I've always loved the story of the Prodigal Son.
It's always been my favorite story.
I've seen cartoon versions of it done and things growing up.
But I really wanted to see it brought to life.
MUSIC
Well, apparently, when we shopped at Thrift Store America,
they wouldn't take Southern's credit card.
So I used my own without checking how much money I had on it.
And I overdrafted.
This is Saturday night, the night before production.
Everyone was supposed to be here at 9.
It's 9, 10, and there's only a few people here.
So I just hope that's not a sign of how this week's going to go.
I've gotten, like, 500 phone calls in the last couple hours.
We changed the date and didn't tell our lead role for tomorrow
that we changed it.
And he had no idea we were shooting.
So we're leaving at 5 o'clock in the morning tomorrow.
Well, we're pulling out by 6.
Success on Friday will mean that I still have friends,
that I passed the class that we're doing this for.
We have all the footage we need.
Successful me, I still have a girlfriend.
Successful me, I'm not sick.
If that all happens, it'll be successful in my mind.
I think I've got everything we need for tomorrow.
I think.
Oh, man, I forgot to get coolers, so I'm getting them now.
So is everything ready?
Today, one of our crew members called us saying that he was
traveling back last night.
And then he got trapped in a snowstorm.
And now he is struggling to survive eating granola bars
and using his jacket as a blanket, which is why we are
down a crew member today.
We are slightly behind schedule.
The camera was falling, and I caught it with one hand.
There's only been, like, three fights, I think, the whole
time I've been there.
No, like, the guy was, he's out of the hospital.
We were doing a shot where the boom was required to be lower,
and we had it on the ground, or I had it on the ground.
I turned around and went to go walk towards the light.
And people were walking by, and somebody hit it.
There was no way for me to have known that it was down there.
And knocked off the head of the boom.
I don't feel guilty at all.
Nobody knows how to fix it.
It's his fault, and he's going to have to pay for it.
I don't know how we're going to do it, really,
because it's pretty much been the worst experience of my
entire life.
We had a rough, not really a rough,
rough start.
It was an early morning.
It was raining.
It was pretty nasty.
It took us a while to get the first shot set up.
I think we spent about three hours just trying to get the first shot.
But we definitely made up for it in the shots after that.
And we wrapped shoot three, three hours, three, four hours early, which is pretty, pretty amazing.
Pretty much everybody on the shoot is pretty new at this.
And, you know, there is a learning curve going into it.
It's my first time doing this kind of thing, and I kind of felt on edge all day just wondering
if I'm doing things right, if I should be here or there, and been a little unnerving.
It should be a little bit harder tomorrow, because we've got exteriors, and we have to
deal with weathers, and sun, and rain, et cetera.
Tomorrow's going to be a rough day.
Our actor is going to be running a few minutes away from Uranus in trouble.
He lives all the way in Canton, Georgia, so he's going to have a two-hour drive.
And then we needed a prop tractor moved, but it was out of gas, and that's a big tractor.
So it took a lot of manpower to move it.
Now our biggest problem is keeping warm, because it's 20 degrees out of it now.
It's windy, and there's not much cover out here.
Yeah.
I want to make movies that make people think.
I don't want just a cheap thrill.
I want people to walk away asking themselves, what can I do to better myself?
What can I do to make a change?
Out of everything, I think this last scene really didn't make the day rewarding.
Philip did an amazing job.
The hardest scene I've ever had to direct.
And honestly, I didn't do anything.
Philip just nailed it.
It was a good day.
I'm furious right now.
I'm going to cry.
That's crazy.
Genius.
Were you trying to be off the roof?
That's the shot.
You wouldn't happen to have any toe straps, would you?
And why was he driving off the road?
To get around someone, apparently, is the story?
Let's go, let's go!
Go, go, go, go, go, go!
Thank you.
Well, yeah, we're halfway through.
And so far, things have gone actually pretty well, I think.
Not without any trouble, but I think pretty well.
Well, everything has been going fine.
Then we stopped for lunch and came back afterward.
And the prop money is missing.
So that's a bit of dilemma because there was probably a good $400 or $500 laying on the table.
Real cash.
And it's gone.
We use this camera technique called hand-holding the lens.
It's to make everything look pretty crazy.
You actually hold the lens a little bit in front, right in front of where the lens goes in.
And you just kind of wiggle it a little bit.
I think it's a crazy focus effect.
And we were trying to use that to simulate maybe a little of what Luke was feeling at the time.
So he's wrapped the victory.
I just cleaned up here.
Went awesome.
And it turns out the missing money was just a job.
The crew seems to think that today's going to be a simple shoot and we'll be out here in four hours.
But we have two locations to shoot tonight.
I think everybody just thinks it's going to be an easy day.
I hope that doesn't mean they think they're going to slack off.
It sucks to be Philip because all the pressure is on him.
All the pressure.
You know what I mean?
I have none on me whatsoever.
I'm free as a bird just to tell him what I want.
And if he doesn't do it, then it's not my fault.
It's all Philip because I told him what I wanted and he didn't do it.
Nobody's going to blame me.
Nobody even see me.
My name's just at the end.
Your face will be written across this horrible disaster.
But it's a beautiful face.
Okay, so today went really good.
Finally, I feel like the crew has met their stride and we are doing things a lot faster.
I think you can tell how well the shoot went by how angry I get and today I didn't get angry at all.
So it's been a good day.
I feel like tomorrow is going to be a bit challenging.
Tomorrow is probably going to be one of the hardest, if not the hardest day tomorrow.
I don't even know what's happening right now.
It's going to be cold. There's chances of drizzling.
Probably end shooting at like four o'clock in the morning.
We're supposed to try to get a light up in the rooftops but we don't have rooftop access.
We're shooting downtown in a ghetto alley in dark.
We're building a door somehow out of nothing.
I'm sort of expecting a lot of lucky lose and a lot of people to be like, what are they doing over there?
I think tomorrow is probably going to make or break this production.
It's about 15 to 20 minutes past rendezvous time and we are missing about half the class.
Challenges tonight are going to be keeping the bums and drunkards out.
We really can't get started with much until all these cards are out of the way.
Getting all the lights set up is going to be kind of a challenge.
We need an HMI way up there.
So we showed up on set. First thing we saw was a 9mm bullet casing.
So kind of worried now. We don't really want to get shot tonight.
I'm afraid I might get stabbed tonight.
Somebody parked across the alleyway over here blocking in my Jeep and the generator.
Right now we are dying Keith's hair. He is going to be a stunt double and he has blonde hair and we need him to be Burnett.
So we went all sketchy and bought us a hair dyeing kit and I'm doing it in the middle of an alley right now.
I'm going to be a stunt double and he has blonde hair and we need him to be Burnett.
Music
We just finished our last night of shooting here on Prodigal.
The first day of shooting crew ran around like chickens with their heads cut off.
It's pretty much been the worst experience of my entire life.
The last day of shooting people ran around like they knew what they were doing.
Like they were seasoned pros.
It was probably the best experience of my life.
I've learned a lot through film school like actually going through the classes and everything like that.
I think that there are stuff that just can't be learned inside the classroom
which makes this project just such a great learning experience and such a great learning tool.
I mean it's just been a great experience overall.
I personally believe this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I had the chance to take what I was learning in class and I was kind of forced to learn it out in the field.
That's how I learned. I learned by doing and seeing for myself.
A lot of things that could have gone wrong didn't thank the Lord.
Really I mean I can't think of a better way to end my freshman year.
