Friday, April 18, 2008

Bride Wars

Man what crazy work it is to make a real movie! The band got the call to appear in Bride Wars (starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway) on Sunday, with the shoot to take place Thursday night. By the time I got the band's OK and got the music to them, it was Monday night. Then they changed the shoot time from Thursday night to Thursday day! Needless to say we didn't have much time to prepare. But we're the Slacks, and we like a challenge.
We loaded in our gear to the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston at 10:30am Thursday, into the Venetian Room amid dozens of technical-looking men and women, some rushing around, some standing still looking bored. The place was completely decked out for a wedding, Hollywood-style. While we were setting up, some guy came over and covered up all the brand names on our instruments with tape. Apparently, if Fender wants their guitar in a movie, they have to pay for it.
After set-up, we were shuttled over to the "extras" holding area in the basement of Trinity Church, where 150 wedding extras were signing in, getting dressed, and standing in line for hair and makeup. I've never seen a more beautiful crowd (except for some Thursday nights at the Cantab).
About noontime, we were hustled back to the shoot and put in place on stage. They brought in the extras (wedding guests) onto the dancefloor and set up the shot. Eventually Kate and Anne and their leading men (didn't catch their names) showed up and got into position. Words like "cue playback" and "T-mark" and "Rolling" and "Action" started up and the Chicken Slacks officially began our acting careers.
The first thing I noticed was how incredibly slow the filming process takes. We were on the set for about 14 hours, and they must've shot about one minute of footage! I just kept thinking "Can't we just run this a few times and move on?" But of course I have no idea how it all works, I guess there's lighting and sound and foreground and background and all that cinematography stuff that needs to be considered. And this was just Bride Wars, can you imagine what filming Lord of the Rings must be like?
And acting it was! Did you know that all the music you hear in a movie is mimed? That's right, we set everything up as if we were about to play, and then mimed our way through the songs. Sound ridiculous, but I guess they have to do that in order for the microphones to pick up the actor's dialogue, although I hear 90% of that is overdubbed as well! I'm glad I spent all those hours when I was a little kid, before I had a drumset, sitting in my room playing air-drums to Rush and Van Halen. Who knew one day I would be paid so well for it!
They would have us play (or pretend to play) about 8 bars of the song. Then they'd take five minutes to adjust whatever they needed to adjust, and we'd do it again. At least Curtis and I got to sit down. The other guys had to stand, and the poor women on the dancefloor had to stand there in high heels for hours.
They had us work through lunch, and by the time we broke for dinner (about 7pm) they had shot about 30 seconds of footage. Curtis was pretty depressed because it was fairly obvious he did not get into any of the shots they took. By the end of the night he and his keyboards were surrounded by lighting equipment and baffles, so he was clearly out of the frame. We had fun teasing him about that. In the dinner line, the band broke out an impromptu acappella version of "Hollywood Swingin'". We were that desperate to play some real music.
But we had lots of fun. They had flown in a popular young singer named Ryan Shaw to be featured in the movie, so he sang (mimed) with the band as well.
By the end of the night the band was so anxious to just plug in and rip a few numbers for all these people - we all really needed it. But alas, they finally called it a wrap around midnight and we packed up our gear and headed home without ever even tuning up.
Not sure what will come of it, whether you'll even see us in the shots they took. But it was a great experience and they took care of us. I think the movie will come out at the end of the summer. We'll keep you posted!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey so glad you guys got the gig....I'm sure you all did a great job but hard to beat Rick's 50th !! Yes, it's a trip pretending to be grovin' to the music when there isn't any..... even funnier try dancing to it. Maybe next you'll be in Chicago and we can work together.....See you on the big screen.

Take care,
Barbara Purro

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you guys are really making it big time!
I've been waiting for this!!