until the end of the day (I was trying to do my best to better schedule our actors' time.)

Packing up seemed very routine by now. We filled the cars one more time and drove towards Sambuca. It was my mom’s birthday today and I wasn’t sure if I would get a chance to see her. I gave her a call, wished her a happy birthday, and suggested she and my dad come to set.

We arrived at Sambuca and I went inside to find our contact, Melissa Gallagher. Luke had originally met Melissa while he was negotiating a party with Sambuca. He had discovered upon talking to Melissa that she was interested in film. He sent her my way. I spoke to Melissa and inquired if Sambuca might consider allowing us to shoot. Melissa seemed really excited about the idea and had been more than helpful in securing Sambuca as a location. Having somewhat learned my lesson, I had sent a release in advance. Upon arrival I asked Melissa about the release and was informed there might be some issues to deal with. She wasn’t sure if we would be able to use the name "Sambuca" or any of their logos. This wasn’t much of an issue for me (although I would have liked to give them some free publicity in the movie) and told her we could work with whatever. To be on the safe side, though, I decided to not shoot any footage with any reference to the name Sambuca.

Andrea soon arrived and started getting everyone into makeup. It was great having Andrea on set. Not only was she fantastic at her job, but, as I’ve mentioned before, she always brought a great amount of energy wherever she went. As she started working on the actors, we went to work setting up the shots.

Sometimes too many options are far worse than not enough. As stated, we could shoot anywhere we wanted. And that meant anywhere within the restaurant. And that meant Doug and I checked every possibility. After looking everywhere we decided to go with one of the booths downstairs. The lighting was very moody and we really liked that for this scene. Because we were primarily going to be in a stationary locale, David was able to rig up some stationary booms to supplement the lavs. You can read about his setup here.

I was feeling more and more confident as we were setting up. Today was definitely going to run smooth.

One section of the scene involved a few female fans approaching Brandon. We had cast Theresa to play one of the fans, but were still in need of another. The original plan had been to cast one of the girls from the story gathering team (they had finished gathering the night before.) We had decided to cast Jenny as a waitress. So, that left Jenn and Missy. I believe it was Jenn who initially suggested, instead, that we consider casting Max as the other fan.

Max was on the doc crew. He was, and is still, in High School and provided never a dull moment when he was around. I hadn’t really considered using guys as the fans, but was piqued by the idea. We tossed it around a little more. I thought it might be odd to have both a male and female fan. It was then suggested that we recast Theresa as Brandon’s girlfriend and cast Max and Eric Brooks, who was working as PA, as the two fans. Eric seemed more than up for it, saying he had definitely had his share of experiences with crazy fans.

Andrea quickly went to work redoing Theresa’s hair and makeup, informing me a fan would look much different than a girlfriend. I hadn’t thought about this, but she was exactly right.

As Andrea worked, I had another issue to debate. Buffalo Trace was one of sponsors. They had made few requests of us, but had asked that, when possible, we make Buffalo Trace visible (either in the short, the doc, or in real life.) Nobody had any issue with this; happy to have Buffalo Trace on board. Since we were in a bar, it had been suggested (I forget by whom) that this might be a great possibility to work Buffalo Trace in.

We had a section where Nat and Brandon ordered drinks and thought it might work to order Buffalo Trace. After further review, we realized that Nat tends to get a little drunk and belligerent in the scene and Buffalo Trace might not appreciate this. We decided instead that it might be better to have Theresa drink the Buffalo Trace. Everybody liked the idea.

We were ready to shoot. Speaking of drinks, we had to find something for Nat to drink other than the shots of whiskey he was ordering. We did some experiments and finally found the right ratio of water to coffee to make a liquid reassembling whiskey.

So, that was settled. Now we were ready to go to work. This was a great situation to be in. I felt that the actors could really focus in on the scene without having to focus on the logistics of moving for the camera. This was important. It was a very intense scene and I wanted to make sure we captured that intensity.

As we were shooting we realized we were probably going to need some extras to establish the locale a little better. We had several people on hand and decided to put them all into makeup.

We continued shooting the scene from different angles, with Nat beginning to fill up on coffee (he had 3 shots in each take) and getting a little shaky. He’s a pro, though, and worked through it. Brandon was holding his own too, and both guys were really living up to expectations.

We were also really lucky to have Erin Grovsnor on set today, working continuity. Restaurant scenes are notoriously bad for continuity, but Erin constantly made sure glasses were always filled to the same level in each shot and was also extremely nitpicky (exactly what we wanted) about everything else.

As we shot some wider shots, we thought it might be a good idea to have customers fill the booths adjacent to where we were shooting. I volunteered as an extra and wrangled Heidi in also. If I remember correctly, we had a very interesting conversation about eating duck.

We finally got all our shots in the booth and decided to get some shots of Nat entering the restaurant. For that we needed more extras. We finished everyone’s makeup and then placed them. We had been running at a pretty leisurely pace today and were actually starting to come very close to our deadline.

We instructed the extras to make lots of clinking noises and talk and look naturally. We cast my parents as extras (the parents of the two fans) also. We got our shots and then quickly moved outside.

Sally had arrived earlier in the day, not wearing what she had worn in the Encore scene. We had expected this scene to immediately take place after Nat and Sally left the Encore together. Therefore, Sally would need to be wearing the same clothes. I asked Sally if she brought these clothes and she said no. She was lying and after enough time had elapsed of me trying to figure out what we were going to do, she went and changed.

Unfortunately, the weather today was very cold, gray, and windy - almost the exact opposite of what the Encore had looked like. We couldn’t really do anything about it, though. We really needed to shoot this section and were going to have to make do with what we could. Sally and Nat decided to improv some talk about the weather as they walked. We figured, if nothing else, this would get some laughs. We set the scene up, got our shots, packed everything away, and then headed back to Luke’s.

These were the last stories. It was hard to imagine everything was almost over. It had been a whirlwind of days, with almost no time for reflection. Knowing, though, that these were the last stories, brought reflection to the forefront. Briefly,though. We still had a whole day’s worth of work to get through.

These stories had been gathered the night before at The Place - a dance club near the Encore. We started watching. The stories were okay, but nothing was really jumping out at us. We kept watching, hoping. We hadn’t been let down yet, and tonight would be know different. We found our story and, I’m not certain, but it may have been the last story we watched.

The story dealt with a lady who was leading a choir. She was wearing a wig and at one point the wig fell off. One of the deacon’s in the church rushed up and put the wig back on - backwards.

We were shooting in the Sony conference room tomorrow. We had decided ahead of time that this needed to be a Jordan scene. We decided that the basic setup of the scene would involve Jordan in a meeting with his label.

So, this is what we pulled out of the story -

A woman is leading the choir and being watched by an audience - Jordan, the star performer, is brought in by his label to review his performance.

It is reveled that the leader is not all she was thought to be - Jordan is told by his label that he is not nearly the songwriter he thinks he is. His faults are laid bare.

The woman, far from being embarrassed, continues on - Jordan, rather than cowering, accuses his label of not sending him any good songs and of playing games with him.

The woman’s wig is replaced, but placed on backwards - Jordan is reaffirmed by his label, but with a twist - if the relationship is to continue, Jordan must reconnect with his brother, the real songwriter of the pair.

With the idea of the scene in place, it practically began to write itself. It was the last piece of the puzzle and everyone felt like it fit perfectly.

Story 9 - Song/Scene 3

2009-01-26T09:58:00.000-06:00

Story 9 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Songwriter Blog #8

2009-01-23T23:50:00.009-06:00

BENTON BLOUNT PART II - HEARING THE SONG - THE BADDEST THAT I'VE EVER BEEN

Well, I was actually starting to feel like the end was in site. I really only had 2 more nights of writing and then I would be all done. My last 2 nights of writing had been relatively painless so I was riding a bit of momentum. That momentum aside, I woke up on this day in the most physical pain I'd been in since we began this. I'm only 33, but playing football the night before had caused me to pull my back out- I was in pretty rough shape. You know how it is, the next morning is always the worst. Plus, I spent the night sleeping on the couch with Vega squeezing in for space. So when Ryan got to the house with Benton's rough mix, I was in a state of painful anticipation. I slowly tried to sit up.

Vega- My Lab/Pit Bull Mix, makes a warm couch mate. Unfortunately, she takes up a lot of room.

Before we get to that mix though, I need to say a few things about the studio that this was recorded in. Welcome to 1979 Studios was awesome. It was in a huge factory type building - tons and tons of space. Getting this studio was completely last minute. We were in a desperate situation and Ryan totally came through with this. The guy that we really owe our thanks is Chris Mara.

Me talking to Chris Mara at the Wrap Party. Chris owns "Welcome to 1979 Studios." He is a great great guy- and his studio is AWESOME!

The day at Dark Horse Studios was difficult for Ryan. He spent all day making frantic calls to studios until he finally hooked up with "Welcome to 1979 Studios."

Chris owns Welcome to 1979 Studios. We gave him a cold call and told him what was going on. He was up for it and said "I'll see you guys tomorrow." From the moment that the guys arrived there Chris was entirely gracious and helpful. The entire day ran smoothly and it was a great experience for everyone. So if you're ever looking for a studio with some vintage flair- check this place out. I think it was very special to Noel Golden, who for the first time in years got to say "we're rolling!"

Daily Vidcast Day 7 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.
This Video Blog contains some great footage from "Welcome to 1979 Studios."

Anyway, we slid the CD into my mac. Immediately I smiled. This was the first song on the album, so it really had to come out with a bang. Noel and Benton had really sped up the song and immediately it came barreling in like a freight train. The musicianship was simply perfect. This is Nashville, so you can easily take this for granted. These were the types of musicians who tour with the big artists and play in the big studios. They know their stuff and they get it done right every time. The whole thing just sounded like a big rockin' country radio single..."Noel Golden Style!" Benton's voice was perfect for the song. He almost "attacks" a song with his voice. It's a very powerful vocal style. He added some flair to the ending which I thought was amazing. I looked at Ryan and said "7 for 7." He looked at me and said "yeah, so don't screw the last 2 up!"

MEGHAN KABIR PART I - WRITING THE SONG - KILL A MAN

Meet Meghan Kabir.

Let me begin by saying that this night, by far, was the most difficult night I had. The other nights weren't even close. It's funny in retrospect when I talk to Chad about how the nights went. It always seems like this was one of his easier nights (I assume the first or second night was his toughest). For me though, it was probably the most difficult piece of writing that I've ever done...and people were watching.

Let me tell you about Meghan Kabir.

Meghan was the last artist that we brought into the project. Technically, Mean Tambourines were the last, but that was because we lost an artist and producer last minute. So as of about 60 days before the project Meghan completed our roster. I was looking at the other 8 artists and thought "hmm, we need another female artist- and preferably someone more in the pop/rock vein." I started racking my brain and remembered this girl that my buddy Mike Logen had told me about. Her name was Meghan Kabir. I thought I recalled her being one of my myspace friends- so I looked her up. I liked her music, thought she'd be perfect and proceeded to send her a message via myspace. We talked on the phone a couple times and agreed to meet over at Edgehill Cafe.

Meghan Kabir stopped by Dan McGuinness for one of our parties. Here she is talking to Actor Nat McIntyre.

From the moment I met Meghan I immediately liked her. She's got lots of things going on and you can immediately tell that she works hard to achieve what she achieves. She's always meeting someone, going to a session, writing, etc. She's got a very special charisma. We talked about the project, I answered a few questions, and we agreed to give this a go. I was actually very anxious to write for her. I had done a couple writing sessions with artists in similar genres and had really enjoyed them. This was going to be lots of fun for me. Plus, I knew she'd be working with a good friend and producer named Paul Buono.

Producer Paul Buono.

Paul was the first producer that The Nashville 9 brought in. He has worked with Ryan Pruitt on numerous project and they are good friends. Paul spent a lot of time producing in Finland. So he really brought an interesting background to the table. He not only produced plenty of rock albums but he does lots of cool stuff like "trance" and "trip hop." We pretty much knew, before we even talked to Meghan, that Paul would be the right producer for her. We were very excited to see what they came up with together.

Anyway, back to that night...

We all sat down to watch the stories. There was a buzz in the air because we had heard these stories were pretty good. Just so you know, they were, in my opinion, the best stories that we got. As we watched I found myself thinking "I don't know which one of these to choose." The stories were taken from Bobby's Idle Hour on Music Row. I had gone in there by myself to ask if they would mind if we came in to get stories. I immediately thought that the place would be perfect.

Back when I first came to Nashville I managed a little Honkytonk Bar out in Gallatin- it was called Lucky's. I owe a great deal of my eventual love for country music to that bar. What was even more interesting though was how intriguing the patrons were. The stories they would tell were just fascinating. Regulars with names like "Bull," "Vodka Larry," "Dickens," "Bear," and "Cleve" would come in every day, order the same drinks, and tell the best tales ever told. Bobby's Idle Hour seemed exactly that place. We weren't disappointed.

Me with Laura, one of the bartenders at Lucky's.

This is Bull. One of my favorite regulars at Lucky's. He told the best stories.

We were really drawn to this story about a guy who actually killed a man who molested his 9 year old niece. The story just really stopped me in my tracks. It's one of those things that was just so engaging that I wanted to use it. It was the most "whoa" type of story, but it wasn't the best one in terms of storytelling. Brandon kept talking throughout the story to engage him further. All that aside though, I was really really hesitant because I was writing for Meghan Kabir. How would I take this dark story and its content and translate it into a song for Meghan? Where would I go with it? If it were Evanescence it would be easier- I could afford to just write a really dark song. That wasn't Meghan though. Her stuff really dances and the content isn't super heavy in that kind of way. So...I wasn't sure I should write this story.

I expressed my hesitation to the guys. The way this process was working for them was a little different. They had already written 7 scenes and they only needed to write the last 2. So they were looking for a specific theme to work with. I asked what the theme of this scene would be- Chad said "conflict." I thought "damn," this story would be perfect for them. Now please understand, I don't say that so that you think I made the great sacrifice and "took one for the team." That really wasn't the case. At the end of the day, I really wanted to know if I was good enough to make this work for her.

Story 8 - Scene/Song 5 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.
This is the story!

Immediately after we saw the stories I went into the writing room and sat down with Meghan Kabir and Paul Buono. They came by for a bit to meet with me and talk before the writing began. One of the interesting things they said was that they wanted something upbeat and dancy. They really weren't hoping to get a dark ballad. This made me sarcastically think "awesome" since that was exactly what I was planning on writing. I did my best to assure them that they would get the best song ever. Inside though, my most honest thought was "how the hell am I going to do this?"

So they left and I put on a pot of coffee. I then went in the other room while it was brewing so I could start throwing together some ideas. I started on the piano. Every single idea that I came up with was really really dark and really really balladesque. As I thought of the story, I kept falling into that realm. I'm somewhat of an emotional writer. I like to create the music first and then allow the "vibe" to dictate content. It doesn't always work that way, but it's how I like to do things. In this situation though, it was working against me. The only thing I could think of doing was write what I wanted to write and make some vague references to the story- but that felt like cheating.

Every single idea I initially came up with was some kind of piano ballad. I just couldn't get away from it.

I went in to get the coffee I brewed and it was all gone- the crew drank it all. Somewhat pissed, I drank 2 of those 5 Hour Energy drinks.

Something interesting had started to happen. The story had kind of altered the feel in the house. It seemed like there was a general "something interesting is going on" type of vibe permeating the house. I felt like I noticed more cameras than I usually did. I sat back down and started pushing through the ideas again...

It felt to me like there were more cameras than usual this night. It really added to the pressure.

The documentary crew had decided to interview me for a while. It was already about 10:30 and I had absolutely no idea where to go on this song. I sat down and started answering questions. The interview lasted about an hour and I was starting to get really jittery from all those energy drinks. Plus, I was beginning to get tired and was stressing that I had nothing yet. I began to get a bit panicky. I couldn't think, every idea sucked, my head hurt, and I was having trouble staying awake.

Again I forced myself to sit down and roll together some ideas. I brought Brandon in to help me find direction. Brandon is really good once I get something going - he really helps me hone in and finish up. Unfortunately, I wasn't far enough along for him to really help me. I had idea fragments and he would say "great, now let's go with that." It didn't work though because none of it felt right. I started getting really edgy with Brandon - this is a luxury because he doesn't take it personally. Finally, I said "man, just go to bed, I need to hash this out on my own for a while." He was cool about - he gets how I work. Before he left though he turned and said "you're gonna have to pick a direction and go with it - you can't keep going back and forth between ideas." He was right.

Brandon did the best he could to help me write this song. I just wasn't ready to be helped.

I was really starting to get edgy.

I had one idea that kept bouncing through my head. It was this line that I kept singing in my head with a certain bass line. It was "tonight I'm gonna kill a man." It seemed really dramatic and intense though...maybe too intense for Meghan. I kind of left it because I thought it was a bit too much.

Killa%20man%201.mp3
This was my initial idea for the song. Though I initially left it, I ended up building the song around this.

I started thinking about the storyteller's tattoos. I started thinking about having scars that you can't hide- kind of like a tattoo. I spent a little time on that idea and it kind of fizzled. I had nothing. So I went outside and talked to myself like an idiot, hoping the fresh air would clear my head. I started dialing Reed Pittman...then stopped. I could do this without bringing him in. We were writing on the last night anyway. Then I went ahead and dialed him anyway. He was out at a Restaurant with his family. I hung up feeling like an idiot for calling. I realized I was starting to get desperate. I went back inside and had more coffee. I started playing bass hoping for a different feel. I started feeling pretty sick. I went outside in the front yard and vomited in the grass. All that coffee and 5 Hour Energy drinks were killing me. Then I finally thought, the hell with it, lets make Meghan Kabir "kill a man" in this song. I'm just gonna go with it. She's a really tiny diminutive girl, but lets make her do it anyway. Besides, I can use it to my advantage in the song.

So, I knew what I had to do. I needed help. I couldn't stay awake- I needed interaction. So I called David Scott.

I promised early on that I'd tell you more about Dave. So here goes...

David Scott and I walking out of the Grocery Store...back in the day.

Dave and I are best friends from high school. He was the first person I ever wrote a song with and he was the best man in my wedding. Suffice to say, we're pretty tight. He and I were in a band together after college. The band was called Jordan's Wake. Maybe you've heard of it? Well...most likely not.

David Scott and I during the early days of Jordan's Wake- before Nashville. Oh, and yes, that is a fully bearded long haired Chad Morgan!

Dave is a pretty interesting guy. He speaks a bunch of languages, has lived all over the world, and he reads a ton. He, his wife and 2 kids currently live on the East Coast where he works in law enforcement. He's also spent a great deal of time as a fighting instructor in the art of Krav Maga. So anyway, beyond all that he's an amazing songwriter...and definitely "outside the box."

While we were on the phone, I gave him Meghan's myspace so he could get a feel for her music. I couldn't email him the story since the file was too big. Instead, I played it on my computer while I was connected with him on Ichat. That way he was able to at least hear the story. I told him about my idea to have Meghan "kill a man." He thought it was as good a direction as any. He told me to give him a little time to come up with some ideas. About 45 minutes later, he sent me this:

i left a man today
i left him broken left him breathless
you don't want to know the details
I don't have much left to say
but i left a man today

I 'm not one to walk away
words unspoken. i'm not speechless
you don't want to know the details
and now there's gon' be hell to pay
but i left a man today

I felt like this was a great start. Dave really liked the idea of using things that referred to killing without actually doing any killing. Things like "left him broken left him breathless." I thought these were really good ideas but I still felt like we had to just commit to the "kill a man" idea. Dave's lyrical ideas really got me thinking about the idea that she needed to be in a situation where she was a victim. That way, people wouldn't be so shocked by the "kill" stuff. We talked about it briefly.

David told me I needed to give him more melodic direction. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to plug in the lyrics. I sat and just forced myself to come up with something. Then out of the blue I came up with the melody line that we would use for the chorus. I sang it to Dave and we started working lyrics. Dave sent me back some new ideas and just like that, we had our chorus.

I'm not the kind to walk away, walk away.
Something's going down tonight.
If I'm the one to make it all go away
A wrong will have to make it right.

We loved how the storyteller, in response to Brandon asking if he felt justified, said "I'll let God sort that out." We were able to tie that in with his saying "you don't want to know the details." Together, both of those ideas were thrown into the 2nd verse:

They say the devil's in the details
God will have to sort that through.
But when both have had their say and hell is left to pay
I'm gonna have to pay my dues.

At this point we had finally found our rhythm. Dave and I had written pretty much the whole song. We sorted through some different parts and stitched up some lines. I thanked him profusely and finally hung up the phone. It was about 3:45 at this point. The house was dead quiet and everyone was in bed.

I still felt like the song needed something else...more story. I also wanted to say something about Meghan being this tiny girl, but still being able to do this thing. So I wrote this:

I'm standing in your living room.
Waiting for the moment that you come home.
I know you only see a little bittie girl
But I've got something more for you!

At this stage I was about to pass out. I started trying to sing a demo. Everything sounded terrible. I was trying to capture the vibe of what I wanted the song like, but I was struggling to do it with my acoustic guitar. My voice was shot and I kept having to do it over again. Finally, at about 5:15am I had to just take what I had. It wasn't perfect, but Meghan and Paul were professionals. They would be able to get it! I recorded a long rambling video (in 2 parts) for them and collapsed on my couch.

To summarize this night, let me say 2 things.

#1- This was the most difficult song I've ever written. For that reason, it will always be special to me. For a while, I honestly didn't think I'd make it. I was very desperate.

#2- David Scott saved my ass! I wouldn't have ever been able to write this song without him.

As I quickly drifted into sleep, I wondered what Meghan would think when she heard this. Would she be able to take this idea and run with it? What would they think when they saw the story? Would I be able to wake up when Ryan got here in 2 hours?

Video To Meghan and Paul PART I

Video To Meghan and Paul PART II

Screenwriter Blog #8 - Story 7/Scene 1/Painted Springs - Story 8/Scene 5/Sambuca

2009-01-21T00:10:00.013-06:00

It was supposed to rain today. We had written the scene twice. Once for rain. And once for no rain. We really had little cause to complain. The weather had been nearly perfect for the entire shoot. I was really hoping it wouldn't rain today, though. Not because I didn't want anyone to get wet (in fact, the scene, if shot while raining, would have required Nat to get wet, very wet.) I just liked the shot list better in the "no rain" scene. It rained early in the morning, but then started to taper off. Things were good.

Yesterday's drive was long, but today's was going to be even longer. And trickier. Doug, Nat, and I had each been out to Painted Springs, but that in no way insured we could find our way back. And then there were the people who had never been out there before. About half way to Painted Springs I received a call from Andrea. She wasn't lost, she just wasn't there yet; and in surroundings like these it's better to make sure you're headed in the right direction. I tried to talk her into view of the two Longhorns at the entrance and she and her husband soon made it to set.

It wasn't raining now, but the rain had certainly left its mark. There was mud everywhere. No one was really prepared. Except for Doug. Doug had on waders. Waders that soon became the envy of everyone.

We pulled out all the equipment and started to look for a spot to set up base. This was and is a working farm and I wasn't sure that anyone here knew of our arriving. I wanted to make sure to stay out of their way, but also set us up in a position where we could get the most work done.

I was able to track someone down, explain exactly what we were doing here, and then went back to helping load things in. We had decided to set up camp right outside of some of the barn. Brandon soon arrived and we unloaded the jib.

The barn

We had a lot to shoot today. We not only had to have the brothers interact, we also had 4 flashbacks. Plus, everyone was on a different schedule. Brandon needed to be out by noon, Steve by 2:30, and Michele by 4-4:30. Plus, we really wanted to get some good jib shots today. Once again we were working in an extremely visually stimulating environment and wanted to do our best to capture it.

We decided to shoot the Brandon and Nat scenes first. I really wanted to get a shot of Nat staring out, from the loft, as Brandon arrives. I wanted their initial conversation to take place in that position; Nat looking down at Brandon and Brandon looking up at Nat. Not only did I like the way the shot looked, I really liked what it said about the brothers' relationship. Plus, we were ending the short with a shot where Nat was looking up at Brandon. I was really happy it wasn't raining. It meant we could get this shot.

We set things up, got a few jib shots, and then had Brandon start driving the truck in. We got it within a few takes and then moved on.

Set up in the morning always took us the longest. It never failed. We always took a long time to set up, but were then able to quickly roll through shots. We were working the same today, but unfortunately our schedule had changed. We still had shots to get with Brandon (who had to be out of here shortly) and we were still setting up.

We moved Nat and Brandon into the truck and started the meat of their dialogue. If I learned anything, it's that horses can be very loud. Horses really set the locale, but they're not always your best friend when shooting dialogue. We had a horse whiny, as if on cue, in almost every take.

We finally got through these shots and moved onto more jib shots. We wanted to shoot the truck arriving and leaving. We needed some establishing shots for the entire short and I was hoping we would get something out of these that would serve as such.

The jib is not the easiest thing to maneuver. We needed one person on the jib, plus someone else to carry the monitor as the jib moved (there was a glare anytime we tried to use the lcd screen.) We got it set up and started to work on the pacing. We basically had Brandon drive in (with Nat hidden in various places of the truck so as not to be seen) and then Brandon and Nat drive out. Over and over again.

It was nearing noon and we had to get Brandon out of there so he could go gather stories. We got what we needed, tore down the jib, and sent him on his way.

At about this time lunch arrived. So we broke.

As stated, this scene was very complicated. Lots of setups with lots of different actors. I felt bad. Half the day was through, and half our actors had been waiting around all morning. I tried to hurry to get things moving along.

We decided to shoot Steve's scenes next. We needed Steve to confront Nat. we decided Nat and David Wagner would be pitching horseshoes as this occurred. We would glide Steve in and then have the conversation begin.

Making sure the horseshoes were safe

Steve was great. He was always on his mark and always had his lines down. He had been a Joel recommendation and I was extremely happy.

At about this time it started to get really windy. It didn't hurt things visually (not much to see blowing,) but it was very loud. We did what we could to fix this and tried to continue shooting. Nick had really thrown himself in to helping get problems fixed (he was a big help with the jib) and this was no different. He and David worked through this problem and we continued on.

We took the scene from a few different angles. I was really happy with the interaction we were getting from Steve and Nat and I knew this was going to be great. We finally got all we needed and we released Steve.

We still had three more flashbacks to shoot and it was getting late. We decided to cut shots of Michele stealing the money (and therefore one of the flashbacks;) deciding that this could be implied.

Michele had already been in makeup with Andrea (it was great to finally get to see Andrea working on set. Both her talent and her energy had really stepped things up) and so we moved on to the first flashback.

This required Nat to be working and for Michele to be in his way. This was the third time I had worked with Michele and she had always been great. I knew I could ask her to practically do anything and she would get it done. For this scene, we basically just needed her to walk into the room and sit on some hay bales. Sounds pretty simple. But it's all about the walking and the sitting. We had to imply that she had a crush on Nat and Nat wanted nothing to do with her. All without dialogue.

The bales of hay

We moved back up to the hay loft. We decided Nat could appear to be working (it really was a good deal of work. Some of these hay bales are pretty heavy) by moving the hay bales from one pile to another. We set it up and got our shots.

We were running late and we still had one flashback to go. We had Nat and Michele change clothes and move into the apartment in the barn. We had to work fast. The sun was setting, changing our light at every minute. We crowded everyone into the room, set up two cameras, and started shooting. Once again our trusty wad of money came into play. We got what we needed and hurried Michele out of there. As we packed up, Doug went off to get some B roll.

Inside the barn

We were all packed up and ready to leave when Doug suggested we take a ride in the paddle boat (there's a paddle boat.) We said okay. It's a 4 person paddle boat and so David, Doug, Nat and I all piled in. It might be built for 4 people, but it tended to float really funny. I felt like we might sink at any moment. Anyway, we took it around the lake a bit and then returned to dry land and our cars.

The pond

I didn't know what kind of stories to expect tonight. The team had gathered at Bobby's Idle hour. I've spent some time in bars and heard a lot of stories in bars. Either you get something magical or some meanderings or a mixture of both. But you always get something colorful.

We started watching and we could tell right off we were getting some great stories. I think as a whole these were probably the best group of stories we got. They sounded lived in, practiced, and sincere. Several stories stood out. And I think the one we choose probably stood out the most. It wasn't the best story structurally (it was more Brandon asking a lot of questions than someone telling a story,) but the content was practically unlike anything we had heard in the project. I think we were all initially taken aback to think that someone would actually tell this story and that the person telling this story had actually performed these actions.

We debated on whether or not to use this story as opposed to what else we had to choose from. It fit our scene pretty well, but so did some of the other stories. Still, we thought it might be interesting to use this story. Luke seemed hesitant. This would be a hard song for him to write, especially with who he was writing for. I was a little hesitant too. I didn't want to use this story without justification and just for shock.

We had to make a decision though. We weighed everything again and decided to go with the story.

It was the story of a man who's niece had been molested. The molester was convicted and served 19 months in prison. The man telling this story waited for the molester to get out of prison and then beat him to death. He served 7 years of a life sentence.

It was pretty heavy content. This was scene 5 and we had definitely wanted conflict here. We needed John to really bring out all his issues. We were to be shooting at Sambuca, a restaurant.

So, this is what we pulled out of the story.

Some wrongdoing has been done - Jordan has "stolen" John's song.

Someone has been punished - We decided to have John be the one who was sent away; a sort of self imposed exile.

There is a trial - Some fans come up to Jordan and John while they sit at the restaurant. John starts listing and insinuating Jordan's faults.

There is waiting for revenge - It would appear as if this is the first time John has really spoken this way about this subject to Jordan. He has been holding it in for a long time.

The punishment is severe - John crucifies Jordan with his words. At one point he basically destroys Jordan (or at least how he defines himself) by accusing him of not being his brother.

There is punishment for these actions - John's exclamations make it all the more harder, and maybe even impossible, for he and Jordan to reconcile.

There is potential that a life sentence will not be served - By the end of Nat's speech he sounds more hurt than angry, this maybe paving the way for some reconciliation.

We went to work. We needed Nat and Brandon, but also fans. Nat suggested we call Theresa Meeker. It sounded like a good suggestion and she was available.

I set to writing a first draft of the scene. After getting one finished I fell asleep. Nat was also working on a draft.

I woke up the next morning and took a look at Nat's draft. I didn't like it. I felt like he wasn't really saying much and his character was mostly talking at Jordan. Nat argued for what he had written and then he performed it for me. It made all the difference. It made me see these words did mean something; especially when spoken by Nat.

We decided to use my buildup and insinuations, then use all of Nat's speech directed at Jordan, and then finish with my two last lines.

It read great. I was really happy with what we had and really upset with myself for jumping so quickly to an unwarranted conclusion. It really opened my eyes (again) to the way Nat wrote and how well he could especially write for this character.

Story 8 - Song/Scene 5

2009-01-19T07:08:00.000-06:00

Story 8 - Scene/Song 5 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Songwriter Blog #7

2009-01-16T23:54:00.009-06:00

DENITIA ODIGIE PART II - HEARING THE SONG - MATTER OF TIME

Before we get to when I first listen to the song, I'd like to briefly talk about Dark Horse Recording Studios. As I've mentioned before, I always pop into the studio to say a quick hello to everyone. On this day it was especially important because the film side of the project AND the music side of the project were going to be working in the same place.

Anyway, after the longest drive ever, I arrived at Dark Horse Studios. If you've never been there, it's an amazing experience. It's almost counter to what the musician expects in a studio. Dank dark cold concrete walls are replaced with sunny inspiring upscale recording cabins. I pity the poor guy who has his first recording session there- he's set up for a lifetime of disappointment.

As soon as I get there I see two guys smoking cigarettes on the front deck. I say "hey guys, where's the nashville 9 group?" They look at me and say, "never heard of it." Good sign. They send me toward the other studio. I find our crew milling about.

I arrived at Dark Horse and found everyone milling about.

Let me say this. Every time I go to a studio I just feel like I'm in the way. I try to make myself as small as possible so as not to detract from the environment. I'm just not a studio guy. Now, if I feel that way in a Music Recording Studio, you can imagine how awkward and useless I feel on a film set.

I really felt like I was in the way on the film set.

The moment everyone saw me come to the film set they all hailed me and pulled me into the group. After that moment dissipated, I found myself getting in the way of camera shots, ruining continuity, and talking to people who should be working. So I went to the Recording studio.

The moment you walk into a recording studio you get a "feel" or "sense" of the environment. My first feeling when I walked into the recording studio was that the room was cluttered and tense. It felt like there were more people there than there should have been and that people were frustrated. I tried to shrink into a corner.

Kenny Meeks and Andy Hunt In Dark Horse Studios

I felt kind of bad because Kenny Meeks was thrown into a difficult situation. The very fact that we were excited to have film and music together was going to make Kenny's day very complicated. People were coming in and out. Takes were ruined because doors were being opened. The Short Film crew would need to jump in for filming. It was a pretty hectic and erratic environment. Then the scariest possible thing happened...Chad asked me to act in the Short film. I was to play the music producer. I was really happy that I was getting a chance to be in the short film. It's just that the fear overtakes the joy. I don't act. I'm just not very good at it.

I had a non-speaking role in the test shoot months before. I had 2 responsibilities. #1- I needed to walk towards the camera. #2 - I needed to walk out a door and trip. Lets just say that after multiple takes, numerous sarcastic comments from Nat, and an embarrassing 35 minutes I was certain that I should stick to writing. So when Chad asked me to act, I started getting a bit stressed.

I had one line- "Jordan, we're ready for you." They were about to start when I said "wait!" Should I say "JORDAN, we're ready for YOU," or "Jordan, WE'RE ready for you," or...you get the point. My first take went and they had to re-shoot it because I turned too fast. My second take seemed to be good enough, so we kept it. Truthfully, I just think that they needed to get the real musicians back into the studio- but I was honestly content to make it a wrap! I was irrationally nervous.

Here is me looking unnatural at trying to look natural.

Speaking of nervous, we had a bit of drama to add. It was kind of an inside joke between Ryan and I that we didn't have enough drama going on for our documentary. The short film guys had all kinds of crazy stuff going on. We, on the other hand, had a pretty smooth ride. We were planning on being at Dark Horse Studios on this day and the next. Unfortunately, day 2 at Dark Horse fell through. So here we were, 2pm on Thursday and Ryan starts making calls to find us a studio for Friday.

Ryan and I walk outside and have some rare time together to talk about what's going on. He informs me that he's made a good 20 calls and has nothing yet. I ask him if I can do anything- he says "just write songs - I've got this." I quietly thank God that Ryan is working on the project as I have barely the energy to call my wife at the end of the day, let alone call and find a studio.

So at about 6pm, I get a call from Ryan. He says "hey man, I found a studio." I say "awesome." He then informs me that it isn't a typical studio. It's called "Welcome to 1979 Studios." All of the equipment is state of the art...circa 1979. That's right, 24 channel board, analog tape, etc. Most people these days can use 24 tracks for just the drums. Our producer will have to do the whole thing with 24 tracks. Well, we'll get that later...

Back to the morning and listening to the song!

I couldn't wait to hear this tune. Denitia's song was going to be the last song on the album. Because of that, I was really hoping that Kenny would work the song so that it kind of went on and on at the end- kind of a long fade out. So in the CD went!

Immediately, a super laid back guitar lick takes you right into this super mellow feel. It's the kind of thing that makes you say "ooh," and immediately gets the head moving and eyes closing. With Kenny Meeks and the guys he had playing, it's almost unfair. They are the kind of musicians that are so good that they don't have to play too much.

My wife Jenn telling Denitia how much she enjoys hearing her sing.

Denitia's voice is so captivating that it can take up plenty of the space. Kenny did the perfect thing by laying a solid foundation and allowing her to just do her thing. With those guys it's all about feel and taste. The song came out more mellow than Mike and I had written initially, and it was really cool. Denitia had made lots of melodic changes. It was interesting in that she kind of moved the whole melody up to where the harmony would sit. Also, she added some stuff and the end of the chorus that just really helped make the song. On top of all that, you should see and hear Meeks play the guitar. I say it again- it's all about taste and feel. Kenny and those guys are just another level.

There was definitely some really special chemistry that happened between Denitia and Kenny. The song was amazing and it was really an honor to work with them.

Denitia on the tire swing after tracking her vocal

Kenny and Denitia really had a great chemistry

WRITING THE SONG PART I - BENTON BLOUNT - THE BADDEST THAT I'VE EVER BEEN

Benton Blount.

Way back when Ryan and I were gathering artists, we knew we wanted a good range of different genres. We wanted it to represent what was in Nashville. Therefore, we knew we needed someone who was right down the middle rockin' country. Unfortunately, I knew tons of girls that would fit that bill, but no guys. So Ryan and I started talking about it. Ryan told me that some guy named Benton had emailed him saying he was interested in being one of the artists on the project. So I told Ryan to send me a link to his myspace.

Here's what I saw when I first went to Benton's Myspace.

This first thing I noticed when I went to his myspace was that he was labeled as "Country Crunk Rock." I didn't know what that was and intrigued. Let's be honest. Usually, and I stress USUALLY, when someone contacts YOU, they usually end up not being what you're looking for. I listened to Benton's stuff on Myspace and was like "Wow, he's great and he's perfect for this!" We felt like he was so good that we tried to figure out what good be wrong. Well, we rolled the dice and I called him...and it turned out to be one of the best moves we made.

Benton Blount at The Duck Race

Benton immediately got along with all the core Nashville 9 people. Here he is with "Ducky," Mike Logen, Me, and Jaclyn James.

He and I agreed to meet at SAE to talk about stuff. I have to tell you, Benton is the real deal. He's got that "bad-ass" intimidating country artist demeanor BUT immediately falls right in line with the rest of the group. At the end of this whole thing he was one of the guys that the core of the Nashville 9 became most endeared with. We're all fans now.

Beyond that, he's very talented. He's a great writer, great performer and he's got an amazing voice. I don't mean to pour down too much praise on Benton, but it's just nice to meet someone who is that good without being too caught up in it. He was going to fit in perfectly with all the other artists. He was even willing to take some time and play at The Duck Race! Even better than that, he said that he already had a producer that he wanted to work with- Noel Golden.

Noel Golden.

What blew me away about Noel Golden was his absolute lack of fear. Most producers asked tons of questions about this and that. Noel just said "I'm in, tell me what I need to do." When he came to the house right before we started writing the song, Ryan and I told him about the analog studio and how he only had 24 tracks to work with. The guy didn't bat an eye. He just said "sounds good- see you tomorrow."

I was kind of planning on writing this one alone. I've had a chance to do lots of country writing and I felt comfortable doing this. I knew this was the first song on the album so it really needed to come out of the gate pretty strong. It had to be fast and upbeat.

The story was about a guy that was valet parking and decided to steal a car to impress this girl. I got up after watching the story with the guys and walked by myself into the room to start. Literally one minute after I sat down, Brandon came in and said "I have an idea for this one." I really hadn't sat down with Brandon to write anything substantial so I was more than happy to write this one with him. Brandon said "we have to make Benton steal a car!" I thought that was a great idea and immediately started playing some stuff. We thought about having him steal a car from a bar and taking a joyride down 65. Maybe he could pick up his girlfriend and get back to the bar before the guy knows his car is gone. Then Brandon said "let's called it 'The Baddest That I've Ever Been.'" In probably 30 minutes we were all done. All we had to do was sing a rough recording.

baddest%20cut.mp3
Though it's pretty slow, here is a quick verse and chorus of the song recorded a couple moments after we came up with it.

Brandon came in right after watching the story with a song idea.

The fact that we wrote this so fast was perfect since Nat and Chad came in and challenged us to a game of touch football...

So there we were, 10pm on Thursday night, playing football on the street in front of my house. Brandon and I won that game, but it came at quite a loss. We all took quite the beating. I pulled something in my back and was nearly incapable of moving. We all came in and collapsed in the living room. Chad lay down on the floor to catch his breath. Then, one of my favorite things from the whole project happened. My dog Mike walked over and threw up on him. I just couldn't stop laughing which only made my back hurt more. You can check out the video blog below.

Daily Vidcast Day 7 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

We decided that Brandon would sing this one. He and I threw together the demo and I passed out on the couch.

Brandon and I recorded this video after a 60 minute football game in the front yard. My one consolation is that Brandon looks worse than I do!!

Screenwriter Blog #7 - Story 6/Scene 9/Dark Horse Studios

2009-01-14T23:39:00.004-06:00

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.

Story 7 - Scene/Song 1

2009-01-13T19:21:00.000-06:00

Story 7 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Songwriter Blog #6

2009-01-09T23:42:00.002-06:00

MIKE LOGEN PART II - HEARING THE SONG - TELL ME HOW

Well, by now, if you've been reading the blogs, you know the drill. I got up early. I was really tired. I couldn't sleep with everyone everywhere. Dogs were loud. Ryan brought coffee. I couldn't wait to hear the mix. Blah blah blah. Before we get to the song though, let me tell you something interesting...

"By this point in the week we were all pretty tired- as you can see from this picture."

Every morning I would play my roughly recorded version of the song for Ryan and then we'd talk about it. Keep in mind that I wasn't recording these demos in Pro Tools. I'd open up Garageband and click record. Then using the tiny built-in mic on the laptop I'd record a live acoustic version of the song. I didn't have the time or energy to do any kind of full recording. Most people will tell you that they can hear what the song will sound like- they don't need the production or the "good recording." Just so you know, that is almost never true.

All that to say that I was nervous that Ryan Pruitt and the artists/producers would be unable to hear beyond the fact that these recordings were rough. From day one, Ryan was always like "man, this is awesome- they're going to totally dig this." He definitely seemed to be one of the few people that can hear what a song WILL sound like. This is probably due to his long history as an artist in a band.

"Thankfully, Ryan was able to hear the vision on our rough acoustic demos."

I say all that to say this: I was more excited about "Tell Me How" than I was any other song on I'd written. I KNEW it was good and I KNEW everyone would love it. I even thought the rough version I recorded with Reed Pittman was great. HOWEVER, this was the first (and only) song about which Ryan was like "eh, it's ok." He made mention of the fact he wasn't sure this was the best for direction for Mike Logen and the guys. I was like "do you need me to play it again? This is perfect!"

I mention this because I think it's funny that the one song I'm most confident about is the one song Ryan found to be least impressive. I guess that's just the way things go... Also, in Ryan's defense, I think he felt like I missed it stylistically (not that it was a bad song).

Anyway, I pushed play.

The moment I heard the beginning I thought "I love Cason Cooley." The intro was so sparse that it immediately engaged me. Mike Logen has a great voice- there's just no way around it. So the moment his vocal came in I was further on the hook. Then, my first of several great surprises. The chorus came in with really cool sounding cello- courtesy of Matt Slocum. They did a "cut chorus" into a half-time feel. Everything was sounding so cinematic. Mike and the guys changed up the bridge a bit- again I loved it.

I feel like there were two distinct directions that the Mike, Cason, and Andy could have gone in. The first, and I think the most natural, would be to make the whole thing huge on the chorus. It would have been easy to make this really commercial and dramatic- and I probably would have loved it. Still though, there is something about the way Cason resisted that urge that gives it something more special. He never left that half time feel. Somehow this song became more of a journey that you go on- which is really what that song was about. I found myself constantly wanting the song to "deliver" me, or "take me home" but it never did. Because it never did, I realized that this song accomplished something on a level beyond my expectations. I finished the song with one feeling - longing. This was really beautiful and I couldn't have been more pleased!

Mike Logen changed several lines. I'm really comfortable with Mike doing that because I've written with him so many times. Here are a couple things he changed:

LUKE: I'm just a stranger now, in a foreign land.
MIKE: I'm just a stranger now, in a strange land.

LUKE: I search for black and white, under skies of gray
Nothing's ever clear, I can't separate these days
MIKE: I see in black and white, and I'm turning gray
Days move into nights, I can't separate

LUKE: When I close my eyes, I remember that goodbye.
When you made me promise I'd find my way back.
MIKE: When I close my eyes, I see your guiding light.
I made a promise, I'd find my way back.

DENITIA O'DIGIE - PART I - WRITING THE SONG

"Kenny Meeks and Denitia O'Digie."

Stories for this night had come from The Boys and Girls Club. We had been excited about this because we were hoping to benefit these guys from the project. We had an opportunity to go in and meet everyone. I think we all were moved by the dedication of everyone working there. We decided to use a story told by the director- Jeff.

"We had a chance to visit The Boys and Girls Club before The Nashville 9. We all had a great time hanging out with the kids so we were excited to hear what stories they told!"

Tonight was going to interesting. I would be writing WITH Mike Logen. He would be leaving the recording session and coming straight to my house to start working on the song for Denitia. In some ways this seems like it could be a scheduling nightmare. Truthfully though, I had planned this on purpose- I didn't know how tired I'd be by this point in the project. Therefore, I knew that Mike could help carry me if I was exhausted.

"I was really looking forward to getting to actually WRITE with Mike. I had just written a song for him. He came straight from the studio to the writing."

Before we began, Denitia came by with Kenny Meeks. She was going to spend a little time talking about her music and would even play us a song. As it happens, she actually sang 2 songs. When she finished and finally left, one of the doc guys put down his camera and said "whoa, I think I love her." She really is amazing to hear perform. After the 2 songs, we all talked about their approach to the song and then they headed out.

So let me tell you about Denitia O'Digie.

"Denitia O'Digie sharing her Nashville 9 experience with the guys from The Champion and His Burning Flame."

Like so many Nashville artists, she's someone that you probably see all around town and never know who or how talented she is. I would see her about twice a week when I would come in for coffee at the Frothy Monkey. She actually worked there. We'd talk every now and then about her music. I knew she was good because people were always talking about her. One night though, I had the chance to go see her at The Basement. She was so amazing! With Denitia, it's a combination of her voice and her performance. There is something about the way she performs the song that pulls you in and refuses to release. You actually experience her music. When you watch her sing, it's very intimate- she's able to make you feel like you're the only person in the room.

And then...there's Kenny Meeks.

"Kenny Meeks"

We had a couple producers lined up. Unfortunately, the first thing producers ask when you ask them to do the project is- "what other producers are going to be involved?" If you're able to throw out some well known producers, people are more inclined to want to get involved. No one wants to be the first to get on board.

I had heard of Kenny, but didn't know him. Doug Brumley, the director of photography, actually knew Kenny pretty well and suggested we meet him. So Doug, Graham (doug's son), me, and Kenny met at...you guessed it- The Frothy Monkey. I began explaining the project and he immediately got it. You just can't understand how special that was in light of how hard it was to adequately explain the project. He was like "I'm in and I love the idea." Then he suggested some good producers and we agreed to talk later.

"Me, with Producer Kenny Meeks and Director of Photography Doug Brumley."

Here's what I've learned since then. Everyone knows and likes Kenny! He was like our "gateway producer." Once he came on board, everything just fell into place. He came to several of our events and was always a great time. So we were thrilled to have him with us. He is an exceptional guitar player and we were really excited to hear what he would do with Denitia.

"Kenny with Michael Logen and Johnny Lang. We always laugh because Kenny knows everyone!"

Mike Logen got back to my house at about 9pm. We got right to it.

There were certain elements of the story that we immediately focused on. We liked the idea that this guy kept trying to leave but was continually pulled back in. We began approaching the idea relationally. Maybe this person is constantly pulled back into a relationship he or she is trying to get away from. We ran with that a bit and then decided to switch angles.

Maybe this girl should be seeing this person come in and just KNOW IMMEDIATELY that that person is going to be hers. We actually thought to make her a bit intense. We liked the line "go ahead and try to walk away." This person almost has no choice about being pulled in to this relationship. We tied in to the kid in the story that only had half an arm with the following line: "I saw you first, standing in line, holding your heart in a sling." We liked this direction and kept the song in 6/8 time. We finished the song in about 2 hours and recorded a quick demo.

The Video Mike and I made for Kenny and Denitia.

Screenwriter Blog #6 - Story 5/Scene 4/Encore - Story 6/Scene 9/Dark Horse Studios

2009-01-07T06:45:00.007-06:00

It was hot this morning. And that only meant it was going to get hotter. While planning for this project we knew weather might be a concern. But not hot weather. Shooting in November shouldn’t have been an ideal situation. I expected it to be somewhat cold and rainy everyday (like it was the week after the project finished,) but weather had actually been near perfect for the entirety of the shoot. We were complaining about it being hot and sunny today. Not something I ever expected to be an issue.

We had started a new trend. Most of the actors and crew either met at Luke’s house or on set, taking my house pretty much out of the loop. Still, my parents brought breakfast and my sister to Luke’s every morning.

We needed very few props for this scene. Originally, we had contemplated bringing the jib (Brandon and I had discussed plans of disguising ourselves and the jib so that we might bring it into the Encore and then up seven stories to the balcony,) formulating grand shots in which the camera would swing out over the railing of the balcony. We decided to forego this and save these great shots for some other day. Brandon wasn’t in this scene (he had stories to gather) and time and logistics of shooting didn’t really make the situation optimal.

As a whole we were pretty familiar with shooting at the Encore. Jenny lives in the building (hence our ability to utilize it) and we had all been there to visit several times. Plus, a large portion of our entry in the 48 hour film project had been set there.

We had four actors in the scene today. Our largest speaking ensemble yet. Still, I felt pretty confident. We were working with Nat and Sally, already veterans to the process, and also adding in Cara and Benton, both of whose abilities I felt really comfortable with.

Nat and my sister headed over to the Encore. This was a dialogue heavy scene and we needed to get the actors working right away. They would rehearse in Jenny’s condo, while everyone else set up upstairs. We had done some last minute fine tuning of the script, but it was now ready to go.

Although we had a lot to shoot (more dialogue than movement,) we were feeling pretty confident, rested, and relaxed after yesterday’s shoot. I was really hoping today would go the same, and already treating it as such. Although the actors had gone on, we were making a pretty laid back attempt to get the equipment packed and moved out.

We did finally leave and soon arrived at the Encore. The Encore is a pretty secure building. So, getting everybody and everything in and out always requires a bit of manoeuvering. There are pass codes, and concierges that have to make phone calls, and elevators that will take you to only the top floor and the bottom floor unless you know what you’re doing. Good for the residents, but not always the easiest for non-residents. We started loading in (some through the front door, some through the back door) and started making our way up to the seventh floor balcony (stopping off periodically to check in on Nat and the rest of the actors on the 2nd floor.)

Primarily because of its skyline view, we had chosen to use this building and its balcony. It was kind of an odd location for us. We didn’t write the scene to be set at a condominium. We wrote it to be set at a place where the audience could get a nice mid-level, or eye-level (as we would reference it in the script) view of Nashville. In this sense, the backdrop was really the location we were writing for today. It was what we wanted the audience to see and reference in regard to what we were writing.

We faced some problems right away. The scene was a meeting. We quickly found a table and chairs that provided a very good setup. Not a problem. The problem, though, was lighting. It was very sunny (hence the heat) and that meant a lot of light and a lot of shadows to contend with. We tried to manoeuvre our table to the best possible position, but the sun was already overhead and moving; moving our best possible situation with every minute, creating ungodly shadows and blinding key light where once there had been none. This meant that not only was getting one set up going to be difficult, but continuity between takes might be a beast.

We did what we could and made the best of it. As we were setting up, I was greeted from a member of the Encore board. After the greeting, I was informed that a large party had been scheduled on this balcony for this afternoon. And that they would need to start setting up at 12:30. Meaning we would need to have vacated the premises by 12:30. Jenny had acquired and arranged the details for this shoot and therefore I knew it had been handled thoroughly. I knew this party wasn’t supposed to be happening, but if I had learned anything, it was to not argue with locations. Always a waste of time. Better to just say “Fine. Whatever.”

Jenny and Nat

I hurried down to the 2nd floor (once again,not the easiest thing to do. You have to get into the elevator - which requires a pass code - then walk through the garage to a door that requires a pass code. Going from the 2nd floor to the 7th floor is even trickier.) So, I frustratedly made my way to the actors, informed them of the situation, and then brought them upstairs.

We had need for few props in this scene; a couple of folders and a briefcase for the meeting. We gathered what we could and got the actors up and in place. We had dealt with multiple actors, but only with few speaking roles. All 4 actors had lines of dialogue interwoven today. Our sound quality and equipment were always good. The only problem we ever faced was that we just didn’t have enough of it. Even though we always had 2 lavs and a boom on hand, with the time we had to shoot today that just wasn’t going to cut it. The shots we were setting up required the actors to run the entirety of the scene every take. And that meant everyone had to be mic’d every time. We knew where we could find extra sound, but that was a touchy situation. Since we were being filmed for a documentary, Nat and I were almost always lav'd. We approached the doc crew (a debatable move if we wanted to get a separation in place - but really we had broken that barrier way before this) and asked to use their lavs. They were amenable to it. Still, though we only had 4 inputs we could implement and one of those needed to be boom. We decided not to lav Benton, but rather make sure the boom captured him every time he spoke a line.

We finally got all this worked out. It was now nearing 11. The sun was moving. We knew we had to start shooting. So, we positioned as best we could and started rolling.

The actors were absolutely no problem at all. In fact they were dynamic. Both Cara and Benton lived up to and surpassed my expectations. Both were extremely natural (as were Nat and Sally) and I felt this scene captured some fantastic performances.

As I said, we pretty much needed to run the entire scene for each setup. The scene ran about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes long (which doesn’t seem very long, but actually really is when a deadline is looming, we need to do various takes for any number of reasons, and each setup is a battle with the sun.) And not to mention the construction. Oh yes, there was construction. All around. And sound picked it all up. And of course it was never consistent.

I was fearing we were going to have these great performances screwed up by everything external to them. But worrying wouldn’t solve anything and so we kept shooting, making adjustments the best we could.

We shot all the dialogue at the table (the majority of the scene) and then quickly rearranged to pick up a conversation Nat and Benton have near the railing. We moved to glide cam and quickly got it shot. We were running out of time. Luckily we had only one aspect left to shoot.

As part of this scene, we had decided to have Sally bring the devil kitten box to the meeting and then offer it to John. John, appreciating the gift, but yet still showing disdain for his brother, would take the box and kick it off the building.

This was definitely going to be a one take.

We set up one camera on the balcony to get the kick and another in the parking lot to pick up the box falling. We shot it and got out of there quickly.

We had vacated by 12:30, but still wanted to do some establishing shots. We glided Nat walking into the building and then just glided him walking near the Encore. As the first lines of the scene referenced John being late, I wanted to show him taking his time getting to the meeting. Plus, I really wanted to get a shot of John walking by the Willie Nelson mural. We got all these shots by 1:15 or 1:30 and then headed back to Luke’s to eat lunch (some great chicken salad sandwiches, which I ate on habitually for the rest of the Nashville 9) made by Ryan’s mother.

So, we were shut down early, still had gotten all our shots, and made little fuss about it. I’m not sure if that was a testament to our professionalism or our willingness to just lay down and take it. Maybe they’re the same thing. Anyway, it really was a blessing in disguise. I relaxingly headed back to Luke’s, ate lunch, and then took a long nap.

Favorite misplaced object that could have destroyed a relationship #1 - As we were scrounging for props, Nat took a briefcase (he found in a cabinet at Jenny’s) and gave it to Cara to use. In the heat of loading out, that briefcase didn’t make it back to Jenny’s, but rather went with Nat, eventually found it’s way into my car, and eventually into my house. In mid December I would receive a freaked out call from Nat and a text from Jenny (as would many other members of the Nashville 9) looking for said briefcase. If you’re wondering, the briefcase contained Jenny’s mortgage, along with several other important documents.

Favorite misplaced object that could have destroyed a relationship #2 - At one point in the day I was charged with carrying the glide cam case (Joel owned the glide cam and was gracious enough to allow us to use it.) At one point in the day I set it down on the sidewalk and then went inside to get another shot. At one point in the night we realized it was missing. We called the Encore. It wasn’t there. Doug swung by to scour the streets, but still no luck. Luckily there wasn’t much lost. Just the case and some washers.

Favorite misplaced object that could have destroyed a relationship #3 - And a battery on loan from TVC. Doug had worked very hard to acquire sponsorship from TVC. They had loaned us lights and batteries, two indispensable items on a shoot. Well, I lost a battery (and they aren’t cheap either.) Doug explained the situation to TVC and they were pretty understanding (we still had to buy them a battery, though.)

TVC's Banner

I woke up and went in to watch stories. These stories had only been gathered hours before and had been shot at the Boys and Girls club. We were all excited. The B & G club was a partner of ours. We had gone to visit them a few weeks before and found that just about everyone in there had some sort of interesting story to tell.

We started watching and we weren’t let down. There were some funny stories and some sad stories, but the one we chose was a very inspiring story, told by the director of the Vine Hill club.

The story detailed how he came to be director of the club. Originally he had went to the club attempting to find day care for his son. While he was there he ran into a boy who was shooting basketball. The boy passed him the basketball and Jeff, the club director, shot it one-handed because he had broken his arm previously. The boy told Jeff that he shot basketball like he did and Jeff then realized the boy only had half of one arm. The boy tried to wrangle Jeff into playing some foosball with him. But Jeff, who needed to go look for a job, tried to excuse himself. The boy was relentless and he and Jeff went to play foosball. Joey, the boy, afterward explained to Jeff that the baseball team wouldn't let him join. Jeff, who was still trying to excuse himself so he could go find a job, went and talked to the team; paving the way for Joey to play with them. Jeff returned day after day, instead of finding a job, to spend time with Joey. Eventually he got a job at the club and has remained there to this day (about 15 years later.) He lost touch with Joey, but is currently trying to find out where he is.

This was a great story for us in many ways. It was inspiring. It was surprising. And the story kept on going even after it had ended. We were shooting at Dark Horse studios and this was scene 9. We had yet to decide how we wanted to end our story. In scene 8 we had paved the way for a reconciliation, but not yet healed all the wounds. There was still a chance things would not end well, but we wanted John to at least make an attempt, though. So, we did want him to go to the studio. And we thought there still should be, if not conflict, uneasiness.

This is what we took from the story -

A man, by necessity, goes to a place to help someone – John, after being asked by Jordan, feels that he should do him the favor of showing up at the studio.

That man is thrown for a loop when he runs into a young boy at this place – John encounters Dominic, whom he hears playing drums.

The boy is left out of the situation, made to feel unwanted – Dominic is reprimanded for playing on drums that weren’t his.

The man tries to rectify the situation – John stands up for Dominic and tells the one reprimanding to leave the kid alone.

The man doesn’t realize that what he’s looking for is right here – Jordan offers John a job, but John continuously refuses.

The boy helps the man to rectify his own situation (that of needing a job and also of maybe not understanding the job he is looking for is right here) – As John defends Dominic, a spontaneous kid who lives in the moment, he begins to realize he could very well be defending Jordan from someone like himself. John begins to have second thoughts about the barriers he has created between he and his brother.

The man makes some attempts to put the boy in a better situation – Jordan who is happy that John even came out, tries to push his luck, by asking John to help him with a specific song. John does, but is very matter of fact and does only as much as he is asked.

The man tries to get out of the situation with a valid excuse – John tries to break off his meeting with Jordan by telling him he (truthfully) needs to go get a job and that he can’t really help him anymore.

The boy thanks the man – Dominic tells John how much of a fan he is of Jordan and of the song, not knowing John wrote it, “Cannery Road.” The reasons Dominic gives are ones that make John rethink his position on writing and his position on allowing others to hear what has been written. He starts to realize that maybe Jordan did him a favor.

The man, upon further reflection, stayed on at the place – John returns to the studio after Jordan has left.

The man searches for the boy who has yet to be found – The story remains open ended as John goes back inside to look for Jordan. Jordan doesn’t realize he has returned.

As with previous nights, scene ideas and writing seemed to be coming easier and easier. We were getting great stories and I think we were learning how to use their elements better. Plus, everything just seemed to be falling into place. We were getting exactly the material we would have liked.

We knew that once again this would be a John and Jordan scene. It was the last scene. I think we wanted to present enough resolution to show that the characters had moved in one direction or another, but we didn’t want to resolve everything. We thought that would be way too easy and far too unbelievable.

Since both film and music were going to be at the same studio the next day, I was hoping we might be able to utilize the musicians, or at least their gear. We wanted to set up enough of a valid backdrop without getting in anyone’s way. Therefore we didn’t write any lines of dialogue for musicians. We just wrote them as extras, needing it only to appear that we were at a working studio.

This story worked out great for us also because we had really wanted to use any or all of the members of the Barkaszi family, a family of actors who had recently auditioned for us. Due to the nature of casting for this project we had no idea if this would be a possibility. We took a look at the story and the location and realized Dominic Barkaszi would be perfect for the role of the young boy (he also plays drums.)

So, as we continued writing, Nat called Mary, Dominic’s mother, and I asked if we could cast Dominic in the role. She thought it would be great. So, that was settled. Brandon left to go gather more stories while Nat and I remained to put the finishing touches on the scene.

Story 6 - Scene/Song 9

2009-01-05T07:49:00.001-06:00

Story 6 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Songwriter Blog #5 - Day 5/Song 4 - Tell Me How

2009-01-02T23:51:00.012-06:00

KINDERCASTLE PART II - HEARING THE SONG - REASONS

There were a lot of reasons that I wanted to start this day strong. First of all, there was a lot of buzz floating around about the Kindercastle song. People were whispering in quiet corners saying things like "i heard this song was ridiculous!" I wasn't sure what all that meant, so I was anxious to hear it. Also, I would be writing for Mike Logen, and I had a personal stake in that (more on that later). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it was HUMP DAY! Even though I can't stand that phrase, I'm going to go ahead and use it anyway. This day was the halfway point of the project. When I finished writing this song, I would have the worst behind me...or so I thought.

I woke up right at about 8am. I was dead tired from the session the night before and had done my best to try to catch at least 5 hours. When I finally pulled myself up on the couch, the house was again packed with people. A certain pattern had clearly emerged...and not one I was loving. At about 6am, people started streaming into the house. No matter how deep you sleep, you can't really manage any "Z's" once people start coming in. I know you probably think "oh, I could sleep through anything." But all you need to do is ask ONE person who came to my house how loud and how much my dog Vega barks! They'll get my back on this. You can't sleep through it!

"You have no idea how loud this dog barks!"

So in comes Ryan with 2 coffees and 1 CD that reads "Kinder mix." I can't wait to hear it. Ryan said their inspiration was to start "gospel" and end "new orleans." I didn't know what that meant, but it only added to the anticipation. In the CD went...

"I couldn't wait what these guys did with the song!"

There was no intro. Vocals immediately came in with the line "sophisticated methods of a higher call..." If you haven't heard Cody's voice, you just can't understand. It always surprises you! It's almost like you need a minute to ask yourself how you feel about it, only to end up the same conclusion every time- you love it. Check out their song Violet for reference.

So right from the beginning they played it pretty straight UNTIL about 30 seconds in. As soon as you hit the pre-chorus you hear the synths start weaving their way into the framework of the song. It's amazing to me how much stuff they can put into a song without it ever sounding too crowded. The guitar licks were always welcomed when they came in; the bass was perfectly tasteful.

After the second chorus, they guys really start pouring on the effects. You start hearing synth sounds from all over the place. And just when you think that's over, the kick drum kind of distorts and WHOA...we're in New Orleans.

"Hanging out in Bookhouse Studios with Mark Nash and Kindercastle."

The guys completely change the feel and totally take the song to a different place. They conceptually mimicked the story line. Just as the wall split the church, so they split the song. The 2 styles seemed to recall the 2 separate sides of the Church. This song was so much more than I ever thought I'd get. More importantly, Steve Savage (and Chad Morgan) were dead on. This song was perfect for Kindercastle. They just took it and ran!

During the little amount of time I was there, I got to watch Mark Nash work. I was so impressed with the way he understood the artist and really pulled the best out of them. They were all so excited about the day. It was like watching kids in a candy store. There was an energy about this day that wasn't always exhibited in the other studios. Mark Nash is a great producer and one I would definitely use on a project. We really appreciate his a part of this.

Allow me to remind you that every day, I would pop in to the studio for about 15 minutes or so. I didn't want to get in the way of what was going on, so I got there early enough so I'd still be surprised later by the final. Check out this video- Ryan Pruitt had a surprise for me when I started rolling my Flip Camera.

MICHAEL LOGEN PART I - WRITING THE SONG - TELL ME HOW

"Mike Logen playing at The Boys and Girls Club Duck Race."

Ahh...Michael Logen. Where do I start with him? Actually, let's get to him in a moment.

First...

As the project progressed, we all began to learn things. When we were planning the Nashville 9, most everything we set up we hoped would work. Really though, no matter how much we did tests, you couldn't really plan for what would come up during the actual project. So you kind of had to roll with the changes.

"This is me, Nat, Doug and Chad nearly 2 years ago. These were the early planning stages of what was then The Nashville 12. At that point, everything was a guessing game- we didn't know how things would really play out."

One big thing for me was cowriting. I'm someone does write alone quite a bit...and I can even write a song quickly when I'm alone. Before we started, I was only planning on 4 cowrites. As we got into the project however, I was beginning to realize that I just couldn't do the songs justice by myself. The pace was too intense and you just get too tired. You need the energy of the other person; the feedback. As a result, every Nashville 9 song was a cowrite.

Real Quickly, we've got to talk about Cason Cooley and Andy Hunt.

"Cason Cooley."

"Andy Hunt."

A little while before the project began I was trying to find the right Producer for Michael Logen. I had kind of run out of options and had everyone else lined up (though not finalized). Once we knew Mark Nash would be working with Kindercastle, I only needed to find the right person for Mike. So I called my friend Alice.

Once I started writing for Weimerhymes, Jeremy Lee told me I would be working with someone named Alice. She would help with "administrative" stuff for the Publishing company. Let me just say this- Alice is awesome...and to say she does "administrative stuff" significantly downplays everything she does. Anyway, I called her up and asked if she had any suggestions. She said "let me talk to my friend Cason." I said "sweet!" A day or two later, Alice called me and said "Cason told me to give you his number to talk about everything." I immediately called him (which happened to be about 5 minutes after he had talked to Alice- clearly I was sounding desperate) and unloaded on him about the Nashville 9. We agreed to get back in touch.

Just so you know, I looked up Cason's stuff and immediately loved what he did. I really felt like he'd be perfect for Mike. He really gets that acoustic vibey kind of artist. As a side note, he's one of those guys that you like immediately when you meet him as well. He's a really quiet, humble, easy going guy- exactly the kind of producer you can put some faith in. You know he's thinking about what's best for you and the song...sort of a quiet assurance.

We talked a couple days later and he told me he was in. I set him up with Mike Logen and they both talked beforehand. Oh yeah, Cason wanted to work with a guy named Andy Hunt.

Andy Hunt is in my opinion, one of the unsung heroes of The Nashville 9 project. Every producer did 1 song- some of them even mixed it. Andy however, produced and/or engineered 2 songs (Tell Me How & Matter of Time) and then mixed 3 (Tell Me How, Can't Not Dance, and Matter of Time). I can't really put a value on the work any of these guys did- but with Andy, I know I need to at least take him out for some drinks. He went above and beyond the call of duty and I can't say thank you enough. If you're in the market for a mix- I'd definitely head his way. He's damn good!

I knew I was writing for Mike Logen and I needed someone on the fly who would work for him stylistically. Reed Pittman was perfect. Reed and I work together a great deal and I'm very comfortable writing with him. He also had done really well on the 1st song - Monday After Easter. So he was planning to come by around 8pm (hopefully without the Elton John Costume).

"Reed Pittman - performing without the Elton John Costume."

So back to Michael Logen. When we first started working on this project I knew I'd want to use Mike as either an Artist or a writer. As it happens, we used him for both. Here's some quick back story on Mike...

About 4 years ago I decided (at my wife's prompting) that I should see what I would need to do if I wanted to be a songwriter. I really hadn't written much of anything beyond band stuff- plus, I knew Nashville already a couple aspiring writers. Who needs another one? So, I really didn't know where to start. Brandon (as in Utility Man Brandon) suggested I meet with his friend, and old college roommate, Mike Logen. He had just signed a deal with Combustion Music and may be willing to talk to me.

"Members of The Nashville 9 hanging out at The Duck Race. Me, far right talking to Mike Logen. Brandon, who introduced us, hanging out directly below."

So I called Mike and we met at S.A.T.C.O. I don't honestly remember what we talked about or what advice he gave me. I only remember that I really liked him and that we saw Sandi Patti hanging out having lunch. Then, he and I sat in his car and I listened to a song he wrote called "Haven't Always Been Alone."

I didn't ask him to write. It would still be almost 2 years before I did that. That's a tricky thing with writers. Most good and established writers absolutely hate the question "hey man, do you want to write together." You can't just write with everybody and when you start writing professionally you need to be more selective- it's just how stuff works. I didn't want to put him in a position where he'd feel obligated, so I waited until I signed with Weimerhymes and called to see if we could set up a session. He was cool with it (though truthfully he would have done it earlier if I asked) and we met at Combustion to write. During our first cowrite, we wrote a song called "Get up and Dance." Since then we've became good friends and write together often.

Here are two songs Mike and I have written together that you can hear online:

What About Jesus
No Hometown

"Mike Logen being interviewed by the 'Nashville Ninetern' Lyra Smith."

Most fans of Mike's music would be familiar with his song Mystery. If you haven't heard that song then you need to click on the previous link and hear it. Mike's an amazing songwriter and no less amazing as an artist. I tell you all of this stuff not only to give background, but also because I want you to understand how special it was for me to write for him. Personally, I put more pressure on myself to write a good song for Mike than I did for any other artist...that's just honest. Writing for him was in many ways like writing for myself. Stylistically as an artist, he would be who I am closest to. This had to not only be good , but it had to be something I would perform as an artist.

So in comes Reed Pittman and we start thinking about the song. I had already written the intro and verse music on the piano just before Reed got there - so we were ahead of the game. We briefly discussed the story together. The thing that really moved us about the song is the idea that this person is far away from everything he knows and loves. He is in a place he feels he needs to be, but is beginning to question the reasons he went there in the first place. So we wanted to paint a picture about this guy who wants so badly to find his way back to the one he loves. So we incorporated the idea of "seeing the sign" and being a "stranger in a strange land."

Reed and I kept playing the verses and were really liking them, but didn't know where to go in the chorus. I told Reed, as I often do when I write, to just keep looping stuff and let me sing until something sticks. While he was looping, he put some chords together that I loved. He had sung some melody that I wanted to run with. I put down the coffee filter, ran in and was like "yes, keep playing that." After we locked in chords and melody, the lyrics came right away. We loved it so much that we were afraid this was someone else's song.

tellmehow_clip.mp3
"Here's a portion of the pre-chorus and chorus Reed and I came up with immediately after we wrote it. We sang it into Garageband on my laptop."

The rest came really quickly and we both loved it. At that point (and even still now) this was my favorite song that I wrote during the project. More than any other song, I felt like I could perform this one as an artist. I just hoped that Mike Logen, Cason Cooley and Andy Hunt would feel the same...

"This was the video we gave to Mike Logen, Cason Cooley, and Andy Hunt."

Screenwriter Blog #5 - Story 4/Scene 8/Studio Daylight - Story 5/Scene 4 - Encore

2008-12-31T10:08:00.007-06:00

Studio Daylight is a very busy place; highly in demand. We were lucky to have it for our shoot.

We had been going back and forth for a few weeks, working to get our schedule to gel with theirs, and by the kick-off party we still weren’t sure shooting was a certainty. On that Thursday, though, we met Michael Gomez, former owner of Studio Daylight. We hit it off with him and he vowed to make it possible for us to shoot on Tuesday. I was extremely excited. This location had lots of open space, a variety of “looks” and “feels” to choose from, and was, contrary to Downtown Presbyterian, a secure set*.

I felt good today. I felt rested and I felt we had a really good script. This was a scene almost entirely dialogue driven, practically the first one we had all shoot; a trend we would mostly continue throughout the rest of the days. For all the work Nat and I had done together over the years, we had never really written together. The first couple of days of the Nashville 9 (writing-wise) had been trying for us. Nat writes in a very naturalistic style, while I tend to write stylistically. He tends to work with first drafts (and likes when I do too,) while I work in fifth drafts. He sometimes finds my words convoluted and confusing and I, his, sometimes lacking in meaning. We soon realized, though, that if a script was going to get written, we needed to take the best elements of both our styles and make them work together. I should also mention that Brandon also played a very important part in the writing process. Brandon, along with adding lines himself, served as diplomat, helping Nat and I realize the best and worst aspects of our respective styles, providing a clear, at times understanding and at times authoritative, voice. Also helpful was having both actors on hand at all times, hearing immediately if a line was working or not. Without Brandon or Nat, the script would have never been as good as I hope people think it is. Just one more testament of how we all had to work together to accomplish this project.

Nat speaking on, what I can only assume is, his disgust for my writing style

Understanding and Authoritative - and with beer in hand

I felt by this day we had really gotten the hang of it. We had a system where we would each spend time with the script alone and then finally together, sometimes trading lines the entirety of the scene.

It was eye-opening for me also that we were writing a script about two brothers having to work through their differences; finding ways to make their two different styles work. Rarely does this happen, but I started to find inspiration in what I was writing by events occurring during writing, and vice versa.

This was Election Day and Brandon had long hours ahead of him. He was gathering stories at the polls by 6 AM and then he had to head over to Studio Daylight to shoot all day. Luckily we didn’t really have many props to gather. We had decided to insinuate, by having him pack up various vintage albums as he was leaving, that Nat came from an old school style of writing, listening, and attachment to music. I called Doug and asked if he had anything appropriate. He said he did and brought several albums when he arrived in the morning.

Also to arrive this morning was breakfast. As we had stopped sending actors to my house, my parents had stopped fixing breakfast.

There was minor outrage at this decision.

So, to calm the storm, I asked my parents to bring breakfast with them when they dropped off my sister.

Breakfast arrived - as did Doug. Doug and I were at an advantage today. We were able to look at Studio Daylight online, thus virtually setting up shots before we arrived. We found one area of the studio that contained a couch, chairs, and table. It was also adjacent to a kitchen area. We decided to set everything there, in that location. We packed up and headed off.

We arrived at the studio, loaded in, and I met Michael for the second time. He was immediately and consistently helpful; amenable to anything we needed. We set up and then waited for Brandon and Nat to arrive.

Although it was a relaxed day, I still felt it was taking Nat and Brandon a little too long to arrive. I had learned to assume that nothing will run as smoothly as I would like it to, and therefore it’s better to get what you can as soon as you can. I gave the guys a call and was informed they were looking for a specific brand of beer (to be used as a “prop”) and that they would be arriving shortly. Doug, Heidi, my sister, and I set to rearranging the space as we liked.

Brandon and Nat did soon show up and we went right to blocking; a fairly easy scene to shoot, with little movement between the two characters. Basically, we just set up shots and let Brandon and Nat do their thing.

An extremely nice change of pace from the days before.

Once again we allowed ourselves to really focus in on the actors and allowed the actors to really meld into the scene. We did several takes. Just because we could.

Nat and I working together

As lunch was arriving, a tractor trailer, by turning from the non-turning lane into another car, caused an accident outside. We all paused to wonder if this was what a new McCain or Obama world would be bringing for us. As we watched the confusion outside, my parents bringing lunch, once again came briefly to set.

As today was election day, my sister was constantly giving updates as to election results. Wanting the set to remain non-partisan and aloft from the political melee, I had asked that if ever either candidate’s name was mentioned, someone else should immediately mention the other candidate’s name.

We ate lunch and then went back to shooting, soon finishing dialogue. Our only other shot was an establishing shot. I wanted to make the most of this great old building (located in Cannery Row) and so we decided to have Brandon arrive in an old freight elevator. We would then glide him down the hall into the studio.

It must have been a pretty relaxing day all around, for Luke showed up on set as we were beginning to shoot. He hung out for awhile and then returned home.

Towards the end of the day, while we were packing up, Brandon and Nat disappeared. I later learned they had left the set to also return home. I got a bit angry at this. It had been a very lax day, but leaving before everything is packed up and away is inexcusable.

Upon arriving home, I confronted both of them (separately) and, to their honor, they honestly didn’t realize what they were doing (based on my accusations) and were extremely apologetic.

Favorite Prank of the Day - Nat had to drink from a beer, which after a few takes had no beer left in it. Brandon took to filling it with water, giving Nat something to drink. On one take, Brandon filled it with extremely warm water.

Best Out of Character Element We Decided to Shoot Just Because - Nat sitting down (you’ll have to see the movie to know what I’m talking about.)

We had wrapped early (that’s right - early) today and so we all took the time to get a little rest before watching stories. If I remember correctly, Brandon and I watched Mythbusters.

This night’s stories had been gathered that morning at polling places. When we were planning locations for story gathering we had a few requirements in mind -

Find places where lots of people will be.

Spread out the 9 locations so as to get a variety of demographics.

Utilize any interesting events occurring during the week (e.g. Halloween.)

We had hoped today’s location(s) might really meet all three of these requirements. We expected several people to be at the polling places, we were planning on sending the team to a variety of polling places, and this was a landmark election day.

The story team did arrive with some great stories, but according to Brandon and the other members, today had been a difficult day for gathering. Not sure really why. We once again had some stories with great elements, but also some lacking variously in one thing or another.

The story we chose had no video. We immediately accused Brandon of being technically deficient (Brandon’s first test with the camera had resulted in him cutting off the last line of a story and then reversing record and pause for the remainder of the shoot. We had cause to be wary.) Still, though, he had proven himself on the other days and we attempted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Brandon then explained that the storyteller had asked to be recorded with audio, but no video. We all said “Oh,” but then wondered if the story would be usable and if it fit our qualifications. After minor debate, we decided it did.

Writing going on in here - or sleeping - or malicious slander

The story was about an African-American Sergeant who was head of an A team during the Vietnam War. He, and his team, one day encountered a sign. This sign, written by the Vietcong, specifically asked, by name, this sergeant why he was fighting here in Vietnam while back in the US “his” people were being killed by Americans. It was 1968.

Tomorrow we were shooting scene 4 on the 7th floor balcony of the Encore Condominium building. We had set up John’s relationship with his brother and made him bitter, but now we wanted to turn his attention towards the industry that had taken part in “making” him bitter. Our intention was never to portray any aspect of the Country Music “industry” with contempt, but we did want to make any representatives pragmatic in their goals. We wanted this to be a business, but a business that valued talent. Therefore we wanted John to be resentful, angry at events in his past and the circumstances beyond his control that had allowed them to happen, but wanted that conflict to be something he had to deal with internally, rather than setting up an exterior antagonist (e.g. The industry.) We decided that John would be taking a meeting with a country singer and his management. The management would be attempting to woo him to write for their artist. John would go to the meeting, but more with the intention of striking out rather than of being receptive to a job prospect.

To get there, this is what we took from the story -

A leader (the Sgt.,) the most visible member of a group (the A team) is confronted by someone outside his camp (the Vietcong) - During the meeting, John confronts up-and-coming artist Wayne Williams. John is being wooed by Wayne’s management to write for Wayne. John doesn’t write for anyone and has left the world of this industry behind.

The attack is a surprise (came upon the sign while walking through the jungle) - The meeting takes on dimensions neither the artist, nor the management suspected.

The enemy is native to the land (Vietnam,) while the one being attacked is a foreigner (American) - John has been inside this industry before. He could fit in, but is deceiving. Wayne is new to this world.

The enemy strikes at what they perceive could be a sore subject for the attacked (Riots of ‘68) - John’s attack on Wayne is really an attack on the industry. John attacks by attempting to take Wayne, very impersonally, under his wing and point out the downsides of being a part of this industry.

The enemy seems extremely well informed about the attacked (name, rank, color of Sgt.) - we decided to flip the story on this one and have the management using unspoken old knowledge/rumors and hard to gain new knowledge as propaganda in an attempt to woo John.

The propaganda attack would target something close to the attacked’s heart (”his people”) - John would be confronted about knowledge of the relationship between he and his brother.

The attack was meant to break up unity (the storyteller was the only African-American in the A team) - If John could persuade Wayne to rethink his goals, his management would be greatly affected.

So, we started writing. We knew we would be using Nat, but we also needed management and an artist. Nat suggested Cara Greene, who had attended the same graduate school as Nat as was in town visiting her brother, as management, and Benton Blount as the artist. Benton actually is an artist and he was to be recording for the Nashville 9 on Friday. Nat and I had met Benton a week before at the Duck Race. We both had been struck by his presence and by his naturalness when interacting with people. We both had hoped to use him in the short and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. We also thought, although maybe a little awkward, that we needed to work Sally into this scene somehow. This was scene 4, we had introduced Sally in scene 2, and then put Nat and Sally on a first date in scene 7. We needed to set up that date somehow. We had already shot scene 6, so we weren’t left with many options. We decided to write Sally in as an assistant to Cara. We knew Sally was looking for a job (it had been mentioned in scene 2,) but we weren’t sure yet how to put her in this job (although an assistant it was a pretty high profile position.) We decided we’d have to figure that out later, but for now it was good enough just to put her there. We also liked the oddness (and also the interconnection) of Sally being at the same meeting as Nat. Also, the knowledge that she would be privy too, as an assistant for this management group, concerning the brothers’ relationship, would set the scene for Nat’s monologue in 7. We also thought, as a joke, we might have Sally bring the piece of art to the meeting (willing to give it back to Nat as a gesture of good will.)

Benton Blount at the Duck Race

The ducks racing

So, we had a lot to fit in, but that also meant we had a lot to work with.

It was election night, so we got down to writing while watching returns. Nat gave Benton and Cara a call. I contacted Sally.

For all the reasons I mentioned above, writing was coming easier now. We had our ideas sketched out. I put down a draft and then went to bed after hearing who had won the election. Nat and Brandon wrote their own ideas down. I awoke a few hours later. We revised the script based on both our drafts and then I returned to bed.

*This comment is not intended to denigrate Downtown Presbyterian. I absolutely loved shooting there. It’s just that the shoot at Studio Daylight had a 3% chance of being interrupted while Downtown Presbyterian had a 62% chance.

Story 5 - Scene/Song 4

2008-12-29T07:47:00.003-06:00

Story 5 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Note: The author of this story requested that only audio, and no video, be recorded of his telling.

Songwriter's Blog #4 - Day 4/Scene 8 - Reasons

2008-12-26T20:02:00.008-06:00

JACLYN JAMES PART II - HEARING THE SONG - HANG ON

I woke up on this day and for some reason I was just more tired than I should have been. There was either something about this day or just all the other days totaling in on me. I noticed when I got up that there were tons of extra people in my house. The dogs were freaking out and it was really overstimulating. I assumed that Chad wasn't meeting with everyone at his house anymore- something had changed. This was The Nashville 9 though, and you had to roll with stuff. So I walked in the room in my boxers and said "hey, can someone grab me a doughnut?"

Ryan Pruitt came in, upbeat as usual. This is a trait that I both loathe and admire in him. He really comes in fresh and ready to go. I feel like he's at an advantage with all of this due to all those years of going out late only to have to be at a coffee shop at 5:30am. That is not my world and therefore you really have to pull the metaphorical chain a few times before I start. I will say that Ryan brought me my own coffee in a Frothy Monkey cup on this morning...so I take back the loathing comment.

Ryan somehow managed to show up every morning looking like he had 10 hours of sleep.

He had a rough mix of "Hang On" and I was pretty excited about hearing it. Before I tell you how that went, let me say a couple things about one of the producers- Ben Phillips.

Going into this thing I was probably more familiar with Ben than any other producer. I had a few opportunities to work with him prior to this project. A few weeks after I first started writing for Weimarhymes Publishing, I turned in a song called "Lead Me On." I recorded it onto a little tape recorder and Jeremy Lee said "let's get a demo done." I didn't really know how that worked, all I knew is that I needed to go see this guy named Ben Phillips. From the very first moment I met him, I knew he would be someone I'd enjoy working with. He's welcoming, easy-going, mellow and most importantly- a great producer. He was immediately able to take this rough song and turn into something you could hear on country radio. This was also the first time I got to work with an amazing bass player here in Nashville- Tony Lucido. Tony made several appearances during the Nashville 9.

Tony Lucido. No surprise that he laid down some great bass parts for Hang On.

Anyway, about 18 months before we started "The Nashville 9," I talked to Ben about this idea Chad and I were working on called...gasp, "The Nashville 21." I would be looking for a producer to produce 21 songs (one per day). Yes, I said 1 producer for 21 days- this was early in the planning. Ben laughed, thought the idea was interesting, but no producer would do 21 straight days. : ) We honed, went back to the drawing board and about 1 year later asked Ben if he could do 1 day. Lucky for us, he said yes.

Producer Ben Phillips.

Back to now...

I'm about to push play after having slid the CD into the drive. Ryan says "there's a delay on the vocal that probably won't stay in the final mix." I take note of that. I hear Ben count off the song with his drum sticks. This immediately gives me the impression that the mix quality won't be great. Then, BANG. I couldn't have been more wrong.

When Jaclyn's voice comes through the speakers with that first line "I'm so stubborn," it is crystal clear and right in front of you. She plays the song on her CP70. Somehow Ben and Quinlin added some kind of effects to her piano that give it the most ethereal and engaging sound. Clearly Jaclyn has done some things to the chord structure to make the song a bit darker. I immediately love it. Ben's drums sound amazing. Tony Lucido plays this part in the first verse where the bass "swells in and out" - also amazing. Ben and Quinlin went with a more low-key first chorus - and again - awesome! Throughout the song, the electric guitars fueled everything perfectly- they were just so tasteful.

Jaclyn's Yamaha CP70 set up at Ben's Studio.

Michael Payne laying down a guitar part while Jaclyn listens in the background.

I continued listening to the song and got to the 2nd chorus. They had really delivered it in the second chorus. Then I got to the bridge. I had loved the melody line Tiffany and I had written for the bridge, but it wasn't there. Oddly, even though I loved what we wrote, it didn't quite fit with what was happening in the song. So I thought simplifying the melody as Jaclyn did was a good idea. It served to drive the part better. They came out of the bridge into a huge swell highlighted by Jaclyn's CP70. Then, my favorite part of the song- they did half of a broken down chorus and BANG...exploded back into the song.

When the song ended, I just looked everyone. I felt like "wow, we've really got something here." When I turned around after listening, about 10 people had materialized into the room during the song. I said "whoa." Everyone else said "can I get a copy of that?" Ryan Pruitt said "3 for 3 brother...what's next?!"

Standing outside of Bletchley Park Studio, I took a quick opportunity to poke fun at Tony Lucido!

Side note on a Guy named Quinlin- Before we started this, Ben told me he wanted to co-produce with a guy named Quinlin. I had never met him and I get nervous when someone only has one name. It usually means they're really good, or think they're really good. Just so YOU know, Quinlin falls into the "really good" category. Besides, he probably has a last name, I just didn't ask him : ) Anyway, I didn't think a producer could be more mellow than Ben Phillips- then I meet Quinlin. I immediately liked him a lot. He's what I'd refer to as an "artist's producer." Some producers approach the song technically, Quinlin really approaches it organically. I guess you could say that he is similar to being a "player's coach." You really feel like he understands being the artist in the room and he knows how to talk to you to get the best stuff out of you. He has great intuition, and he was really good working with Jaclyn- They both were.

Click below for some footage of the day that I recorded with my Flip Video Camera.

KINDERCASTLE - PART I - WRITING THE SONG

...where do you start with Kindercastle?

Cody Uhler of Kindercastle.

Ross Wariner of Kindercastle.

Way back when we were getting the bands, I knew they would be my biggest challenge. These guys are young, talented and they take their music seriously. Kindercastle is really 2 guys - Cody Uhler and Ross Wariner. Ryan Pruitt wanted these guys in from the beginning.

Ryan Pruitt at Dan McGuinness with Ross Wariner.

When I first heard them, they reminded me of a mix between Paul McCartney, Talking Heads and The Postal Service. Cody's voice is very unique and I was immediately digging it. These guys were definitely in a different scene than all the other artists on the project. They appealed to a "younger" more "indie/hipster" crowd (allow me some levity on the use of those terms- I'm just blogging). I felt like if I gave them something that sucked, they'd all be like "you've got to be kidding me." Then, I would be exposed as a complete and total "out-of-touch poser" of a writer (same disclaimer as before). Needless to say, I was very excited about the challenge of writing something for these guys- I have a great deal of respect for what they do.

Our biggest problem with Kindercastle was that we had to find the perfect producer. Those guys needed to be with someone who not only respected what they were doing, but whom they respected. Ross and Cody, up until now, had produced all of their own stuff. They were just about to realize their self-produced album "In a Tizzy." When they got the song, they'd need a couple hours to do their thing and allow them to layer and stack synth, keys, xylophones, etc, etc. The producer would have to know how to mic a megaphone and let all this happen within the alloted timeframe.

Enter Mark Nash.

About 1 month before the project began, we had 7 of our 9 producers. Mark Nash was on our wishlist. I didn't really know Mark but we both certainly saw each other often. For about 9 months, I would run in to Mark at the Frothy Monkey every morning. I would sit down, put my headphones on and work on stuff while he would occupy the next booth over. I knew who he was and was familiar with his work via the band "Celebrity." Still, we never really talked shop. As is so often the case in Nashville, you can see somebody all the time when you get your lunch only to find out he's the guy waiting for you one day at your writing session. Anyway, Mark is well known here in town and has a great reputation. Several of the other producers had mentioned that he'd be great to have on the project. From the little time I got to spend around him I could tell that I really would enjoy working with him. I just hoped he'd be interested in doing something different. So we gave it a shot.

Mark Nash.

Ryan got together with Mark and told him about the project. Mark was like..."cool!" He said "I want to work with Kindercastle." This was perfect, because that was exactly who we wanted him to work with. From the beginning we felt like Mark Nash would be the perfect producer for those guys. So we set it up!!

Ryan thought (and I agreed) that I should use a co-writer for this one. He suggested that I use someone who was familiar with Kindercastle and would be able to help keep me in their headspace. So Ryan set me up with Steve Savage. Steve not only tours solo in Europe, but is also the front man for a band called Beggars Fortune. This is also the band that Ryan Pruitt drums for. Just so you know, I really like Steve Savage. He's so pure in his writing and recording that he makes you remember why you did music in the first place. He's an amazing artist and a great writer. He has a really keen sense of melody and he's a veritable fountain of ideas.

A poster from Steve Savage's Tour in Europe.

I'd been wanting to write with him for quite a while but we just were never really able to set something up. So I was excited about writing with Steve but also apprehensive since we'd never written together. I've learned the hard way that even if you and your co-writer are the greatest songwriters in the world, that doesn't mean you'll be great together. Sometimes it just doesn't work. I felt we'd write well together but also knew we'd have the added pressure of a deadline. Couple that with a story to work from and a specific artist to write for, and you never know what could happen.

Steve Savage at the kickoff party with Nashville 9 artist Denitia Odigie.

Well, we watched all the stories. Keep in mind that we gathered all of these stories from a conservative church. To me, that was going to be a bit of an odd fit "content-wise" for Kindercastle. Nonetheless, we settled on a really well told story about a church who puts a dividing wall down the middle of the aisle. How we make that work for the song, I still had no idea.

For some ridiculously foolish reason, we thought it would be a great idea to head to the 12th South Taproom for a few beers. Keep in mind, I'm that guy who is always up for a couple beers with friends. In the context of this project however, 2 beers can make you SO TIRED you just can't function. So I got back to the house about 30 minutes before Steve got there. I HIT A WALL! I was just so tired I could barely function. This was by far the most exhausted I'd been throughout the whole project.

At the conclusion of watching the stories, I was absolutely exhausted.

I for the first time drank a couple of those "5 hour energy drinks." Nothing. This led me to feel a sense of anxiety tinged with panic. Looking back, it's easy to be like "i got through it fine," but at the time you just can't focus and have new ideas. Your body and mind just shut down. So, in that context, in walks Steve Savage...

We watch the story. I'm thinking of going in a fun, dancy direction- something akin to their song "violet." Steve however says, "what do you think of this?" He plays a really mellow and simple chord structure in Bb. I'm thinking "I don't think this is a Kindercastle song," but I know enough to know I don't know enough. So I go with it.

There were certain phrases and ideas we really liked from the story. We really like the following phrases from the story: sophisticated methods, negotiated compromise, right things for the wrong reasons. We wanted to work them in. I knew that we needed to give Kindercastle a lot of space in which to work. We needed to keep everything as simple as possible. Steve really was good with the melody and how to keep it really open. I really liked tagging a bit of a vocal lift at the end of all the second lines of the verse. We hammered everything out. Once we finished we tried to record it. I was so tired that I just couldn't get it right- we played it probably 8 times until it was close enough. Steve thought it was perfect and they'd love it. I thought they'd hate it. I just wasn't feeling it. I liked the song and thought it was good, but just didn't think Kindercastle would like it.

Steve and I took a quick break. I actually considered writing a new song. I even played some ideas for Steve. He was like "man, I think our song is great- but if you want to try something different, let's go for it." So we started working on a new tune and I realized that I couldn't stay awake much longer. I needed to go with what we had. Poor Steve kept saying "do you not like the song?" In retrospect, I really made this session hard on Steve. This one definitely showed some self-doubt on my part. I just wasn't sure it was right like I was with all the other songs.

We kept it. Steve left and headed home. I went in and collapsed on Chad's bed while he sat at the desk working. I said to Chad "man, I don't know if this song is any good for them." Then the most amazing thing happened. Brandon came in and said "I didn't really like it." Then Chad said "I think it's the best song I've heard you write so far in this project." In that moment, because Brandon didn't like it and Chad DID like it, I knew the song was going to be great. Chad and the guys from Kindercastle, in my mind, are cut from the same mold. It was the perfect reassurance. I then passed out on the floor, defying my 5 hour energy drink. I would later wake on the couch with no memory of getting there. What's not to love about The Nashville 9!!

Screenwriter Blog #4 - Story 3/Scene 6/Downtown Presbyterian - Story 4/Scene 8/Studio Daylight

2008-12-24T22:32:00.010-06:00

With both main actors living in Luke’s house, we decided it made logistical sense to forgo the trips in the mornings to my house. Being always a bit late to everything, we hoped this might help. We also figured we could rehearse any of the other secondary actors, whom we seemed to be having at least one of everyday, on set.

Shooting today was going to be a little odd. Brandon, who had been on set in various capacities everyday, was now going to be on camera. While Nat, who had been on camera everyday, would not be acting in this scene. I was interested to see how this might change the dynamic on set. Nat, whom I had never worked with off camera, was going to be working with Brandon, whom he had never worked with on or off camera. I felt we were all on the same page, though, with the script and didn’t worry so much that we wouldn’t pull this off.

This was also the first day we had any of the cast or crew arriving at Luke’s rather than meeting us on set. Nick, my sister, and Heidi Spencer, who was to be working as PA, were scheduled to be showing up soon. I hoped I had given everyone the right address and couldn’t entirely relax until everyone arrived. Which they soon did (early nonetheless.) After once again loading down cars with equipment, soda, and coffee, and what seemed to be the remnants of the previous day's lunches, Heidi and Doug drove off to pick up the location release for the church. These documents had become quite possibly, for these 9 days,the most precious articles anyone could possess. I did not relish going through another day one, a "Crossing the LeQuire," as I like to call it.

Anyway, this document was being held somewhere in Green Hills and Doug and Heidi went off to pick it up. Doug, who had acquired the Downtown Presbyterian Church for us and was taking care of all the paper work, charged me with the handling of a separate location release; one the church had asked US to sign. I guarded it with my life (actually I think I placed it in the trunk in a milk crate, a very secure milk crate.)

Nat, Brandon, my sister, and my vacuum cleaner, entrusted with no paperwork but a script, packed into Luke’s Jetta (I don't remember why they took the Jetta. I do, though, based on this situation, remember Nat and I coming up with a brilliant advertising campaign for Volkswagon based on a Mac Davis song.)

Even with the scheduling magic we thought we had worked, we were still running a little late. No matter what we did to get ahead, we always seemed to be running a little behind.

We all set off.

I was worried, since we were downtown on a Monday, that parking was going to be an issue. Luckily, the church had allowed us the use of a few of their parking spaces. Being Monday, the Nashville 9 also took on a sort of surreal aspect for me. Working a day job, I'm used to all endeavors such as the Nashville 9 taking place at night, weekends, holidays, or sick days. I was now working when everyone else was working on something I really wanted to be working on. It felt good. It felt like when I drove Route 66. Route 66 is actually made up of many roads. Several of these roads run parallel to the interstates. I remember being on those roads, being the only one on those roads, within eyesight of all the other traffic, and thinking "we're all driving in the same direction, trying to get to the same destination, but right now I'm the only one doing it like this." And then I drove 120 mph. Just because I could.

Anyway, it felt good.

I arrived to find David and Tommy already there. We started loading equipment in and I, needing to turn in Doug’s paperwork, searched around, futilely, for the church office. A few more trips around the building and eventually I saw the sign, jutting out of the wall, that said "Church Office." I turned in the form, remaining in Doug's good graces, and then went in to find out how everyone was doing.

I had forgotten how big the sanctuary actually was. It looked great, but dwarfed anything moving inside it. Actually quite a nice effect. The light was fantastic, streaming in through the stained glass. I wasn’t sure, though, how much of this great light would be usable, knowing it would be awhile before we started shooting. Doug arrived and we brought the rest of the equipment in. As we were beginning to set up, a tour of about 50 elementary kids swarmed into the room. We paused, enjoyed the distraction, and waited for the disturbance to subside.

While we waited, we started planning shots. We had a lot to get today - one establishing exterior, shots in the sanctuary, shots in the balcony, shots in the bell tower, and movement to all three of these locations. Luckily, though, we weren’t dealing with a lot of dialogue. The tour group left and we decided to go ahead and get some shots outside. I sat down with Heidi and went over the list. She seemed confused. I’m not always the best communicator, the shots were a little complex, and this was the first time Heidi and I had worked together. We went over the list a couple of more times and it just wasn’t happening (it may have had something to do with me revising every time we ran through the list.) Eventually Heidi told me she knew exactly what I was talking about. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case. But she played it off like a champ. Jeremy was working slate for us today. He had assisted Julie yesterday, so he knew exactly what he was doing. Jeremy was very quiet and always where you needed him to be. So much so that sometimes it was easy to forget he was there.

Brandon and I discussing the scene

We moved the crew outside and decided to glide cam a couple of shots of Brandon noticing the church and then walking inside. We were shooting in a public area, meaning people and cars would habitually be getting in the way of our shots and continuity. Instead of shutting down the street, we decided to wait for the right opportunities. Eventually we were able to get the footage we needed. I watched some of the glide cam footage later, noticing it looked like we were shooting an episode of Law and Order. Cool enough. We moved inside to start dealing with some of the trickier aspects of our shot list.

At about that moment, another tour group arrived. I began to get worried this might keep happening all day. My parents also arrived and hung out for a while. Eventually everything quieted down and we got back to work.

We had to walk Brandon into the church, past a foyer, into the sanctuary, and into a pew (where he would take out his guitar and start playing.) Ideally, we wanted to try and get all this in a continuous shot. Except for the toll it was taking on Doug’s arm, we were starting to really dig using the glidecam. Still, this was a somewhat logistically difficult shot. We wanted to shoot two different angles (one leading Brandon in and the other following) and get coverage from a camera on sticks. Not so difficult, except we had to walk past a 20 foot high mirror and also pass through a swinging door. Also, we needed to get boom audio; meaning yet another person walking. We worked it and worked it, but were getting nowhere. Passing through the door was proving to be impossible to shoot believably. Either Doug opened the door before Brandon arrived at it or the door had to be held open for Doug and Tommy to pass through. Everyone was getting frustrated and at one point Brandon and I had a few words. Brandon likes to move things along and will let you know when he thinks time is being wasted ( I stand by the fact I think he would make a great AD.) Doug and I try to work through everything until we can get it right, or at least exhaust all the options. These two working styles were not meshing. Brandon and I took a break from everything, stepped outside, said our piece, and soon rectified any unease between us.

Getting everything in order

We came to a decision to only use the glidecam to pick Brandon up as he came through the swinging door into the sanctuary. We could watch him enter the foyer, though, through a pane of glass in the door. Actually, a pretty interesting shot. Unfortunately every single fingerprint on that pane of glass could also be seen. We scoured the church for some glass gleaner. We also scoured the church for some outlet adapters. Our batteries were running low and we needed to plug the cameras in. Downtown Presbyterian is an old building and the outlets were not friendly. We eventually found both glass cleaner and an adapter. We went back to work and positioned a camera on sticks in the only place where it couldn’t be seen in the mirror. Who knew mirrors would be such a problem on this shoot?

Finally, after all this set up, we were ready to start getting some shots. We decided to only capture Brandon up to the point where he enters the pew and takes his guitar out. We did this in an attempt to cut shot length down and also because we hadn’t written the specifics of what was to happen next.

All in all it probably took us 15-20 minutes to get the shots from a couple of different angles. The set-up had probably taken an hour and a half. This is how things were going for us this day.

Cleaning the window

Doug started looking for other shots while David got Brandon mic’d up (we wanted to capture both boom and lav sound, as Brandon would be speaking to himself.) In this section we needed Brandon to play through some song ideas and not like them. Luke had written a great song, Hang On, the night before and we talked about incorporating it into the scene. Originally the music and the film were not planned to meet. We knew they might, but we weren’t planning on it. Hang On, though, really seemed to fit as a song Brandon’s character, Jordan, might write and eventually latch onto as something he thought might be good. We decided we wanted to use it. We still needed, though, some other material for Brandon to play through before he got to that point. Brandon suggested we use some of the other songs written in the past two days. It seemed like a good idea. I was wary, though, about the fact that we were having Brandon’s character be a not-so-great songwriter and that the “songs” he was writing were Luke’s. We talked it through and figured we would have to sell this aspect of the scene, once again, by Brandon’s reaction. Whether the song was actually “good” or not would entirely be subjective. Brandon gave Luke a call and got the okay to utilize the songs.

Meanwhile, Nat was working with Nick on his character, plus trying to organize the logistics of the distractions. We needed to show Nick and the vacuum cleaner, yet still have him be hidden from Brandon. We found a good spot, rehearsed the vacuuming, and soon decided to start shooting the scene. Brandon did a fantastic job of improvising while playing and singing, and after a few takes and a really clean patch of carpet we decided to move upstairs.

As said before, we were using the glidecam as our primary cam today. And it was starting to take a bit of a toll on Doug’s arm (it’s very awkward and somewhat heavy to hold.) Doug was and is a pro, though, and he continuously worked through any discomfort, acting not only as DP and camera operator, but soon enough, as lighting grip. It was proving to be a tough day for David and Tommy also. We were moving Brandon around almost continuously throughout the scene and Sound was constantly having to figure out how to capture boom and lav without figuratively and literally stepping on anyone’s toes.

Doug and David prepping

Things were not moving quickly.

And then lunch came. We decided to break and moved down to the fellowship hall in the bottom of the church.

As we were eating, a lady came into the hall from off the street, inquiring about food. Nat spoke to her and told her to take some food. I suggested Nat might want to inform the church that he had just given permission to hang out, in the church, to someone the church may or may not want wandering around. He went off to do so. As we were finishing up, I was accused, unfairly, by this lady, for not allowing her to do something (I forget what) at another place and time (I forget where and when.) I say unfairly, but I’m not really sure. She thought I was someone else and for all I know that person might have deserved the berating I received. Whatever. We worked out our differences and she took some of our gum. We returned to shooting.

Nat and Nick

Our next setups were in the balcony. We needed Brandon to walk into the balcony and then sit on the ledge, continuing to write. We could fairly easily get him up there, but keeping him seen was an entirely different matter. Our great, usable stained glass light was now gone. Doug finally broke out our TVC sponsored lights, that he had worked so hard to acquire, and went to making Brandon visible. Lights required outlets and outlets meant more adapters. We didn’t have more adapters. We worked to rig up some power strips and extension cords. As Doug worked, I ran through blocking with Brandon while Nat handled Nick’s logistics on the first floor. It was decided to have Nick be hidden in a pew and then pop up, continuing to vacuum. As a joke and as a test of Nick’s honesty, Nat planted the prop wad of money underneath a pew where Nick was to bend down. Nick’s amazement at what he found was irreplaceable. Our amazement at his honesty in showing Nat what he found was and is a stain on our character.

We tried shooting Nick in the same position he was as before, but found we could not see both he and Brandon in the same shot. We then decided to move Nick further up the sanctuary. This worked a lot better, but it put us once again in a precarious situation with outlets; less an adapter problem and more a length of cord problem. We had used up all our available extension cords. We stretched the cord, once again pulled out our geometry books to determine angles and distances between points, and finally got the vacuum cleaner rigged up. Nat and I then worked out a cue system between us, so as to time the vacuum cleaner’s distractions perfectly.

Gliding up the steps

It was a tough day.

We were finally set in the sanctuary, but still, though, we weren’t getting the lights as we liked in the balcony. It was either way too dark, way too light, or shadows in all the wrong places. We were moving slowly and everyone was getting tired and frustrated. Eventually, though, we were able to mold the situation to our liking, get our shots, and with the little time remaining, head up to the bell tower.

Every minute in the bell tower was one where coolness of shot had to be weighed against possibility of serious bodily injury. It wasn’t the safest place to be. Not even for one person. We decided to put, at one point, 8 people up there. Once again we had some tricky logistics to work out. We needed to put Brandon at the top of the tower (after following him all the way up) and then shoot Nick at the bottom of the tower. They were to have a conversation; which meant we kind of needed to fulcrum the camera angle. Plus we had to get both Nick and Brandon laved. Plus we had nothing to use but natural light. We worked to get everything set up. We were really running late on time. It took us about 7 takes to get what we wanted; not helping our time situation, and definitely not helping, as Brandon had to continuously walk up and down the steps, the safety situation. We wrapped and quickly got out of there.

Favorite request of the day - Brandon asks my sister to hold his pistol in her purse.

Favorite question of the day - Nat asks if anyone has seen his sweat shirt. Upon describing it, LA, a doc crew member, says she is pretty sure she saw it being carried off by one of the chaperones of the aforementioned elementary student tour.

We got back to Luke’s and I realized I was tired. It had been a tough day and I didn’t really relish writing a scene. I knew I’d get past it, though, once we started watching the stories.

Tonight’s stories were gathered from a church. After watching them all, we decided to use one of the first; coincidentally, a story told by Joel’s grandfather. It was a great story - concise, odd, humorous, and a bit head shaking.

The story also fit our situation well. We were shooting scene 8 the next day at Studio Daylight. We knew that Scene 9 would obviously be our finale, but we knew scene 8 had to really pave the way for our finale to be believable. As we had set up the relationship between the two brothers as our major conflict, we knew this needed to be a John/Jordan scene.

We decided that the studio would be Brandon’s residence, adequate digs for a person of his personage. We also wanted Nat to be staying with Brandon (motivation for Brandon to order him around into doing such things as picking up pieces of art,) but would be preparing to leave (based on certain revelations gleaned in scene 7.) Brandon would be returning home from his day at the church. Both John and Jordan would be in relatively high, but guarded, spirits, having recently found that their life might be able to proceed out from under the shadow it had been in. And in some way they would be sharing this knowledge, more in the tone of their interaction than in their words. They would act as brothers.

The story was about a church that a young pastor visited. Upon arrival he found that a shoulder high boundary was being placed down the center of the church. Upon inquiry he found that boundary divided those who wanted to hear organ music from those who wanted to hear piano music. The pastor, taking charge of the situation and doing as he said "the right thing for the wrong reasons," then, upon ultimatum, refused to allow the last piece of barrier to be placed.

We took these elements from the story and incorporated them into our own -

Two factions - John and Jordan. We decided,on the technical end of shooting this scene, to rarely show the brothers in the shot. We hoped this would greater enhance the faction idea and show there was still a gap in their relationship and disconnect between the brothers.

Two halves of a whole with irreconcilable differences - Brothers who have a long standing disagreement over something.

A conservative faction and a progressive faction - John would come from a very traditional, old school style of song writing. Jordan would be in the moment, always moving with the times.

The factions remain together, amicably coming to an agreement - John and Jordan realize that they will always be too very different people who disagree on many things, but also realize that they are brothers and that that bond can never be broken. They realize that the faults they see as each others are really faults they have of their own. And that what has been done in the past was not malicious, but a misunderstanding. This realization will hopefully lead to a future reconciliation. The problem isn't quite solved yet.

The pastor tries to right the situation - an outside force, an album Jordan is recording, requires Jordan to ask for John's help (underlying themes of Jordan's need for help from John and John's need to reconcile with his brother and also to get back to what he loves doing) and will, for reasons of its own (?), attempt to bring John and Jordan back together.

We came to our ideas relatively quickly and decided to once again, though tired, head out to the 12 South Taproom, the official hang out and meeting place of the Nashville 9. We spent about 45 minutes there and then headed back.

I decided to forego writing for a bit and take a nap. I awoke a few hours later and we all set to writing. This was actually the ideal writing situation. As there were only 2 characters in the scene tomorrow and all three of us were at the house, we were able to work through a lot of the lines as we went, potentially taking some of the pressure off the next day. Writing continued sporadically through the night and by morning I felt we had a really strong scene to work with. Today was going to be a good day.

Story 4 - Scene/Song 8

2008-12-22T07:02:00.002-06:00

Story 4 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Songwriter Blog #3 - Day 3/Song 6 - Hang On

2008-12-19T16:30:00.013-06:00

Mean Tambourines - Part II - Hearing the Song

After a pretty restless night of sleep, I awoke to Ryan Pruitt rolling into the house at about 7:40am. He hadn't yet taken to bringing me coffee in the morning- that would begin on day 4. This was probably about the time he began to notice my diminishing capacities. Anyway, he sat down next to me and told me that he had the rough mix from Jamie Kenney and Mean Tambourines. I slid the cd into the drive and we began to listen.

Jamie Kenney in his Studio

Members of Mean Tambourines along with Nashville 9 Music Coordinator Ryan Pruitt.

Right off the bat I loved the intro. They definitely sped up the song! Ryan Truso reworked the melody to better fit his voice and style. I totally dug it! The song had tons of energy and forward momentum. I felt like what I gave them was relatively dark but they took it back out of that- and they did it in a good way.

Mean Tambourines lead singer/guitarist Ryan Truso did an excellent job re-crafting the lyrics to fit what the band does stylistically.

Initially when I heard the chorus I wasn't sure how I felt. Ryan Pruitt had told me that they changed some lyrics before I heard the song. So I knew that I'd be hearing something different. Still, lyrical changes always make you nervous.

Here's what I originally wrote:

She can't not dance, she can't not dance. She's spinning in a chemically-fueled romance.
This won't be the chance she'll miss, as she gets pulled into a cocaine kiss.
She can't not dance.

Here's what Mean Tambourines Recorded:

She can't not dance, she can't dance. She's spinning in the chemicals, in the chemicals.
In this romance, in this romance. She's spinning in the chemicals, in the chemicals.

I think I was initially disappointed when I first heard it. I had loved the original lines in the chorus and was looking forward to how they had been incorporated. But as I got to the second chorus, it really started working for me. I realized that they had sped the song up so much (which it needed) that it would have been nearly impossible to get all those words in. I feel like when you write something one way and someone records it another, you have an initial reaction that isn't always trustworthy. You find yourself listening "for" something and not "to" something. Such was the case in this.

I noticed that everyone in the room was totally loving their version of the tune. I actually listened to the song a second time and found myself really pulled into it. I can't even count how many times I've emailed it to Nashville 9 team members. We probably have a total of 2 hours of footage of Nat McIntyre, Jenny Moss and I singing the chorus. Now, as I write this blog, I can't imagine hearing it any other way. Over the next several days this song was in the heads of everyone involved in the Nashville 9 - it was definitely the most "sung" song during the project. So all in all I loved this song. This song changed more than any other song in the project...and I couldn't be more happy it did. I wanted them to make this their own. That's exactly what they did.

Favorite Change to the song: I loved the way they reworked the pre-chorus. The music that sat beneath the line "daddy couldn't keep her from California..." and led into the chorus was awesome.

Biggest Regret: I wish the word "cocaine" had managed to find its way in the song. I feel about that the same way I felt when "tow-truck driver" didn't get into the Champion song. I could understand how it didn't make its way in, but because it was such a big part of the story, I wished it stayed.

Side note on Mean Tambourines: These guys are an exceptional live band. Jenn and I recently had a chance to see them at The End. If you get an opportunity to see them, I highly suggest you make it out. They make a lot of noise for 3 guys! Even more, they have that undescribable quality that makes them come alive on stage. Here's a link to their shows and info.

Side note on Jamie Kenney: There wasn't one single producer on this project that I wasn't tremendously impressed with. Jamie was no exception. He's got a great studio over in the Marathon Building (same building that the Yazoo Brewery is in). What really impressed me about Jamie was that he had an extremely calming presence. He exuded a very comforting sense of confidence throughout what could have been a very stressful day. He seemed able to take ideas and give ideas in equal measure. He's definitely someone I'd work with on my own album. Definitely check him out. He and the band were dealt a difficult task to try to make something from my demo- it speaks highly that he and Mean Tambourines were able to do what they did!

Check out some quick footage below that I recorded on my flip video camera!

Jaclyn James Part I - Writing the Song - "Hang On"

Jaclyn James.

Overall, this day had a different feel to it. My wife Jenn and good friend Jenny Moss came by at about 3pm. I had just come back from visiting the filming location. I really didn't get many chances to do this, so when an opportunity came up I felt immediately inclined to take advantage. Anyway, this was the first chance Jenn and I were going to have to actually debrief about how things were going. When she and Jenny came in, they got a chance to look over the 2 day wreckage that was once our beautiful home. While I'm sure Jenn expected this, I felt she was a bit surprised at just how quickly the house turned into a frat house.

Nat and I with our Jenns - Jenn Sheets and Jenny Moss. Their contribution to The Nashville 9 can't be overstated.

I then told "the Jenns" that it was difficult to concentrate and write because people were constantly coming in all the doors, dogs were running out the front door, people were loud, etc etc. Overall, the environment wasn't conducive to "creating on a deadline."

So this is where Jenn and Jenny take things under control. First, they clean everything up (this isn't their job but they do it anyway). Then, Jenn prints up the following sign:

I tell you all this so that you know that when I finally was able to write on this night, it was with a deep sense of calm. Most of this was because of that sign. So thanks, as I have said so many times, to Jenn and Jenny. My wife is able to instill a sort of fear in a person that I simply cannot : ) So when SHE puts up a sign, people listen.

So tonight I was going to write with Tiffany Lee for Jaclyn James. So here comes the quick back story...

How we got Jaclyn James: I was sitting in The Frothy Monkey as I do so many mornings. I had a writing session coming up in about 45 minutes and so I wanted to go through some song ideas I had before I walked into the session. I left my little recorder (which held my song ideas) in my car. So I got up and walked into the parking lot behind The Frothy Monkey to get it. While heading out, a car pulled in front of me and drove past. I noticed a ton of music gear in the back window with the name "Jacyln James" written on it in white. Just minutes before, a songwriter friend of mine had told me good things about a nashville songwriter named "Meghan James." The close proximity of those two events (and my early morning pre-coffee haze of confusion) caused me to look up "Jaclyn James" thinking she was the songwriter my friend had just told me about. So I saw her website and immediately knew it wasn't who I thought it was. That being said, I really liked her music and thought she'd be a perfect fit for Tiffany Lee to co-write a song for. So I emailed Jaclyn! Crazy how things go, huh?

How we got Tiffany Lee: About 18 months ago I started writing for a Publishing Company called Weimarhymes Publishing. The owners of the publishing company are Jeremy and Tiffany Lee.

Good friend and music publisher Jeremy Lee (right) next to Hawk Nelson drummer Justin Benner (also a great friend).

So over the last two years those guys have become good friends of me and Jenn. Tiffany's full name is actually Tiffany Arbuckle Lee- many people would know her as an artist called Plumb. She and I talked and she was willing to be a part of the project. So we decided together that it would be ideal to work with her as a co-writer and then maybe have her sing backups the next day on the song we wrote. It seemed like a great twist to have the established artist writing for and almost "mentoring" the younger less established artist. So when I first saw Jaclyn James' myspace, I knew she was the one for me and Tiffany to write for.

So back to now...

We had a pretty cool story about a guy whose uncle tried to ride out Hurricane Katrina. Before we started writing, I had Jaclyn come by to meet Tiffany. I felt like it would be important for Tiffany to have an opportunity to get a feel for who Jaclyn was as a person/artist before we wrote. Jaclyn played us a song, we talked for a few and then she left.

Jaclyn playing one of her songs for Tiffany and me.

Tiffany and I listening as Jaclyn describes who she is as an artist.

Tiffany and I sat down (in our freshly cleaned has courtesy of the Jenns) and got right into it. Tiffany immediately began throwing out ideas for different directions. This is something that I love about Tiffany as a songwriter. She has enough energy and fearlessness to simply throw out ideas - couple that with an incredible sense of melody and you've got someone who really progresses the creative energy. She immediately latched on to the phrase "I'm so stubborn, that's how I got here." This was a direct correlation to the story. I started immediately playing a piano part in the key of "F." Tiffany pretty much had the melody for the first part of the verse right away. We stumbled a bit because Tiffany kept initially hearing the word "here" on the first line landing on a major chord. I liked it, but felt like it may be too "outside the lines" for what we were trying to go for. So we kept it simple and moved on.

Tiffany sitting across from me throwing out song and melody ideas.

Overall, we wanted to put this person to be in a situation that she was responsible for. She got herself into this. Then, just when that person feels like she just can't hold on any longer, we have a voice imploring her to "Hang On." Just as the waters crashed in around the character in the story, we mirrored that image in the song.

In the bridge, we loved the melody against the chords. I really liked the line "Lift your eyes, the sun is rising." Tiffany on the other hand really pushed for "BLINK your eyes." We went with blink which I'm very happy we did. Maybe for Tiffany the word "Blink" was an homage to her last album - "Blink." : )

All in all, this was the easiest writing session that I did during The Nashville 9. I feel like it was a combination of getting all the distractions taken care of AND writing with another songwriter I was familiar with. We knew what we were there to do and simply knocked it out. This was really important for me because I was started to really get exhausted and had begun feeling the pressure of the days stacking up. I couldn't have been more pleased with how this turned out. Little did I know how much would come from this song...

This is the Video Tiffany and I made for Ben Phillips, Quinlin, and Jaclyn James.

Screenwriter Blog #3 - Story 2/Scene 7/The Non Salon - Story 3/Scene 6/Downtown Presbyterian Church

2008-12-17T21:53:00.023-06:00

We arrived on set a bit more refreshed than the day before – and almost on time (we had just entered daylight savings time, so there was absolutely no excuse for us to be late. It did make me think, although, that our driving force was a deadline. Any deadline. Whether we had only 2 hours to shoot, or a bonus hour of writing, we still managed to come in about a fashionable half-hour late every time.)

Jen McDonald was already at the salon and I will admit that I felt bad for her. Not only had we asked to use her place of business, asked to come in on a Sunday, and totally taken over every inch of space upon arrival, but we were also asking her to act. Sure, it was a little bit of typecasting (we needed a hair stylist - she is a hair stylist,) but we also knew she would do a great job (with absolutely no complaining) with whatever we threw at her.

And we had a lot to throw at her.

After yesterday’s near defeat, but eventual triumph, we must have been getting a little cocky to think we might be able to pull off a montage. A montage in a salon nonetheless.

Whatever. We were in it now.

Jen and Brandon McDonald

Sara soon arrived, ready to get everyone into makeup. It’s difficult to say how extremely grateful we were to have Sara on hand. Andrea Politte had been scheduled as hair/makeup artist for the entirety of the shoot, but was pulled away at the last minute by a commitment for an event in Chicago on the 4th (something about an election or something) and wasn’t going to be able to make it down to Nashville until Thursday. We had spoken to Sara a few months earlier about working with us, but due to previous commitments herself, weren't able to get her on board for the shoot. When she found out (on Thursday) about our predicament, though, she juggled things around and made it possible to be on set for the first 3 days of shooting. A huge help.

Anyway, Sara started getting the actors into makeup. And by actors, I mean Sally. Nat hadn’t arrived yet. After a mishap earlier in the morning (see the vidcast) Nat had left to pick up more props. Brandon had scavenged the night before what he could (amazingly, although not asked to, he was able to find Peeps,) but, as he was at church, was unable to perform prop gathering duty this morning. That's right. At church. No, no, no. Not serving the Lord. Gathering stories. We had brainstormed throughout the night, creating a new list of props and Nat had volunteered to pick them up on his way to the set. This fool’s errand included finding Tab, a facial mask, and a putter. At about 9:30 I received a call. It went something like this –

Chad – Did you back into another ditch?

Nat - %$#!@(* you. Fanta or Fresca?

Chad – What? Tab.

Nat - ^%$@!. No Tab. Fanta or Fresca?

Chad – Fresca. You coming to the shoot today?

Nat - *&^%^#.

He would be arriving shortly thereafter.

Back on set we had problems too. Turns out, after an earlier self-inflicted mishap, Sally was in need of a haircut. Good thing we had a stylist on hand. Have I mentioned how bad I felt for Jen?

With all this craziness going on all at the same time it seemed like we were already rehearsing the montage. Everyone seemed to have whatever it was they were doing under control though, so I went in with Doug to scout out the primary shooting location.

Doug and I had many logistical issues to work out. The space we were shooting today was very defined – two rooms, plus one simple exterior. The exterior would be no problem. But the rooms, especially our primary room, where Nat and Sally would be greeted and then styled, looked like they were going to be tricky. On the plus side, this was practically a ready-made and nothing needed much dressing. On the minus side, we had to work in a pretty small space cramped by two revolving chairs, 4 actors, 2 cameras, and a film crew. Oh, and one of the walls, the wall we would almost always be using as a backdrop, was nearly entirely a mirror. We got out our geography books to determine what angles we could still shoot, capturing the room, and not being seen in the mirror. I must admit, though, our limited possibilities were actually a blessing. When Doug and I plan out shots we tend to look at every conceivable possibility before setting things into motion. This allows us to do a lot of trouble shooting before getting into too much of a precarious situation, but it also means that everyone has to wait until we are finished. Normally, all this set up and storyboarding would be done ahead of time. We didn’t really have that luxury on this project. So, the fewer the possibilities, the less possibilities for us to debate, rationalize, and eventually cast aside. We went to work with what we had. The frenetic nature of the montage had inspired us to shoot a lot with the glide cam. We wanted to start with shots on sticks and eventually, as the craziness became more incremental, move to the glide cam. That would come later, though. Doug went to work planning positions and lighting the entire room. David and Tommy tried to figure out how to mic four actors with only 2 lavs. I tried to get out of the way.

A little side note on our equipment. We had decided that, in order to pull this project off (short, stories, and documentary,) we would need a minimum of 6 cameras (1 on short, 1 on stories, and 4 on doc.) And we wanted all 6 cameras to be the same model – a Panasonic DVX-100B. In June we had zero. I was able to acquire one and Doug was able to acquire another a few months later. So, by September we had two. I decided I really wanted to make the short a two camera shoot, though. Meaning two cameras would shoot from two different angles at the same time, thus cutting in half the time to complete the shot list and also ensuring that good takes would be good takes from 2 angles. Plus, I knew we would be using a lot of actors trained more in theater than film. Using two cameras means less cuts and therefore more of the scene may be acted at once (more of a theater than film practice.) All this to say, we may have had 2 cameras locked down, but this decision now meant we were looking for 7 instead of 6. When Joel joined up as producer of the documentary he brought 2 more dvxs with him. That put us at 4. In early October we decided to use a lesser quality, but more mobile camera for stories. So, that put us at 5. We still had a month to go, but had exhausted most of our options. In mid October Allan Rondo joined the doc crew, bringing our camera count to 6. This meant that we could do the project as we had originally imagined, but not like I wanted to. The days started to roll by quicker and quicker. By the 28th, we still only had 6 cameras. Joel was doing constant research and on the 29th he found a dvx that might be bought and also someone who might be able to take it off our hands after the project. Joel did some last minute finagling, we pooled our money together, and on Wednesday had a camera shipped to us from Massachusetts, barely arriving before the start of the project Friday night. I tell you this to help you understand why we mention two cameras and also to say that there is absolutely no way we could have shot this with only one. I’ll save the talk about mics for later.

Joel and I at the wrap party

I walked into the green room and found that Sally’s friend Eric had arrived. Turns out he is a pilot. Very interesting. We spoke a little. He actually seemed rather quiet and I was a little worried as to what his performance might be like. Sara started getting him into makeup while Jen finished her work on Sally’s hair. Nat soon arrived, props in hand. We got Nat quickly into makeup and went outside to get our first shot.

With every scene written, we were always a little unsure as to what transitions we might need to write in. Therefore, we tried to always have our characters arriving in some fashion. This scene was a first date. We decided to have Nat and Sally walk up to the salon, thus establishing we were at a salon. We paid little heed to the fact that according to the sun, this first date took place at about 10:45 in the morning. We also needed this establishing shot to somehow make reference that this was a first date (obviously the characters would know this, but having not written any but one preliminary scene, we weren’t sure the audience would.) We decided that, as Nat and Sally were arriving, we would have them each say the line “First Date,” a reference in the present to something we would write in the future about something which had occurred in the past. The inflection of this line would relate each of the characters’ feelings about said date and hopefully a bit of endearing anxiety, a feeling, based upon the chosen story, we wanted to establish at the outset of this scene. Sally would say it first (unsure) and then Nat (reassuringly). We tried the scene several times, always remembering to have Nat shuffle his feet as he went. I was displeased with how the line was sounding. Nat asked for a different line. I didn’t have one. We tried a couple more times. Still not working. Sally then suggested we swap how the line was inflected by each character. Nat would be unsure and Sally would be reassuring. It worked great. Amazing how little changes can make all the difference. We shot a couple more angles and then broke for lunch.

My parents brought lunch to set this day. They had been in town since Friday night, but this was the first chance I had gotten to see them. We caught up about what all I had been doing and what they were doing. Then they left to take lunch to the recording studio. As we ate, Nat and I worked on completing the writing of his monologue. I had sketched the monologue out and we had many definitive lines, but had yet to form a complete script. We hurried through it and got something down so that Nat could start working on memorizing it. He would have no time once we started shooting again. We moved inside to shoot.

Most of the action in this room would take place as Nat and Sally sat in chairs, tended by Jen and Eric. Nat and Sally would start out having similar salonish things done to and for them, but then we would start a one-up contest of craziness between them. To capture this we needed to show the action on one character, but also the reaction on the other. As stated before, this was very difficult to do with the angles we had been given. Doug though, being the never-say-die guy that he is, went right to work on it. And if that wasn't enough, we also wanted to do a sort of special effects shot where we sat both actors in the chair and then spun them around,time-lapse fashion, to reveal them in facial masks.

Whatever. We were in it now.

As Doug was setting up, we ran the actors through a few rehearsals. We had no specific lines, and asked everyone to basically improvise a greeting. Getting Sally and Nat from the door into the chairs was actually proving to be more logistically challenging and awkward than we had hoped. Eric really came alive in this scene, though, and helped to push things along. He proved to be really great at improvising and I was so thankful Sally had suggested him. Jen gave Eric some quick lessons in styling and he, in turn, gave her some acting pointers, both doing what they could to help each other’s performance.

We got some of our basic shots in the chairs done and then began to move onto some of the more crazier set-ups. These included facial masks, manicures, pedicures, and tattoos. I received a crash course seminar from every woman in the room as to the proper order that these treatments would take place in a spa and was summarily reprimanded anytime I strayed from this order while shooting.

Watching the dailies later that night

I went outside to get some air and a vitamin water and found that Luke, Jenn, and Jenny had showed up on set. You may notice Luke and I make few appearances in each other’s blogs. Unfortunately this mirrored how most of the Nashville 9 went. Due to the nature of our respective roles, we rarely saw each other and almost never worked together. This was very odd for me and I’m sure for Luke also. We had spent everyday for the past year and a half planning for these 9 days, nurturing this plan into fruition. During that year and a half we probably spoke to each other 10 times a day on the phone, not to mention hours upon hours every week in meetings. So, it was kind of odd to come to day one and practically have to say “See you when this all over. Let me know how it went.” So, I took the time we had and caught up a little and then returned inside.

We picked out some hellacious ink for Sally and a killer tramp stamp for Nat. We had originally intended to use a separate actor as a tattoo artist, but instead decided to stick with our two stylists. Jen was a little wary of applying Nat’s tattoo, (have I mentioned all that we asked of her that day?) so I stepped in and did the dirty work. We were starting to have fun and we were getting our shots, but we were also beginning to run a little late. Julie was keeping everyone on task, but we could do only so much to beat the clock. We still had many more elements of the montage to go and started talking about what might need to be cut. We finished up in the main room and decided to move into the other one. But first, we felt it a good idea to go ahead and shoot Nat’s monologue. We had Nat and Sally lie on the floor, heads touching. Doug shot looking down on them. It was a great performance. I felt great because we finally had the opportunity to allow our actors to really focus in on something and work their magic. It's still odd to me to hear someone say words that I've written on a piece of paper. And even odder to hear them spoken better than I heard them in my head. Although Sally had only the opening and closing line to this section, and Nat spoke the rest, she had to speechlessly react to everything Nat was saying. She would represent the way we would want the audience to react. Difficult to do. It was a great scene and my favorite moment of the shoot up to that point. We did a few takes and moved on. We were really starting to run short of time.

Julie

The elements to be shot in the next room were just pure craziness. We set up two cams and let the actors have fun. We tried almost everything Nat had suggested, and I will definitely admit that all played well and really allowed the scene to do what it should. As we neared wrapping for the day, we put everyone to work cleaning up. We had made a bit of a mess. We finally got everything back in order, packed up, and headed back to Luke’s.

We were late, but not that late. We sat down to more good food and some stories.

This night’s stories had been gathered Saturday night on Broadway and 2nd. The atmosphere was very similar to the Halloween stories. We started to notice a trend. We usually got at least 3 stories that immediately went into contention, but also others that seemed lacking in any of a number of elements. I felt for the story gathering team. Not only were they having to constantly make cold contact with people on the street, but also having to explain to them what we were doing, and then trying to convince them to tell a story. I had been pretty resolved about how I wanted the gathering to take place and I know that the team was working their hardest to make that happen. This night they assuredly did their job, bringing in some great stories. I think we were feeling like going in more of a serious mode for the next day and we definitely were given the material to work with. 2 stories really stood out.

One was told by a soldier who had served in Iraq. He had to watch as the parents of a boy worked for hours to dig a a grave in a stone cold ground in which to bury him. Quite a difference from the two previous stories. We debated between this story and the story of a man caught in a flood during Hurricane Katrina. We went back and forth, but at last decided upon the Katrina story.

This was going to be scene 6 and was to be shot in the Downtown Presbyterian Church. We really liked that the story dealt with a man going higher and higher to try and escape something, an act of God. We liked that the man had put himself into this predicament by remaining stubborn and unheeding the advice and warnings of others. We also liked that he was all alone. We liked the fact that he was pushed to the very top, and if the waters had kept coming he might have drowned, but he didn’t. He was given a reprieve.

Downtown Presbyterian

The level aspect was great for the Church. We had several locations we wanted to shoot within the church, each on different levels and each getting smaller and smaller, more claustrophobic and precarious as we went up. We planned on starting in the sanctuary, moving up to a balcony, and then ending in the bell tower.

The sanctuary

Leading up to the balcony

The balcony

We had the logistics. Now we just needed the story of the scene to go with it. As mentioned, this was scene 6, the scene right before the scene we had shot today. We decided not to use this as a Nat or Sally scene, but rather deal with the brother. We really needed to start working him into the story and this seemed like a good place to do it. Based on Nat’s monologue we knew the brother was probably going to be a performer and musician of some sort. We decided if he was going to be a performer and the character in the story was stubborn, we needed to find an appropriate situation for this character flaw to shine though. We decided to make the brother, Jordan, an inept song writer who won’t come to terms with it. We also wanted to eventually elude to the fact, but not in this scene, that Nat’s character, based upon some character elements established in the monologue, was a good songwriter. We wanted the brother to be attempting to write songs in this scene in an attempt to prove everyone wrong. We wanted him, though, to doubt himself a bit, struggling to come to terms with something. We thought it would be appropriate for Jordan to write in a church, a place where he could be without an audience, not judged, and also able to find inspiration. I think by this point we all thought Brandon should play the brother. We checked his schedule to make sure he was free the next day.

The first time I worked with Brandon as an actor was on the 48 Hour Film Project this past August. He was fantastic. I was excited that we were able to cast him. He already knew the story and this meant we would be able to work with our two main characters as we wrote, before arriving on set. Plus, I was really excited to see how Brandon and Nat would act together. I had worked with each one separately, but never together.

We continued writing. The main difficulty for me was in how to show a writer to be a bad writer. The quality of a song is subjective and therefore difficult to show. Nat suggested that the audience would react based on Brandon’s reactions. This seemed a workable idea.

Watching stories

We also needed to find some sort of impetus for Brandon to keep moving up. We decided to find something that would consistently break his concentration and something also intrinsic to the church. We decided that could come in the form of a custodian with a vacuum cleaner. Nat suggested Nick, one of Jenny’s friends, gave him a call, and he agreed to be in for the next day. We were pretty good on props, only needing a guitar (easily gotten) and a vacuum cleaner (easily picked up at my house the next day.) We didn’t have much to write in the form of dialogue, but for the interaction between Jordan and the custodian. We continued writing and I actually got in bed at a decent hour.

Story 3 - Scene/Song 6

2008-12-15T07:52:00.002-06:00

Story 3 - Scene/Song 6 from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Songwriter Blog #2 - Story 2/Song 7 - Can't Not Dance

2008-12-12T23:56:00.012-06:00

THE CHAMPION AND HIS BURNING FLAME PART II - HEARING THE SONG - MONDAY AFTER EASTER

The way we planned the Nashville 9, Ryan Pruitt would come in morning at 8am to hear the song I wrote for that day. I'd kind of debrief with him, talk about stuff, etc. That was also supposed to serve as when I would hear the recorded song from the night before. It didn't work out that way for the song "Monday After Easter." I went with Chad, Brandon, and Nat to 12th South Taproom after we picked the story (which I would be writing for Mean Tambourines). We figured as exhausted as we were already, it would be a good idea to have a couple beers (imagine this sentence delivered in a sarcastic tone). Anyway, when we got there, we saw all the guys from The Champion and His Burning Flame along with Producer Shawn Byrne. Everyone was hanging out and having a good time. Shawn and the guys from Champion were excited for me to hear the song. So to a car we went...

Tim listening back to his drum take on Monday After Easter.

Producer Shawn Byrne at 16 Ton Studio.

Mike Esser did a great job engineering Monday After Easter.

Bass player Jeremy.

Singer and Guitar Player Dave.

So we hit play on the car stereo...

The moment I heard the song I kind of freaked out. I don't know how visibly freaked out I was, I'll have to watch the footage someday. All I know is that I couldn't believe how good the song turned out. You spend all this time with one of your best buddies planning to do some project without ever really knowing if it's truly going to work. However, you don't want to let on to anyone else that the results may not be good. So it was a very special moment where I looked at Chad and thought "wow, this project may turn out to be pretty damn good!" I had this moment where I felt like the guy who gets called up to the Big Leagues and then hits a home run his first time at bat. You get really excited but are super stressed out that you wouldn't be able to do it again. All in all, Shawn Byrne and Champion were unbelievable. Let's just say they gave me a good pitch to hit.

Anyway...

Champion had made some changes to the song. It's important that I mention here that I wanted the artists to do that. I wanted them to take the songs and really put their identity into it. The only thing I wanted to make sure didn't happen were lots of lyrical changes- mostly because I'm working hard to tie the song to a specific story. I didn't want to lose that. One thing they did was to make the verses a bit darker and more suited to their style (which I immediately loved). Reed and I wrote a chord part after the first half of the verse- we thought Champion would really like it but they took it out. I honestly didn't notice it gone- the way they did it actually made everything flow better. Also they really made the chorus dance like we hoped they would- it was very "Beatles-esque." I'm not going to even bother telling you how good the bridge was. You'll just have to hear it.

While much of what Chad and I did were in parallel, we differed on one thing. Chad spent the whole day on set actually taking on the role, along with Nat, as a director. This was important for him to be able to see his vision through. I, on the other hand, wanted nearly nothing to do with the recording process. I didn't want to be there when they first heard the song and I didn't want to influence what they did with it. I knew Ryan would be able to handle anything that came up and I didn't want to be in the way. There's nothing worse when you're trying to record a song on a deadline than having someone there saying "why don't you do this" or "I'd like to hear more of this." Even though that's not really something I would do, I knew the artists may be hyper-conscious of me being there. I just wanted to totally remove that issue. So Ryan and I decided that I would just stop in during the day and say "hi, thanks for doing this"- then leave.

Favorite Part of the Song: The Bridge into the broken down chorus. You'll just have to hear it!!

Favorite Added Line: "we're having a baby"

Thing you're sad didn't make the recorded song: Champion took out my original line "tow-truck driver." In its place they sang "Easter driver." If I recall they took it out because it sounded too country to sing "tow-truck." I was cool with them taking it out, but still like "tow-truck" in that it so directly ties to the story of the tow truck driver. Truthfully though, I also like "Easter driver."

The Champion and His Burning Flame put together a video blog about their experience with the Nashville 9. Check it out below.

VIDEO BLOG 1 from The Champion & His Burning Flame on Vimeo.

MEAN TAMBOURINES PART I - WRITING THE SONG - CAN'T NOT DANCE

I entered into this night feeling significantly more confident. I had one song under my belt and felt pretty certain that I could knock this song out without committing to another full night of no sleep. Chad hadn't even slept yet and I could see how much it was affecting him. It made me realize that I needed to quit screwing around get right to writing. I was planning on writing this one alone. The artist that I was writing for was "Mean Tambourines."

Let me give a little back story...

Early on in the project, Ryan spoke with Garrison Starr about the project. Initially we were just hoping that she would maybe write with me one night for one of the artists. To our surprise she said "I want to be one of the artists." Naturally Ryan and I were very very excited. It was a great chance for me to write for someone with whom I was familiar as an artist. Garrison is very well known in the Nashville community and was really going to add a lot to the project. We were also able to pull in producer Mitch Dane (we were lucky enough to pull him in as kind of a package deal with Garrison - he rearranged his schedule to make the sunday work out).

Fast Forward about 2 months.

Circumstances came up that required that Garrison go to New York at the beginning of November. She was super apologetic and regretted not being a part of the project. As a result, we weren't able to work with Mitch Dane either. So the whole thing ended up being twice as upsetting. We were only about 10 days before the project and I was so covered up with Nashville 9 preparation that I could do nothing to find another artist and producer. So, here is where Ryan Pruitt pulls one of the many proverbial rabbits out of the hat.

Ryan says "I kind of know this producer named Jamie Kenney." Over the phone I hear him say "Jamie Kennedy." This leaves me thinking for about a week that he's having the guy from "Malibu's Most Wanted" producing a song. I trust him though and roll with it. (this name misunderstanding/mispronounciation gets cleared up later). Jamie Kenney is someone Ryan casually knows and is willing to sit down and talk about the project with. After I square up the correct spelling of his name I do two important things- 1) Look him up on myspace 2) Ask my friend Alice (who you'll hear about later) what she knows about the guy. Both things yield highly favorable responses.

This is who Jamie Kenney Is...

So Ryan (along with baby Abbott) go and meet with Jamie. Jamie, being the kind of guy that can say "why not?" tells Ryan he'll do it. Ryan calls to finally tell me "WE HAVE OUR 9th PRODUCER." We then go out to have a drink and celebrate! Baby Abbott stays home with mama.

Little Abbott Pruitt got pulled along to many meetings with artists and producers.

Now, when we brought on Jamie, we told him to go ahead and pick the last artist. As of Oct. 28th, we have our final artist brought on by Jamie- Mean Tambourines (no "the"). Ryan and I then go out again to have a drink and celebrate!

Mean Tambourines written on the chalkboard of Jamie Kenney's studio

Back to now...

So I'm exhausted and really wanted to jump on this one. The story that was chosen became known as the "Coke with the Strokes Story." Though the story isn't necessarily a very dark story, I immediately decided to draw on the darker elements. The story "papa smurf" told was about him and a girl he was friends with. He talked about how is parents moved to dickson county Tennessee to keep the kids away from California. Still, as soon as he was 20 he picked up and moved to California anyway. I found that part of the story really interesting and decided to focus on that. Also, instead of focusing on him, I made the girl he was with the focus. So i knew I wanted to use the line "daddy couldn't keep her from California." I figured I'd paint this dark picture about this girl whose daddy tries to keep her from California, but can't. There is something inside her that just gets pulled into California and the Hollywood party life that represents. I don't often get to write dark decadent songs, so this was going to be my chance!

Now, back to Mean Tambourines. I figured this would be stylistically and thematically perfect for them. As I explained earlier in my back story, they came in to the project only a couple days before we started. I really never got a chance to digest their music and meet them like I did the other artists. I listened to half of 2 songs on myspace and spent about 60 seconds talking to Ryan Truso (singer/guitar player) while waiting for the bathroom at 12th South Taproom. Suffice to say I was working off a very general idea of who they were. I went in thinking "dark, dancy, the killers meet joy division, meet david bowie." In retrospect, I probably should have put less focus on The Killers and more focus on the David Bowie- I should have stayed away from the Modern Rock (which is exactly where I went).

I wanted the tune to have a driving pumping bass...so I wrote it on bass. I immediately decided to call it "Can't Not Dance." Yeah, I know its a double negative. Nonetheless I the idea that this girl "Can't Not Dance" seemed cooler to me than calling in "She can Dance." "Can't Not" implied she was sucked into the dance- she can't help but do it. I pretty much wrote the music and melody right away. I had about 25% of the lyrics together and then I called David Scott, knowing he'd be perfect to help write a dark decadent rock song. I know I mentioned in the last blog that I'd tell you more about him, but I'm not going to do that quite yet. He plays a pretty big role later. Suffice to say he threw some fantastic lines at me for this tune.

I'll tell you more about David Scott later- for now however, here's a picture.

Here i am talking to David Scott via iChat- He was in San Francisco.

I had everything written, but was having trouble fitting the melody in chorus. I felt like I had too many words to too short a space. These were the chorus lines that I was struggling with melodically:

She Can't not dance, she can't not dance.
She's spinning in a chemically-fueled romance.
This won't be the chance she'll miss
As she gets sucked into a cocaine kiss
She can't not dance.

I immediately traded the word "sucked" for "pulled." The word "suck" seemed too strong and took up too much attention. And yes, this is what we song writers do- deliberate for hours over things like "suck" or "pull."
Here is what I had the chorus sounding like. This is a quick rough from that night...

DanceN9Piece.mp3

The only thing I had left to write was a bridge. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure what else I wanted to say. So instead of writing a bridge I let them go with something instrumental (it seemed to serve me well with Champion). This would now be the second time in a row I went with an "instrumental bridge." This would then serve as an inside joke between Ryan Pruitt and I for the remainder of the project.

So now the song was written and all I needed to do was demo it. I opened up Garageband and went to get Brandon- he was asleep. I had him come in and play the bass part while I threw in some occasional acoustic guitar. You'll see on the video that I made for Mean Tambourines and Jamie Kenney that I was very apologetic for the quality of the demo. It was absolutely by far the worst quality demo I gave to any artist. Mostly this was because I was trying to record a live Bass guitar into the built-in speakers for my laptop. It just sounded terrible! I felt kind of bad because I knew this would make it more difficult on them but I was just too exhausted to set up Pro Tools and try to record the Bass directly in.

Interestingly, this was also my least favorite video that I made for the artists. I was so tired and I felt like I just kept babbling about unimportant stuff. I recorded the video in the garage because there was someone sleeping in every room and I didn't want to wake everyone up. Plus, I hadn't quite got the hang of what I was wanting to say in these videos. So all in all, I left Jamie and Mean Tambourines with a long day ahead of them...

People were asleep everywhere, so I recorded the video for Mean Tambourines in the garage.

Screenwriter Blog #2 - Story 1/Scene2/Plowhaus - Story 2/Scene 7/The Non salon

2008-12-10T07:06:00.017-06:00

So, after filling up the cooler with soda, vitamin water, and red bull, picking up coffee from Ryan, and loading our cars down with cameras, lights, and anything else we might need, Doug and I left Luke’s and headed to LeQuire. The actors, after being served breakfast by my parents and running lines with Nat, left my house about 20 minutes before. We were behind schedule a bit, but at least we had a script and everyone was on their way.

Before I got on set, though, I received a call from my sister Christy, who had flown in from Orlando the night before and was to be working as script supervisor. Christy informed me that everyone was at LeQuire, but no one from the gallery was there to let them in. I arrived about 5 minutes later. We were locked out, but Sara Burgers, our hair/makeup person for the day was already getting Sally ready. Sara asked me what “80’s cafe stylish” meant. I told her I had absolutely no idea and that she would need to speak to Brandon, who would soon be arriving, props and jib in hand. Though we were locked out, I was satisfactorily happy to see that the entire cast and crew had shown up. No reflection on them. I was just hoping I had given everyone the right address. I found Nat and inquired if he had any contact info for anyone at the gallery. He didn’t and neither did I. Luckily, someone arrived within the next 15 minutes.

We started bringing equipment in. I asked Alan if he minded our using the jib.

I should probably explain about the jib.

A jib is basically a crane with a camera mounted on one end. I had been pushing to get one donated for months, but had had no luck.

A Jib

About a week and a half earlier I had asked Brandon if he might be able to build one for us. He said sure. The first time I saw OUR jib, I was pretty speechless - except to say, “Wow. That’s pretty big. And pretty amazing.” Out of galvanized steel, Brandon had built a jib with a 9 foot arm that could rotate 360 degrees, and raise and lower anywhere from 12 feet to just above ground level. With a lever system, the camera mounted on the front could pivot both horizontally and vertically. An LCD screen was mounted so that, while in motion, the operator could see what was being shot. And to top it off, everything was mounted on a Dolly with tracks.

Our Jib

It was and is amazing and I wanted to use it for every shot. Anyway, Alan said we could bring it in. I thanked him and asked him to look over and sign a location release.

Sally, also still a little unsure as to Brandon’s instructions, had brought half her closet and everything purple she owned. She and I and my sister looked through her wardrobe and designed an outfit. She went off to change.

The rest of the crew was busy determining where to set up shop. Doug, Julie Smith, who was working as AD, and I started to make a shot list. David Wagner (Sound Mixer) and Tommy Wilson (Boom) needed to know where they could set up, be out of the way, and out of shot. I asked my sister to set up Craft Services. Nat took the actors off to a corner to run lines. And when Brandon arrived, he and Eric Brooks starting bringing in and setting up the jib. All the while a documentary crew, who tried to stay out of our way and whose way we tried to stay out of, were shooting everything.

Things were moving. Moving forward I still wasn’t sure. I knew we were only about an hour into production and everyone was busy trying to feel out the process, but still, it would have felt really nice to get a shot out of the way.

After the jib was set up, we brought the actors in and started blocking the scene. It wasn’t going to be easy to shoot. The room set-up necessitated that we shoot by breaking the plane ( here’s the basic rule number one of shooting a scene - draw an invisible line. Action can take place in an 180 degree arc on either side of that line, but not usually on both. We needed to shoot on both sides. Which is fine. It just meant continually reorienting the audience. But we had no fears. Come on. Did I mention we had a jib?)

Doug setting up shots

So, we started walking through the jib master for the scene. An ambitious first shot. Several elements had to be perfectly coordinated to make everything work. The actors had to nail their blocking and the camera had to follow them in a continuous shot (actually leaving the actors at one point, focusing in on sculptures, and then returning focus to the actors.) Plus the actors were still learning their lines.

At about 11:45 we were ready to shoot the first shot. Lunch arrived. We decided to get the first shot and then break for lunch.

At about this time also, Nat came to me and told me we had a problem. The Gallery was having issues with our location release.

We decided to break for lunch.

I spoke to Elizabeth, the Gallery manager, and Alan about the release. It seems they were very concerned about the use of the plethora of copyrights (read sculptures) in the gallery in the film. We had moved quickly to secure this location and had not worked out all the details. Still, we felt that showing the sculptures, as we had specifically spoken about on Wednesday, was exactly what the gallery wanted. The main concern on the gallery’s side seemed to be with the ownership and use of any footage utilized outside of one showing of the short film. I told Elizabeth and Alan I’d see what I could do. I called Jenn and asked her if she could get me Michelle’s, our lawyer, number. Jenn didn’t think there was anything Michelle could do about the situation. It was after 12 and we were running out of time. I decided to go back to Alan and Elizabeth and see what we could negotiate. I asked if we could cover the statues and just utilize the space, still recognizing it as a gallery (as we had written the scene specifically for a gallery.) They conferred and I went to check on everyone else. Everyone was eating and anxious. I went back into negotiations. The gallery felt that if we were to shoot without showing the sculptures (which we had now agreed was going to be impossible to do) we would more or less just be using this space as a location to shoot in, and this would be unfair to others who would normally be charged to utilize the space. We didn’t have any money. We were at an impasse. As there was no solution in sight and as we were running out of time, I decided we should vacate the Gallery. I informed everyone and everyone immediately started making phone calls in an attempt to find a new gallery. It was a little after 1 and we needed to be finished shooting and back at Luke’s house to watch stories by 5.

Lots of calls and nothing. We continued tearing everything down, carrying it out, and packing it up. It was about 1:30.

More calls and nothing.

Until Julie was able to contact a friend who had a contact at the Plowhaus Gallery in East Nashville (entirely across town.) Julie gave the Plowhaus a call, let them know what we wanted to do, and got the okay. The word was spread and our convoy pulled out - onto a highway only to find traffic crawling; a situation actually less stressful than might be imagined. We had absolutely no control and had to resolve to sit where we were. Traffic eventually started moving and we all sped away.

Julie

We arrived at the Plowhaus. I believe Brandon hit a car with the jib. I’m not sure. We unloaded everything and brought it in. We took a look at the set-up. Although structured somewhat similarly, we still had to rethink all of the blocking. We also had to revise much of the content. The scene would now deal with paintings and not sculptures. Also, the content of the artwork was entirely different. This gallery had a looser feel, so we also felt the need to dress Eric down a little more.

Preparing to shoot at Plowhaus

We still wanted to use the jib and we were still in the same predicament of having to break the plane. Also, we were going to have to put Sally in one corner of the room and Nat and Eric in the other, but be able to cheat so that it would not appear they were 25 feet apart when they confronted each other.

Also, we needed something for Sally to break. Originally, Brandon had found some ceramic pieces that could stand as broken sculptures. That didn’t seem to play here. Brandon remembered he had a few tiles in his truck we could break. The gallery also had something already broken. We decided we would hang one tile (masked to look like a painting by doc crew member Major Chisholm) on the wall and then piece together another tile with the broken gallery piece and place it on a makeshift pedestal. We realized we only had 2 tiles to work with and both needed to be broken. Those shots would have to be one takes.

About to be destroyed

It was about 3 o’clock. We hadn’t started shooting yet. It was 3 o’clock on day one and we still hadn’t started shooting. It was nerve-racking. It was cool. We were just about ready.

Once we started rolling everything started to run really smoothly. We got our one takes, everyone started having fun, and we used the jib a lot. We didn’t make it home by 5, but we did make it by 5:30. Not too bad. Considering.

Shooting outside the Plowhaus

This had been a really bad day and a really good day. It was 5:30 and I hadn’t slept since 6am on Friday. We barely got a script written and we lost a location in the middle of the day.

But we had come through it all. We had come together as a team, made something great happen, and beat the odds. I had confidence in us when we started, but no where near the confidence I had at the end of that day.

And I can’t express enough how thankful I am to the Plowhaus. Without them there might not be any movie to be shown. They really came through for us and with very little idea of what we were trying to get accomplished.

Making the best of a bad situation

I liked how Luke set up some details and superlatives in his blog, so I’m going to steal his idea and incorporate some of my own.

Best/Most Interesting Use of Prop - Brandon couldn’t find Peeps. They are really, really hard to locate out of season. Instead he brought in what was obviously the next best thing - Cherry Slices. We weren’t sure Nat was very fond of them, so we used them in a lot of takes. By the end of the day all we had left was a container of half eaten candy and one Nat not feeling his best.

Short Film Element Written In that Potentially Really Tied Our Hands Later On - 1. As Nat enters the Plowhaus he very noticeably shuffles his feet, a character trait that was to haunt us for the rest of the shoot. 2. Why does Sally carry a wad of money around?

Plowhaus Daily from The Nashville 9 on Vimeo.

Brandon, Nat, and I made our way back to Luke’s. We arrived and dinner was waiting for us. I don’t remember what we had, but I remember it was really good. We started watching stories.

This was Halloween night, so we had a lot of costumes and a lot of crazy stories. We once again debated over a few, but eventually decided upon Papa Smurf doing coke with the Strokes.

Choosing on the second night was both easier and harder than choosing on the first. We now had a story line, however bare, that we were working with, but also against. The story we chose was not an obvious choice, but we did like its tone and we felt we could pull a lot out of it.

What we really liked about the story was that it was a shared experience (this guy and this girl both set out together and neither one knows what they’re in for,) they are completely out of their environment, the events are instigated by the female character (she wanted to see the Strokes,) there was a sense of innocence and amazement to the whole thing (from Tenn/never been to California, didn’t know who the band was, excited to be in limo, limited drug use,) what started out relatively normal(going to a show) just kept getting crazier and crazier, more outlandish and unbelievable (meeting band, riding in limo, doing coke with them and other band,) it was all physical “debauchery”, and that there appeared to be absolutely no repercussions from this “debauchery”, except at one point, a breaking point (locking self in room and writing notes) a true inner self came out.

As the Non Salon was our location the next day, everything had to take place within and associated with a salon. We had two rooms we could utilize in the salon - the cutting room and the washing room. Both had facilities for two people, meaning we could have similar action taking place to two people at the same time (as opposed to say having one person get a haircut, while another waited.)

The confrontation

Once again, we liked that the story dealt with both a male and female character. We decided to continue the Nat and Sally story. This was scene 7, so we figured we’d have some time (i.e. four other scenes) to get them to wherever we placed them in this scene.

So,

Shared Experience - We decided Nat and Sally should be on a date.

Innocence and amazement - First date.

Out of normal Environment - John would be very hesitant about dating in general. The date would take place at a Hair Salon.

Instigated by Girl - At the beginning of the scene, Sally will appear to have asked Nat out and will be reassuring him that what they were doing is okay.

Incremental Craziness - we decided this salon would be unlike any other salon, anywhere. We would start out with something normal (a haircut and shampoo) and progressively have the services provided become more and more outlandish.

Physical Debauchery - This was to be a very physical scene. Nat and Sally will constantly be having something done to their person, or be performing some kind of action themselves.

There are no repercussions - the date goes really well, Nat and Sally roll with whatever is thrown at them and come out closer in the end.

Except there is a breaking point with revelations about the self - At the end of the entire scene we decided to have a release. A build and then a release. A very calm release, though, where Nat talks about his relationship with his brother, something he would never do to anyone, including himself.

We should have gotten down to writing, but we didn’t. That day’s sense of accomplishment and this night’s near complete scene sketch instigated a trip to the 12 South Tap Room. We stayed for an hour, met the guys from The Champion and His Burning Flame, heard the song they had recorded that day, and then headed back home.

We got down to writing.

We had decided earlier that this might be a good place for a montage. We wanted to show a lot of crazy things in a short amount of time with little relationship. Obviously a montage. Nat wanted to take it further than I did. I wanted everything that happened to Nat and Sally to be Salon specific and Nat wanted it to go beyond that, heightening the absurd nature of the date. I wanted it to be absurd, but felt like we needed to stay true to the salon. We went back and forth. We were both tired and anxious to get something written.

Nat was worried we weren’t going to get anything done and we’d fall into the same trap we had the day before; that of writing up until the last moment, continuously revising, and getting no sleep. Nat made it very clear to me that I needed to get some sleep. I was exhausted and was having trouble staying awake at the moment. It was decided that we would get props for many montage options and see what played best. We sent Brandon out to find fake tattoos, facial masks, and an assortment of other things.

We needed Sally again. I called her and asked her to show up again at my house in the morning and bring clothes she might wear on a first date to a hair salon.

Sally in character

We needed two Hair Stylists. Jen McDonald was a strong possibility for one. She had mentioned already that she would act if we needed her to. We weren’t sure what our ensemble provided us as to other possibilities. We thought about using Julie. We also needed a tattoo artist. We thought Julie could possibly be cast as this, the tattoo artist, also, or instead of, a stylist. When I had spoken to Sally, she had mentioned she had an actor friend who was available. I asked if he could play a stylist and she said definitely. I called her back and asked her to ask her friend to show up the next day, not knowing who we would be using. We now had options though.

I was tired and practically passed out. I woke in the middle of the night several hours later to work on the last part of the scene, Nat’s monologue.

I wasn’t sure where to take it. This needed to be some kind of revelation to the characters and to the audience about the relationship Nat and his brother have. It needed to be the stimulus for Nat to try and work out some difficulties in his relationships. It needed to bring Nat and Sally closer together. It needed to be pretty confessional and hard for Nat to say. Nat had to be digging up some demons from the past. It needed to go back a way.

Nat acting - as a projection screen

I started working up some ideas about a story concerning John and his brother, now named Jordan, being taken to a concert by their father when they were really young. The story dealt with the buildup to the concert, events at the concert, and how those events had effected their lives to this day.

Nat was awake now and I showed him the sketch. He liked it. We worked through a couple of more elements and by this time Doug had arrived. Nat headed off to meet the actors. I was still finishing up the rough sketch of the monologue when Nat left, but sent it to my house before he arrived.

Doug and I started taking a look at the script. We were a little behind schedule, but no where near as bad as the day before. Still, we were working with a montage and that meant lots of shots.

Doug had never been to the Non Salon and so I tried to explain it to him. We decided, if we were doing a lot of set ups with a lot of action, we might want to rely on the glide cam as our main camera for the day.

Julie arrived and I asked her if she was cool playing a hair stylist and/or a tattoo artist. She was, of course, cool with either.

We packed everything up and headed towards the salon.