Trailer

Just want to make sure if you haven't seen the trailer for Dry Rain yet, go to the StraighEIGHT Films website and check it out.

What Writers do on Set

Do you ever wonder what writers do on set? You know, their work is done, they've written the script, time to sit back and watch it all happen right? Wrong. If you are Pete Fromm, you sit back every now and then. Sometimes you get after the director, sometimes you hassle the talent. Sometimes, you even teach the crew how to throw rocks and then get them all to do it at once. Hmmm.... maybe we should start a new crew position for a guy like Pete: Set Jester. He was so good at keep everyone entertained!

Ok, he did some writing right before we started shooting. He earned his keep. And, the addition of having his two sons on set was great. They became indespensable for standing in and working and being body doubles. What a deal.

Christine shot these stelthy photos of Pete behind the scenes. She captured the essence of the writer in his element.

Looking Back - Thanks Vitamin Water!

I was looking back at photos from the shoot. There were so many cameras on set, it is no surprise that I keep seeing new pics all the time. This series of images gives you a little insight to the crazyness and boredom that can make the crew go sideways. Of course, there was very little time for being bored! Our creative team of photographers managed to find some interesting subject matter and a little time to actually snap a shot or two.
This particular set is from my fiance, Christine McBride. (oh yes, fiance...that's another story) She was out to portray our sponsor, Vitamin Water, in a realistic fasion on set. She tried to show it in all the different settings she could find.A big shout out to Virginia LaForte for her support of Dry Rain through the donation of Vitamin water for the cast and crew. The thing I love about Virginia is she is a make it happen kind of woman. She saw a need and just called us up and said where can I drop ship a bunch of Vitamin Water. She just did it and took charge. Thanks for helping us out Virginia. And, btw, Vitamin Water was a big hit on set!

Check out Tom's site

Tom Taylor, location soundman for Dry Rain, has compiled a nice set of images from Dry Rain. Check out his site www.taylormadeaudio.com and go to the current projects page. Bonus: you get to see a photo of Tom and Snoop. That's pretty dope, Tom.
This image of Tom's is called: "Losing Light" As he points out on his website, it was about 3pm and it was getting dark! On a hot August day in Montana! That was all due to the fact that there was a huge forrest fire raging about 40 miles away dumping smoke and ask on us!

Finally...a new post!

I'm so far behind on the blog. I have to apologize. As soon as we wrapped shooting back in August (yikes, August) we dove right into post. I spent a great week in Santa Monica editing with our famed editor Lee Gardner. It was awesome. We made a ton of progress and really shaped the story. Then October came and went and we continued to work out the kinks and smooth it all out. Lee continued to plug away at the project and really made some great progress.

Now, after some paying work took me away, I'm back on Dry Rain and we're really seeing some daylight. We locked picture last week. (that means the editing is done and we're moving onto finishing the color and music and other details...the icing). We need to work out the details of finishing the film, but we know for sure by the end of December we'll have a complete film.

We even have a trailer to share: If you go to the StraighEIGHT Films link, you'll find the trailer. Just a little something to get you excited about the entire film.

Take a look and enjoy.

Sundance & Slamdance

I think the top question I get lately is: "when do you hear from Sundance?" or "Did you get into Sundance?" Well, we did make the submission deadline for Sundance. It was a long week of editing, but Lee Gardner and I made it with some long nights of editing. We submitted the rought cut, which is totally normal for films in production so close to the submission deadline. We are keeping our finger's crossed to find out.

The other big festival we submitted to was slamdance. Slamdance started as an answer to the seemingly mainstream fare at Sundance. It takes place as the same time as Sundance but is mainly in Salt Lake instead of up on the hill in Park City. It is equally as important in terms of getting your film seen. We would be thrilled to be at either. You just can't be at both festivals. You gotta choose. Now wouldn't that be a great problem to have: choosing between the two dances.

PARTY!

We had a party and it was so much fun. The goal of the night was to have fun, thank everyone that worked on the film and to rasie some money to help defray costs. We were successful on all fronts. We managed to pull down over $15,000 dollars and there is still money coming in. It was an amazing out pour of love and support. Thank you all.

A big shout out goes to the food crew for pulling together some amazing eats. Bridget from Lovin' From the Oven was the one in charge of that. She did an amazing job and oh wow was the food good. I wish I would have eaten more!

Jessica Hostetter was the brains behind the whole event. She coordinated it all and made it happen. And yes, her husband Doug shot the film. We're all for nepotism.

Special thanks go to Jimmy from USnaps. Check out the shots from the photo booth. They're a gas. You can find more at Usnaps.com and the special code word is DryRain.

There were lots and lots of people that helped out in so many ways including all the folks at the doors, the bar tenders, the props people, the DJ. The list goes on. We got a great crew. Thank you all for supporting us.

Highlights:

150 people showed up!

The big auction throw down for the phone booth. The guys at Seatte Grip and Lighting took it home after some heated bidding.

Pete Fromm....Need I say more.

Three kegs of beer from Silver City Brewing

Great Falls Tribune gives Dry Rain a Nod

Check it out. We're really gaining some momentum here with the press. The Great Falls Tribune just printed a story about Dry Rain. Nice article. Its interesting to hear the side of locals about our production being in their town.
Everyone out there including Scott, the owner of the Home Cafe, and Doreen from the Rose Room, were great and very supportive of our project. One funny story about Doreen, and I'm sure there are more! Doug and I were shooting second unit stuff after we wrapped the main unit. It was a Monday. We stopped by to say hello to Doreen and have a beer. But she was closed! Of course she was there and came out and talked our ear off. She just wanted to chat. She even offered us a beer...on the house! We couldn't even give her any money. "Nope" she said, "the till is closed up and don't have any money to make change. Its on me." And what a good beer it was. We sat out on the bench where we had shot James and Nathan and enjoyed the warm afternoon and Doreen's chatter about forrest fires and what not.

Thanks Brian for the photos. Check out his stuff on his flickr site. Links are to your right or go HERE to his flickr site

Dry Horror

Pete said he could probably write these guys into the film. Changes the tone of the whole thing, but we know Pete's got the skills to work it out. Despite what Pete says, I have confidence in him. His quote about the rewrite after having a look at the image below: "Working on the rewrite now. Shit, it's a horror story."
Actually, that's Ted Barnes, Gaffer and Dave Hayes, Best Boy Grip, in the car being our stand-ins for some driving scenes. These guys were great. They'd throw in where ever...didn't matter. If it needed to get done, they were there. Thanks guys!

Here's Dave's homage to the Unabomber. We did go to Lincoln, Montana, home of Unabomber himself! Ted Kaczynski hunkered down in a small log cabin and banged out his Manifesto on an old type writer. Brought about 15 minutes of fame to the small town of Lincoln. I think Dry Rain and Pete Fromm combined out did the Unabomber in terms of noteriety!

Dry Rain Gets Some Media Coverage

The media can really make or break a film. We knew that having the local Conrad paper on our side would be a huge feather in our cap. It would probably mean some serious momentum for the project. We were lucky enough to make it on the front page of the Independent-Observer. They put us in front of the leading headlines of prior issues like forrest fires and wheat prices!

You just can't pass up good press like this, even though some of the facts might be a little off.

Second Unit Takes Over, Dusty Goes On Strike

Often times, on big feature films, the main unit (comprising the camera, grip and electrical department along with other important departments) will need help getting all their shots done to keep on schedule. Many times, a second unit will come into take care of some shots where the main actors aren't involved like stunt work or scenic shots. It just helps speed up the process to get work completed.On Dry Rain, we had a second unit, too. We had a lot of shots to get that didn't have actors in them and shots that were best acquired with a smaller crew. We has some shots of the car driving through lonely landscapes. We had some shots of Virga. We had some shots to pick-up that set the scene for the road trip. All perfect for a smaller crew.

Dry Rain's second unit was Matt and Doug. Yup, just the two of us. Doug continued shooting and I directed some and mainly drove the car, got in Doug's way and played on the walkie talkie's. Doug managed all the important details like film, exposure, gear inventory and packing and repacking the truck. I made sure we had coffee, got snacks (from our lovely craft service crew! Thanks Jessica!) and lined up our locations and tried not to get into trouble.

Basically, the company wrapped on Saturday August 18th. On Sunday the 19th, the Second Unit, (Doug and I) headed out in search of the right light and the perfect setting for all those extra shots, not to mention always being on the look out for Virga. Our crack team of forecasters (Pete Fromm and his two sons Aidan & Nolan) kept an eye on the doplar weather radar in search of potential Virga producing storms.

The weather turned sour on us on Sunday, so we decided to head east towards Pendroy to start shooting out pick-up shots. Our plan was to drive Dusty, the hero car, up and over Roger's Pass from Lincoln. Go easy on him and not ride him too hard so he makes it at least a few days. Well, Dusty didn't make it a few miles. He just up and quit. He was running very poorly and just didn't want to go over the pass. I pushed him but he pushed back. No going.

We quickly and nimbly changed our plans. See that's what a 2nd Unit can do: move fast. Unlike the fat first unit too cumbersome to do any thing other than plow forward on a predetermined course, our 2nd Unit moved like a cat, ok, maybe not a cat, but at least like a somewhat fast animal of some sort. Anyway, our new plan was to get my truck in Missoula (left there prior to the end of the shoot), get a tow dolly to pull Dusty around and away we go. Of course, all of this takes time and we finally got back to square one and moving east like our original plan late in the afternoon on Monday. Dusty runs just well enough to get a couple of shots off the same day. We crash in Chocteau for the night and find ourselves in Pendroy on Tuesday.

This is where Dusty really decides to go on strike. All we asked of him was to peel out a few times, drive up and down the road a few times and that was it. But NO, he has to dig his heels in and demand some love and attention. All of this comes to a head just about lunch time. We've diagnosed that Dusty really does need a new alternator and probably a battery. Doug heads in to Conrad for some food and fuel and picks up a battery too. I stay back and give Dusty the love he wants. I put in the new alternator we had bought a few days prior, realize the automatic choke is broken and drop in the battery when Doug gets back.

Now, you have to remember that Dusty was a great find, but not the most well loved car in the world. He got some attention before leaving for Montana. We put a new starter into him after day one of shooting. We carted him around on a car trailer like some kind of king. You'd have thought he was gonna be OK for the duration of the shoot. Today, I found out that the little bit of love was all he needed. With all that I did for him on this day, he fired up and was ready to go. We even hit 70 flying down the highway outside Pendroy!

Of course, we still hauled him around for fear of another revolt. I'm sure we were a sight driving down the road. Picture this: Me driving my Bright Red Right Hand Drive Land Rover pulling a tow dolly with a 77 Dodge Volare Station Wagon followed by a white Nissan truck with a camera rig strapped to the front and a bashed in in front fender with deer hair still sticking to the grill. And all of that only going 60mph or so down the "Montana-Bahn" where speeds average 80 or better.

At the end of Tuesday, we rolled into Great Falls to stay with Pete and Rose and the boys. I'm sure the neighbors are still in shock at our ragtag parade of wierd cars rolling into the neighborhood. I wonder if Pete got any hate mail or rocks in his front window 'cause of us? Well, despite visually polluting the street, Pete and Rose took great care of us. They didn't even try to throw us out after the first night. Instead, they fed us and fixed us up with coffee in the mornings and of course, the help of the crack pot meterological forecasting crew was at our beck and call.

Doug and I moved out at the crack of dawn for the next three mornings, at least on the road by 10 a.m., in search of high plains vistas and scenes of isolation and lonliness on the prairie. At times, it was harder to find than we thought. Finding just the right look, with the right clouds and all could be challenging. It was a lot of fun over all. We back tracked over many roads we'd been on in the spring. By Thursday morning, we had checked off everything but the shots of Virga. That was our goal for the rest of the week: Get Virga.

Our meterologists suggested that Thursday had all the right components for Virga formation: low humidity, light to no winds, temperatures in the 70's or above and a new system moving in. And my word, they were right! Doug and I got into a patch of Virga that lasted for at least an hour before it started to really rain. It was great. We got a bunch of different versions of it as it crept across the valley. It was beautiful. Getting that really capped off a great shoot.

Friday would be our day to head back to Seattle. We had to repack and clean gear and sort out the mess we had created during the week. Once we had everything together, we hit the road in our own cars. Doug hit it right back to Seattle. I had to return the tow dolly and put Dusty to bed in a safe spot, just in case we need him again for more pick-up shots. Dusty now resides on the back part of my Aunt & Uncle's property in Alberton, MT, just west of Missoula. I'm not going to give you the exact details of his location. We don't want a lot of people milling about trying to get a glimpse of him. But, don't worry. He's safe and sound and just might make a return!