"Well, they finally did it. They killed my f**king car, man."

--The Big Lebowski

I drive a 2001 blue Volkswagon Jetta. The inside smells like crayon. Blue crayon. I've only had it for a year, and the previous owner did not drive it much.

I have a computerized dash that can tell me how long I've been driving, how many miles, my average speed this trip, my current miles to the gallon that changes depending on how much gas I give it, and my average miles to the gallon.

Last thursday night, after dropping off my girlfriend at her house and on my way home, I heard a loud, obnoxious noise emanating from my dash, a sound usually reserved for letting me know that I need gas. I look to the little screen, and my trip time has been replaced with large red letters that flash the word STOP over and over again.

Well, since this is such a strange occurence, naturally I listen and pull over into a church parking lot. The dash then says "Check Coolant" and then "Service Manual", all the while making that incessant beeping.

I pull out my manual, see what it has to say about coolant, and then open up my hood. I check the coolant reservoir but don't open it because I still have a hot engine, but in the darkness it looks like the reservoir is completely empty.

Then I hear a familiar sound and look down to my feet. There is a huge puddle forming under my tire, and I'm pretty sure I didn't just drive over it.

I bend down to look and it's as if a faucet has been installed under my hood. There's a constant stream of liquid pouring out of my car. I can't tell what color it is because I'm in the dark, but it's pretty odorless, so I hope it's just water.

Still, it's after midnight, so who am I going to call to come pick me up? I considered trying to make it back home, but that would have been a terribly bad idea, especially at this time of night.

So I call my girlfriend, Jennifer (yes she has a name!) who has just gotten into bed, and I don't really want to have her drive me all the way back to my house because she needs to get up at 6 AM for work. So I call my mom, but she's half-asleep, grumpily confirms what I'm asking her to do in her somnambular stupor ("So you want me to... get out of bed... and come get you... now?"), and I decide that's a bad idea too.

So Jennifer comes to pick me up, I sleep on her couch, and I figure I'll sort it all out in the morning. Well, six hours comes pretty fast, and I can either get a ride with Jennifer to my car on her way to work, or I can wait a few hours at her house and ride with her mom on her way to Chapel Hill.

I choose the former (not that I don't enjoy hanging out with her mom when Jennifer is away), talk to my dad who tells me to get some water and fill the reservoir (which now, in the morning light, I can see is completely empty), and drive to the Volkswagon dealership.

My first stop is at a gas station to buy a water bottle. I start pouring it into the reservoir, checking to make sure I don't fill is past the "minimum" line, but then I hear the sound of water going down the drain. I look back into the globular tank and see that the water is disappearing. A quick check under the car confims that it's leaking back out again, this time with a strange, orange liquid.

Luckily, I make it to the Volkswagon dealership before my car overheats and explodes, and I proceed to park it in the longest service line I've ever seen there before.

They're not sure if they can get to my car that day because of all the appointments before me, but luckily they have a shuttle that runs at 8:30 and it can take me home if I need to.

Well, I'm glad I didn't take a chance that they could fix my car by lunch-time because I don't receive a call back from them until around 1:30 PM. They tell me that my radiator hose splits off in two ways in the engine, and somewhere in there it split apart completely, or something like that. I don't really know. I don't "do" cars, and I really should. But he says they've got to replace a part, and the cost of the part and labor will be something like $325.

$325. $325. $325. $325?!?!

Whatever, whatever, just get it fixed and give me my car back. I'd like to pretend I'm a busy man and that I'm going to need it a lot this weekend.

Two hours later I receive another call from VW. I miss the phone so I listen to the voicemail message:

"Hey Mr. Baker, this is Dave from Volkswagon. It turns out that the part that the computer said we had-- well, we don't actually have it. And the part isn't anywhere in North Carolina either, so we have to ship it up from Jacksonville Florida, so your car won't be ready until Tuesday. But you can't drive your car this weekend, it's a bad idea and will just make it worse. Please call me back. Have a good day!"

Well, that's just freakin' great. No problem, I enjoy being stranded for four days. Thank goodness I don't have a job.

Wow, I never thought I'd hear myself saying that.

But, if you want a happier ending to this tale, my father went out of town today for a week and is letting me use his car, which runs on company gas. Cha-ching! I'm literally saving money!

... That is, until I go back to VW on Tuesday. Awesome.

--Cbake

Harry Potter and the Hormones of Destiny

So the new "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" trailer is out, and it looks awesome.

Unfortunately, that's about all I can say because I have to watch it at the library and there is no sound. So yeah, it looks awesome, but I'm sure it sounds better.

While the trailer looks great, there are a few things that are working AGAINST this movie in my mind:

1. The director is Mike Newell, not one who is necessarily known as being visionary or particularly experienced with special effects. Bring back Cuaron (the director of the third movie)!

2. They hired the same visual effects crew who worked on the first two movies (whose effects I thought were okay, but not fantastic), but NOT the crew that worked on the third (which had the BEST effects of the series thus far).

3. John Williams (JAWS, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, ET, Schindler's List, Close Encounters, etc), the Man who created the themes for Harry Potter, was Oscar-nominated for his work on the first and third movie, and is just an all-around kickass composer, is NOT doing the music for the fourth film. Instead, Patrick Doyle is.

Patrick who, you might be asking? EXACTLY.

No word yet on whether or not he will be using the themes that John Williams created, which is a shame because I felt the score for "Prisoner of Azkaban" was one of his best in a long time. Beautiful themes in that one.

Now for some things that are working FOR this movie:

1. Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. This guy knows how to act evil. Just watch Schindler's List.

2. Same cast as the past three movies, excluding Dumbledore. Watching these kids grow up into their characters onscreen is a treat, and I hope they never recast.

3. The effects. Despite what I said above, everything looks great on the computer screen when I watch this trailer.

4. Mike Newell, the director. Well, like I said, everything looks great...

5. This is the first Harry Potter movie to receive a PG-13 rating! That alone shows how dark and mature this story is going to be. And if there's one thing I like, it's dark and mature... Please don't read that the wrong way.

And while I haven't read the book and don't really know what's going on, I'm still very much looking forward to seeing this in the fall. In related news, I finished reading "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" while working on the movie in Edenton. I've now begun reading "Prisoner of Azkaban", and hope to finish "Goblet of Fire" before the movie comes out.

My biggest fear is that this series will end before I've had the chance to read all the books, and some kids (like my cousins, no doubt) will end up ruining it all for me. So now I've got to play catchup and jump on the social bandwagon before it's left me for good.

--Cbake

Picture Time!

Or "How the Art Department Saved the Movie"

Movie Production Update #12

So the original production designer for "The Dog Days of Summer" flaked out on us before I even arrived in Edenton. Apparently, he didn't do much other than sit around and... well, I think that's all he did. This annoyed and worried Mark the director and Mel the line producer so much that he was fired, but Andrew Cappella, then art director but soon after promoted to production designer, convinced them that this was a terrible idea.

See, that would have meant Andrew would have had to create the sarcophagus, flea circus, and Alligator Man costume all by himself. At this stage, Jeff, the art director, and myself had not arrived in Edenton, and Andrew wasn't getting any more art department crew members that he wanted and needed.

So the original production designer, Brendan, went home, a contract was written up, and by a certain date, Brendan was to have completed the sarcophagus, flea circus, and Alligator Man costume while Andrew, Jeff, and I worked on everything else like the sets, set dressings, and scale model of the town.

Well, Brendan's early work on the film (or lack thereof) was just a foreshadowing of things to come because the date on which Brendan was supposed to deliver came and went and nothing so much as a picture of his progress had been sent. Mark the director made a surprise visit to Brendan's home one weekend while he was in town for a wedding, and Mark came back very disappointed and worried.

Brendan kept asking for extensions; at first one or two days, then three more. Finally, one night at about three in the morning, I hear the front door swing open. I jump off the couch in time to see a tall guy in a dirty t-shirt and black rimmed glasses come storming in right past me.

"Uhhh, Brendan?" I ask.

"Yeah," he replies, looking everywhere in the house but at me.

"I'm Chris Baker. We spoke on the phone last month."

"Oh yeah, nice to meet you," he says quickly. "Is Andrew around?"

So we wake up Andrew, who sleeps on the floor in the other room, and the three of us go out to the parking lot to see what Brendan has brought us.

Hmmm, hard to describe what I was feeling at that moment. Happy that we now had our sarcophagus, flea circus, and Alligator Man costume. Annoyed that Brendan had to show up at 3 AM after I had gone to bed. Relieved that the sarcophagus looked finished. Excited at the Alligator Man's head, soon to be replaced with disappointment that this was ALL he had given us of the costume. The head was even missing an eye.

See, in the darkness of the parking lot, everything looked cool. The sarcophagus was huge and looked great. The flea circus was a dusty, old suitcase that unfolded into the stage when you opened it up. And the Alligator Man's head was a harness that fit over your chest and shoulders, and your head pushed up the latex skin of the Alligator Man's head and gave it shape. The mouth was set on huge hinges, so you could open the jaws to see the actor's face inside. I put that harness on and wore it all night, standing out there in the Edenton Main Street parking lot in my boxer shorts, waving to people who drove by at 3 AM.

I bet that was a sight to see. "Half-naked man with an Alligator head dances around deleriously in Edenton parking lot through the wee hours of the night!"

To make matters worse, instead of just dropping everything off, Brendan had to spend 20 minutes on each creation explaining to us how he did everything, as well as pointing out every aspect of the costume or flea circus.

Yes, yes, Brendan, it looks great out here, but please, for the love of GOD, can we go back inside so I can get some semblance of sleep this evening?

Anyway, the point of all this is everything was unfinished, and so it fell upon us in the three-member Art Department (as usual) to suck it up and fix everything. We had to repaint the sarcophagus, completely redo the flea circus, and the night before the very last day of shooting 2 weeks ago, finish the Alligator Man costume with Hannah the costume designer. Why we worked on costumes, I don't know. Probably because Mark knew that we, more than any other department, could be relied on to deliver whatever he needed.

Curses, why do we have to be so good?

Brendan disappeared the next morning before I awoke, but he left his digital camera at the house, which I used during the production to take pictures of the sets and keep up with continutity (to make sure the set was redressed the same way between takes so no one notices the place looks different from shot to shot when they see the movie).

So now, let me play for you a short glimpse at "The Dog Days of Summer", through the eyes of the Art Department.


Here is the flea circus Brendan delivered. Notice the lack of rides, the crappy faux-wooden floorbase, and the tiny creatures that should be nonexistent in a flea circus that relies on the imagination of those who see it.



Here is our flea circus. Notice how we painted the black, wooden trim around the top and changed the floorbase so that it's now black velvet. We spraypainted the ferris wheel gold and painted the top of the carousel so that the circus now has a black, red, and gold color scheme. I liked to say the black represented dark foreboding, a possible evil, while red is symbolic of anger, passion, and the forbidden fruit that Eve took from the Tree of Knowledge. Gold represents the lust that is sown in the hearts of the townspeople when they see this flea circus that Eli Cottonmouth (Will Patton) has created. Course, the colors just look good together too. Very dark, very Tim Burtonish we decided. Notice the trapeze, tightwire, high dive, giant flea statue, and cannonball act complete with Flaming Hoop of Death.



Here is the circus, complete with magnifying glass and flexible arm that I created (per Andrew's idea) for up close and personal viewing. Yeah, I didn't go to sleep the night before this shoot because I had to drive out to Wal-Mart at 2 AM to get the supplies to make this.


Here is a bad, blurry photo of the P.T. Flea that I made. Andrew's original flea was way too large, and he got frustrated and quit- so I took over. He has a black cane in his right hand, and is juggling four red balls with his front arms. We put him under an empty snow-globe glass for the circus.


Here is Brendan's sarcophagus that Andrew helped create. Notice how Brendan just stopped painting below the waist, and in the closeup you can see that he only used one brushstroke for every line and stripe. We had to repaint all of it, and we made the eyes completely black save for two tiny white dots in the centers.


Now we move on to Eli's Shanty. Here is where Eli develops the many pictures that he and the kids take of the town. That is my father's photo enlarger and clock on the right, and the photos were taken by Rob the DP. You can just make out the many jars of oddities along the back shelf that I created from pickle jars and assorted toys (mentioned here).


This is Eli's workbench. He has boarded up the windows so no one can peek at his work. The bench was our workbench in the warehouse, and the old radio on the left was donated to us by Anne Row, the woman who owned the huge mansion we used for a few days' shooting. Just to the right of the radio, you can barely make out a small, silver orb with a cross on the top. This is my mother's prayer box that I borrowed to dress the set. She really wanted something of hers to be in the movie, and I thought that fit Eli's quirky style the best.


This is an old chest donated to us by Anne Row as well, and it fits Eli perfectly. When we opened it up, we found newspapers from the 1800's and other old artifacts. We dressed this with some old rolled up parchment with Indian figures drawn on it, an old plate with a butterfly mosaic on it, an old lantern, some weird purple jester pincushion, and a great piece of black fabric Jeff found that had the sun, stars, and moon all over it. All this looks even better in person.


This is the truck that Eli drives when he rolls into town. This truck was actually used in the movie "Chinatown", which means Jack Nicholson himself sat in it. I've been told it was his getaway truck, possibly from the orange grove scene, if that means anything to you, dear reader. I dressed this with the set dressings and chests from the shanty set (which is why I would need to take pictures of the set beforehand, so I can redress it perfectly for the next shoot).

A closeup of the back. The top half of the sarcophagus is under the sheet to the left, and I took apart Eli's hat and coat-rack to fit in the back too. You can barely make out some Oddity Jars under the rack's legs, and to the very left of the frame are rolled up paintings that were hanging in Eli's Shanty, circus posters advertising his Amazing Flea Circus and the Eternal Box (the sarcophagus). Unfortunately, you will never see these details in the movie.

And here I am with the truck on our first all-day exterior shoot. I didn't put on any sunscreen and got an instant tan all over. I even had tanlines on my face from where my hair hung down at the sides. In the background you can see the black and white screens the grips have put up to block, diffuse, and reflect light

So there you go dear readers. I don't have any photos of the Alligator Man on Brendan's digital camera, and just so I don't take his credit, he took his own photos of the first draft of the flea circus and the sarcophagus.

When I get my film developed, I'll try and scan some photos of me dressed up in the completed Alligator Man costume, the Eternal Box we created (an eight-sided room of mirrors with Christmas lights hanging everywhere), and any other photos I may deem cool enough to share with everyone.

Hope you enjoyed your first glimpse of the movie!

--Cbake

And Now It's Back to Reality With You

Oh, how glad I am to be back home,
With Best Buys and bars that stay open late.
Friends and family live nearby,
And there's a special girl that I can date.

Saying bye to the crew was hard.
The child actors left with teary eyes.
I drew them characters from "Dragon Ball Z".
And they loved the drawings- big surprise.

And now I'm home without a job,
But I worked a Charlotte Bobcats ad.
I forgot I have NO INTERNET at all.
And the thought of that makes me really sad.


Yes, reality has sunk in, the reality that I'm back to living at home without a steady job. That said, however, I am SO happy to be back home. I think I had a heart attack last weekend when I stopped in Chapel Hill saturday night after I had left Edenton. It had been so long since I had seen so many people my age.

And so many girls.
And bars.
And bars that stayed open past 10 PM.

I did work a Charlotte Bobcats commercial this week with former UNC players Sean May and Raymond Felton. Sean was pretty stoic and kept to himself. Raymond, however, looked like he was having fun, and he was much more approachable. I went up to him and told him I went to UNC and said thanks for bringing us a championship this past year. He was very appreciative.

Then we went out and partied downtown, picking up girls and staying up all night on the roof of the hottest hotel in town.

Ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Or maybe not.

Anyway, like I said above, it was hard saying bye to the cast and crew. After you've lived and worked with these people every day for a month and a half, they really start to feel like family. And the two kids- man these were some of the coolest kids (outside of my cousins) that I've ever worked with. It was especially difficult working with them on the last day of shooting and knowing you might not ever see them again.

See, it's different when you're with family, because you know you will see those kids in a year or two. But with Colin and Devon, you've got no idea of the next time you'll run into them. And the kids knew it; they did have tears in their eyes as they said their goodbyes. I drew a Vegeta Super Saiyan level 4 for Colin and a Goku Super Saiyan level 4 for Devon. Only true geeks will understand what any of that previous sentence meant.

And they liked the pictures. I had told them for two weeks I was going to make them a drawing, but I was so busy that I didn't get to start until 4 AM on the final day of shooting. I know I could have done better, but the kids loved the pictures and that's what matters most.

Anyway, I'm back home and very thankful to be out of Edenton. I'm so glad to be around old friends and family. And there's a new girl in my life too, who coincidentally, turns out to be an old girl from my life.

Funny how things work out.

--Cbake

"I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV..."

--The Simpsons

Movie Production Update #11

Sorry guys, but today I am an actor.

Do not come up to me with questions about the set. Do not come to me and ask me to reset the props. Do not come and ask for a favor, like locking down the streets, shutting off the air conditioning for sound, or taking actors to and from wardrobe, because frankly, that's not my department.

In fact, don't even look me in the eye.

So as I mentioned in the last update, wednesday was our last day of shooting. The biggest scene we shot involved one in which some young, drunk punks drive up to this shack at the swamp in their pickup truck, bash in the mailbox with a baseball bat, and then beat up "The General", the old war veteran hermit who lives there and confronts the gang with his shotgun in the middle of the night.

Well we had our two actors play the main punks, and two PAs from Elon were supposed to come back that night to play the rest of the gang. But they never showed.

So who does the director look to to fill the scene? Who shall step up and rise to the challenge?

Why, Chris Baker, Set Decorator, Master Thespian, Acclaimed Artist, and all around nice guy, that's who!

(though actually I think it had more to do with the fact that I was closest to the required wardrobe, working in a white t-shirt and jeans)

So they throw a redneck, sleeveless, yellow flannel vest over my shirt and gave me a bandana to wear over my mouth. Then we rehearsed the scene in which the pickup truck drives up to the shack and I stand in the back of the truck bed, baseball bat at the ready, and just beat the sh*t out of the mailbox as we swerve past it.

Eight or nine times we did this. I stand in the back of the truck, wait for the AD (assistant director) to call action over the walkie-talkie, then I hit the top of the old Chevy truck to alert the actor up front to start driving. He can't drive this old truck well, so he shoots off in a burst of speed, I lose my balance, then try and compose myself as we drive up to the mailbox, but then he slows down and veers away (so he can stop the car at the proper mark), so now I have to stretch myself out to hit the bat, and to make matters worse, because of camera placement, I have to swing left-handed. Needless to say, it was very awkward.

But I never struck out, and by the end of the shoot the prop mailbox was pretty much a dead mailbox. I mean the bottome was falling off and there were huge dents everywhere. People who couldn't see the scene were scared just from the sound I had made each time I connected.

After we stop the truck, we continue the scene in which the General steps onto his porch and cocks his shotgun. The actors yell taunts to him, saying he can't call the police bc he doesn't own a phone, and maybe he uses smoke signals, and I just swing my bat around threateningly and point it at him. The General comes down, confronts Brock (the main thug), walks to the truck, and then bashes out the headlights.

Brock reaches for my bat and I hand it to him, then I hand another bat to the other punk. We circle around the General, yell taunts, and when he's not looking, Brock cocks the bat and swings it at the General's head.

Mark yells cut, the actor playing the General steps out, and then we resume the scene in which we are beating the General as he lies on the ground (in reality, bc of the angle, the actor is out of the scene and we are beating air).

Brock beats him with the bat. I kick him hard in the face. And the driver pours out his beer all over the guy. Then I take the bat, we jump back in the truck, and bc I'm in the back, I do a bit of improvisation and beat the top of the truck in a "Let's get outta here" sorta way.

Now the tricky thing about this scene is that I am not allowed to say any lines. Because this is a Screen Actors' Guild picture, any person who has a line MUST be paid (according to the Taft-Hartley rule I believe). So I was told specifically not to say anything or the production would go bankrupt. But it feels so unnatural to not yell any taunts and insults to the General or anything, and we can only do so few takes for each shot, but I want my part to be believable and at the same time I don't want to run over the actors' lines...

So what do I do? I bark. And growl. And howl. Yeah, I guess I became that guy in the gang that is incapable of rational communication. You know the type, you've seen them before in movies. I don't get a one-liner, I don't get an insult to toss. I get to bark.

"AARRRGH!"

Yeah, you hear it- that's me.

The great thing is, since I bash in the mailbox, I CAN'T be cut! Earlier this week the entire art department (all three of us) played extras in a shot in which we are hanging up a sign for the town celebration. Later in the day, we shot another scene in which we wave to the actor who plays Brock as he runs past us.

This is great because now there is subtext to the scene. I am waving to Brock not only because he's the local baseball star, but because I was with him when we beat up the General in the earlier scene. So my character needs backstory. In my mind, I am Brock's friend from high school who dropped out and now, depressingly and begrudgingly, hangs up signs at town functions.

Brilliant, eh?

I've already worn so many other hats on this production: Set Decorator, Props Master, I've helped out on sound and locked down streets, why not add ACTOR to that list of credits?

So now, when "Dog Days" comes out next year, expect to see me as:

Set Decorator - Chris Baker
Mailbox Thug - Chris Baker
Sign Hanger - Chris Baker

Boo yah, I'm a triple threat.

--Cbake