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I lied, we didn’t do jackshit the night that I wrote last. I felt really weak and dehydrated and needed a break and to get some good sleep for a couple nights. So, two nights ago was the night we got back to it. I kept changing my mind about how to shoot the scene even though I had made the conscious effort to at least sketch out exactly what we were gonna do so we could bang it out when we reconvened. I was having trouble acting as dramatically as I needed to without disturbing my roommate sleeping in the room adjoining the bathroom set. (It’s an old brittle house that makes a lot of noise when pressed.) So, I thought for a while and decided it would be best to shoot it in a way that has the editing carry the performance, action, and credibility. I have no idea really what it will end up looking like; there are so many possibilities for how to arrange the montage. Editing a whole short movie is gonna be a bitch. We’re gonna have to record sound after we finish photography too. I’m gonna do my best to avoid the need for reshoots. I actually need to reshoot a scene we shot earlier. I found a way to save money by returning a prop I used because I found the real deal laying around—a dead cockroach. Beside that, we finished the last three shots of Part I. Onto the big room! We’re gonna have so much more freedom in there, and the best part, it’s cold in there! We have walkie talkies too now that reach from my co-producer’s room to mine, so we’re a legit operation now. On Saturday afternoon, we are dedicating the afternoon, at the very least, to getting started on Part II production. Before then, I have some planning to do, which is gonna be interesting because I find myself more and more busy and just discovered that the Wi-Fi network I used to be connected to inexplicably has disappeared, so why the fuck am I paying almost $800 a month for no AC and no internet? June is the my second-to-last month here, then what? Shit.

It’s been a week to the day that we’ve been working on Dark Chamber, and tonight we’ll finish part one of three; therefore, we can finally escape the swamp ass by candlelight of my bedroom. Last night was the worst in terms of the heat and exhaustion, I would say. I had only two shots scheduled, but my god, the second was the hardest to pull off yet. Forget the intense choreography of camera and actor from Tuesday night (see “Production Note #2“), the amount of work I had to do just to be able to even begin shooting was maddening, and my brain was not at peak problem solving capability (I blame humidity that adds 10 degrees and McDonald’s for dinner). I wanted the camera to swivel, but how the fuck do you do that when both actors have to be onscreen? (I realized after the fact that I probably didn’t even need to be in the shot because it was so dark, so no one would know the difference, but alas. Even then, I much prefer the inhuman quality of the pan inspired by the ending of Coppola’s The Conversation or a one-off gag shot from the Wayans-produced A Haunted House. I needed the camera to reflect being a camera, but not necessarily within the diegesis. So, I took maybe an hour or so to rig a contraption that would swing the hefty camcorder in a semi-circular motion. All it took was an ironing board, an oscillating desk fan, two shoelaces, four books, and a CD player as a counterweight, so the whole operation didn’t crash on the floor after a few rotations. I think because there was so little to shoot that we were dragging our feet and giving in to the heat exhaustion, but we pulled through. The execution was minimal, but the prep was a drag. Plus, we accidentally found ourselves embarking on an entirely new artistic project that I can only loosely describe as internet performance art that’s quite brilliant in its simplicity, which we’ll get into tonight as well. We’re slowly building out a web of interconnected efforts that will form some sort of DIY, choose-your-own-adventure, decentralized (anti)narrative (anti)collective of sorts.

After a night off, we’re back! We completed probably the most difficult shot to pull off tonight, and maybe the last really technical aspect with the camera. From here on, it’s mostly performance-based challenges. Although, next time (later tonight), we do have to figure out how to get the camera to swivel; if not, I do have an easier backup idea. Part one of three is coming close to a close. Part two is where we really get to go crazy because I have planned the cinematography in a way that leaves the space largely open and uncircumcised, so we get to go crazy and have fun with it.

I wish I would’ve documented it before I took them down, but we had to diffuse my bathroom lighting with posters (Drive; Jackass Forever, The Grand Canal Near the Rialto Bridge, Venice), because my skin was too white and blown out on camera. I don’t know if I’ll be able to truly enjoy my own creation because in the back of my mind, I’ll be seeing all the shit hidden just offscreen. It’ll be a different appreciation, but I’ve never watched a (loosely) narrative project as anything other than pure spectator. I’ve known how the sausage is made, but I’ve never made it myself.

There’s only four minutes left on the tape we’ve been shooting on. These last two nights we’ve worked (Sunday and now Tuesday night) have filled it up pretty fast. I didn’t think to overwrite the takes that we decided as absolutely no good. Honestly, I didn’t really know how exactly, but I got it figured out now. I still have another unopened blank tape, fresh in its 2001 packaging, and we can always offload and convert the footage that’s already been shot. We went til almost three in the morning and my gums were in agony from brushing my teeth so many times. It was worth all the pain and annoyance and fatigue.

I’ve been flirting with the hypothetical thought that maybe I would be content with just being a writer if I had a good enough thing going on with that, but now I definitely want to stay on the path of trying everything. Never settle down. Make movies, write criticism, shit, learn an instrument again, try to make my own clothes, live in a van, work construction, move to Europe, present a paper at a conference (a professor told me I had an essay that could certainly be worthy of such distinction). It’s gonna be a hustle certainly, but I think I’m cut out for it; I’m only getting better. We’ll see how my luck fares, I’m still half-expecting that feeling that everything always works out to run out. No matter.

Making a movie is hard. The world around doesn’t stop when the camera starts rolling. I still have to get enough sleep. I still have to go to work. My friend/collaborator has summer classes. My skin still acts up, closeup or not. I don’t get to tell Mr. DeMille when I’m ready, he’s waiting and ready to go already. But it’s going well. It’s exhausting, but I love it. Sweating our asses off in my room with no air conditioning while we’re surrounded by a dozen candles burning and a television going is worth the serendipitous magic moments when things go just right, perfect and unplanned.

Almost all of the art and posters that were on my wall were taken down, and I like the empty walls. It makes you think about space differently. My life really is a movie. My bedroom, the set. I think I’ll keep my room this way until my lease expires end of July. It’s a document of change and anti-inertia.

I wanna get this done around the end of June, and I just recently realized that a July 4th release would really nail home the points I’m trying to make with this movie. It would’ve been a whole lot easier if I hadn’t picked up those two extra shifts this week, because I’ll be even more exhausted. Maybe I can channel that frustration and fatigue into my performance. (I am a very serious person and actor 🧐)

No, but I am quite anxious about being in front of the camera. Not because I can’t control what goes on behind from there (I fully trust my creative partner and he’s taking it all seriously, but it’s still fun and loose, I fully trust and respect his input, judgment, and ability), but because I don’t know how I’ll act around another person, even if it is just one. I’m not much of a performer, but I know I could be. It’ll be an interesting test. Something to be proud of, that’ll help me going forward when we’re all done here. We resume shooting for night two of production after I get off work, and those will be the first moments where I am onscreen. We’ll see how much we get done, I have an idea of what I’d like us to accomplish and I think it’s certainly feasible if I don’t run out of steam physically or with my own image.

I can’t believe I’m actually making a movie. Finally. The two shots we got and the rest we planned yesterday really turned out great, so I’m excited for other people to watch it. It’d be cool to cut together some trailers as a sort of virtual audience test screening. There’s so much to do, but I think I gotta forget about the rest for right now and put my energy into this project. I won’t mind others’ reactions too much, as long as I impress myself. So far, so good.