Realistically, this movie is not gonna be done before I leave, and it might never be completed at all. Two nights ago, we got to the Theatre Centre after sunset, ready for a night of getting down to business, and the door to the room was locked—both of them. It looks like they caught on to what we were doing or starting actually taking precaution due to the recent arrival of the summer session freshman. Classes are back in order, and we are running out of time. Now, we can’t shoot during the day and if the doors are locked at night, we’re screwed. I really do not like that a part of me was relieved to learn that we may never be able to get back in there and get the job done. Something about avoiding embarrassment or failing to meet (my own) expectations? I don’t know, but I am still determined to finish it. I’ll go back tomorrow to check the doors and see if there’s anything at all that I can do. Yet, we did not pack up and go home that easily.

We took the bus back to my room to get a few things, then got on another to go right back. On Saturday night (early Sunday morning), we had another idea—a much less costly, shorter form idea, the kind that could be done in one night. And so, in the bathroom of that same building that is trying to evict our guerrilla-style presence, where we house our props and equipment in a locker after every shoot, we got right back to work on something new. It involved me covered in the remains of my Publix Deli smoked ribs dinner and the fake blood I had already purchased for Dark Chamber, wearing nothing but my white Party City mask and my underwear.

While setting up and recording, it was touch-and-go for a while there. It was Monday, so faculty were still in the building. We’d hear voices or footsteps and scramble to hide, which would’ve done absolutely zero good because we had my clothes and the contents of my backpack strewn everywhere as set dressing. At one point, we waited silently in complete darkness for about 25 minutes to make sure no one would stumble upon us, resuming again at midnight. My hands and arms were still covered in bits of meat and fake blood that I didn’t want to wash off just to put back on again, and I’m still wearing nothing but tighty-whities. The shot had to be one continuous take with the only light source a flashlight, so it took some effort to get everything to fall into place, enough for us to be satisfied.

Maybe about two hours later, when we had finally got the take that we were happy with, as I’m scrubbing the shower floor to remove any trace of the stinking meat and blood, a janitor walks in. I just drew a diagram of the bathroom, which I’ll include, just to highlight how lucky it was that I happened to be in the shower with the water running. He was startled first by my friend standing by the sinks, and hearing the water running, did not venture toward the showers or the toilets. He cleaned the sinks only, then left. I never saw him. If he would’ve just peaked his head around the corner, he would’ve seen a box of bones and the start of a blood trail that I was working backward to expunge. My friend came over and told me we were no longer alone, so I asked him to go bring me someone’s body wash from an open locker to make it look like I was really showering. He left soon after. I couldn’t stop laughing at how incredibly dumbfounded this poor guy must have felt to walk into a bathroom that reeks of hours-old meat in the middle of the night. Aside from the eyewitness, we erased our shenanigans from the walls and floors as best and as quickly as we could. I shoved my stuff back in my bag, closed up the rest in our locker, put on a bathrobe over my soaked underwear, and we skated home. I edited the video yesterday and it’s basically finished, aside from whatever final adjustments we feel we need to make before publishing it. I’m no Fellini (in fact, I think I prefer Antonioni as my go-to Italian auteur), but the eight-and-a-halfth night of production was surely a surreal one—can’t be too mad at that.

Holy shit, another long take, how crazy!!! Looks like someone’s read Bazin 😂🤣😂🤣😂 I swear (to no one in particular) the long takes are purposeful. (Of course, they are, why would I make it harder for us when I could just cut the shit out of space, time, and their image?) We finally recorded the first two shots of the second part two nights ago. That was I had planned for that night since I had work in the morning and we got there around sunset already. After that, it devolved into absolute lunacy—the best kind. The Theatre Centre we’ve been sneaking into thanks to a pebble lodged in an exit door was completely empty. We stayed pretty focused while shooting, but we went buck wild when we got what we needed.

I am a big proponent of as-few-takes-as-possible and just letting the camera roll and going for it, seeing what we can pick up. The next production date—whenever that may be—will be an easy one to execute. The only challenge was getting the first shot right, coming through the door into the new space. I tried different ways of falling through but none of it looked good on camera, looking not very believable or just downright funny—not very scary. I set up mats so I was actually able to trip myself for real when I walked through, but no good. It took several takes and different approaches to my entrance, but the fall had to be scrapped. Hard to fall through a door that opens outward, after all.

Although not much actually got done yesterday per se, it was a rather eventful day of laying groundwork. We made it to the Theatre Centre where some dance recital for children was taking place in the neighboring building, but we managed to slip past and get into the studio space—the black sandbox. It involved mostly a lot of fucking around and coming and going to bring more stuff from home or go get food. We are gonna have way too much fun in there: kicking a yoga ball around the empty dance floor, logging into the mobile computer carts to edit the plot/shot list, trying to get a pair of subwoofers to work, digging through props, wandering around in the pitch black of the basement, imaging what we could do in this building after everyone has gone. We were both feeling inspired in the way that a little kid gets excited and has ideas. Our guerrilla filmmaking is branching into a plethora of projects made only possible in such a flexible space: more video ideas, sleepovers, parties. We’ll see if we get kicked out before that happens, but we already have a way to sneak back in should we be kicked out by University Police. Was that sign on the door to get into the studio always there? A police escort for not being associated with the Dance or Theatre departments seems a tad excessive. However, evidence of others having been in the space is apparent, so we gotta be careful, although no one disturbed us for the hours we were in there being not exactly quiet; no one came to check or lock up before the faculty left the building for the night.

But our freeform exploration of the room—digging through the props left in the back storage room, me randomly playing the same four notes or so on the piano and inadvertently developing a theme when no prior mind had yet been dedicated toward any musical score, shuffling all these new ideas into the fold of the Google Docs outline on the computers we didn’t realize were there—allowed us to get to know the space, how best to live in it. We are not an occupying force, laying claim to or using the space, more like nomads or hobos who come and go. Although, a lock and key that was found in the storage area is currently being borrowed so we can house our equipment in the locker room. Heavy rain for the next hour, the forecast said, and I was not about to carry my camera through the downpour, as we biked and longboarded through a mile of puddles that splashed up to my waistline. It was a good day.

The day before yesterday, after my internet was thankfully fixed, we spent the night revamping the YouTube channel (new profile picture, new banner, new name), making an Instagram account, and all the work that was required to make that all happen. Milk Toast Video is officially online. I found an app called Photo Cartoon Coloring Editor, a real piece of shit, but it allowed me to color in the drawing that I asked my friend to do, so we didn’t just have a black-and-white sketch for our channel. Later that night, I painstakingly fought with Instagram over the upload of my “Seasons in the Sun” video, cutting it into four parts and trying again and again to upload them despite extremely unhelpful error messages. (I ended up having to compress one of the videos, the third of four, even though Instagram swears you can upload videos up to 1GB.) It really is an awful, poorly made app—the post count is higher than it should be, as a result of trying to get these videos public. But, hey, it’s at least up there now and I cannot say the same for YouTube. (I still need to appeal that bullshit.) We’ll probably be back in there tonight to actually start shooting, and then, back to the 9-5 until next three-day weekend.

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.