THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 31, 1997 TAG: 9701300042
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE MARINO CAMPUS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 156 lines
AT 5 A.M. Dec. 26, most people were either fast asleep or battling heartburn from Christmas dinner.
John Lovero, however, was hitting the unusually deserted New Jersey Turnpike, leaving his parents' house in Pennington, N.J., for the sandy shores of Virginia Beach.
Six hours later, we met at the Stargate Hotel at 19th Street and Atlantic Avenue where, one by one, people were being brought to ``Tears.''
Filmed at the Oceanfront in just three days, ``Tears'' is a 20-minute movie about a man who needs to drink human tears to survive. Producer Brad Sykes, a 1995 graduate of First Colonial High School and a student at Boston University's School of Broadcasting and Film Production, made ``Tears'' as a pilot, hoping to someday interest Hollywood agents in financing a feature-length version of the script.
Lovero and I, both upperclassmen at Radford University in Radford, were two of the 12 students and professionals who spent part of the holiday making movies, something that is a lot harder than it looks.
In charge were Sykes, who wrote the script, and Dave Haycox, the director of photography.
My job was to hold the boom microphone, a 7-foot pole that expands to 20 feet with a microphone attached. The whole thing weighs about 10 pounds, and holding it is trickier than it seems. If you tap your hands on it or bump it on the ceiling or squeak your palm across the pole, you instantly ruin the whole audio track.
The tension was already starting to build.
Day Two
At 5 a.m., the sun was not yet up. We could see the fog around the lights on the Boardwalk. At 6:15 a.m., the rest of the crew arrived to shoot the sunrise over the beach. No way.
So by 7, Sykes and Haycox had decided to film the indoor scene that contained the first dialogue in the film.
Such decisiveness did not surprise me. Haycox, 36, is a Virginia Beach native with 14 years of experience and a Cable Ace Award to his credit. In the last major motion picture shot at the Oceanfront, the Charlie Sheen action movie ``Navy SEALs,'' Haycox was a camera operator. He has also worked on numerous programs for both the Discovery and Disney cable channels, as well as commercials.
At 7:42 a.m., Sykes said, ``Action'' and the camera rolled.
One of the things that really surprised me was how well the actors knew their lines. Sykes cast Jack Wareing, 35, and RuthAnn Schultz, 21, in the two roles in ``Tears.'' Shultz is a Virginia Beach bartender and Wareing is well known at the Beach for being one of the owners of Wareing's Gym on 19th Street.
The pair played Max and Lydia, two characters who ended up turning to each other for help. Max needed to drink human tears to survive, and Lydia needed someone to talk to about her problems. Both actors are students of The Actor's Place, Sylvia Harman's acting school in Virginia Beach.
In the scene, Max knocks on the door of Room 512. He has followed Lydia off the beach and wants to know why she is crying.
The very first take was a success. The weight of the first shot was gone. The pressure was not.
We all had to move quickly to prepare for the next shot, which would take place in front of a large oceanfront window. To preserve cinematic continuity, the whole scene had to be completed before the sunlight was noticeably different.
All this continuity was on the shoulders of script supervisor Brett Edenton, 19, a 1995 graduate of Cox High and a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University.
``Have you ever seen a movie where in one scene an actor is smoking a cigarette that he just lit up and in the very next shot, which is supposed to happen a few seconds later, the cigarette is much shorter?'' Brett said. ``That's what happens with bad continuity.''
Haycox stepped in and made up for the changing natural light with a few miracles from his lighting kit. Suddenly, there was a perpetual beam of sunlight across the room, and everyone quit worrying about the rising sun.
By lunchtime I had been on my feet, leaning slightly backward, holding the mike with my arms straight over my head, for seven hours. I was sore, but we pressed on.
Day Three
The crew was up by 5 a.m. We didn't want to be, but everyone had to be ready to attempt a sunrise shot.
Attempt was all that we did. The fog had returned. But this was our final day of shooting, and we had to film the outdoor scenes no matter what the weather.
Haycox sprung into action, coordinating a sequence on Atlantic Avenue to replace the sunrise on the beach scene. It involved Lydia driving her car down the deserted strip, and it had to be filmed from several different angles. One of those angles was from inside the light-blue compact, which did not have enough room for my large boom microphone.
Because audio was necessary, we improvised. Tara Georgenes, who just graduated from Boston's film school, monitored the sound on an expensive Nagra audio recorder, which is the size of a really big purse and was rented from a company in Florida. She hid in the back seat, mike in hand, minus the large boom pole. The sound was recorded perfectly, and ``Tears'' kept on flowing.
At noon, the crew moved onto the beach. The sky was overcast. It was windy, cold. More problems.
The Nagra was designed to use five-inch reel-to-reel tape reels. The sound company sent us seven-inch reels. They would still work, but the cover wouldn't close. Since we were on the beach, the threat of some sand blowing into the open recorder was a serious problem, but we didn't have a choice.
Another problem was the rising tide. Every time the camera was set up for a shot, a big wave would flood the beach. Assistant camera operator Vallie Mach, a recent graduate of Regent University's film school, constantly had to move the camera and tripod farther up the sand.
The beach was supposed to be deserted in the movie. But the few tourists who were on the boardwalk flocked like the sea gulls, asking crew members who the director was, who the actors were and what the movie was about.
This resulted in five takes. Sherrie Austin, another Radford student, was in charge of the ``clapper'' board, which lists the act, scene and take number of each shot. She was constantly gripping the eraser.
When we finally broke for lunch, there were only two scenes left to film. That was good, because we were rapidly depleting our film supply. Everyone was still in a good mood.
Then came the scene that was nearly impossible to boom. It was a wide-angle shot of the hotel room and the character Max. It meant that I had to hold the mike very close to the ceiling. If I let the mike drop one inch, it would appear on camera and ruin the shot. If I raised it at all, it would bump into the ceiling and ruin the audio with a big ``thud.''
I was positive I would do one of these. At that moment, the letters C-U-T were how I spelled relief.
The entire shoot took three days. By the end, I had held the pole for 30 hours. We shot nine scenes in 100 takes.
One thing that Lovero, Austin and I will definitely get for Christmas next year is a chance to work on ``Blue X-mas.'' Sykes was very pleased with our work and asked us to return for that movie.
For now, I am just glad that I worked on ``Tears.'' I learned a lot about film making and I can't wait to do it again. MEMO: Joe Marino is a 1995 graduate of Bayside High school who is now
majoring in media studies at Radford University. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
Writer Joe Marino handles the boom microphone during the filming of
"Tears."
Brad Sykes, 1995 graduate of First Colonial who is a film student at
Boston University, produced the film.
Radford University student Sherry Austin was in charge of the
"clapper" board, which lists the act, scene and take number of each
shot.
JOE MARINO
Brad Sykes wrote the script for ``Tears'' and directed the filming
over three days in December.