With the first day done, there’s only one way to move forward– the second day of shooting. We got a late start due to some snow, but luckily everyone either had front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. Or pickup trucks. That was a relief.

For this second day, we now have more actors– Trent Schindler and Mike McClare who play characters of the same names, respectively.

left to right: Trent, Mike McClare, and Chris Meaney

We were lucky enough to get access to a large centrifuge room with lots of cool-looking machinery, and we were able to work it into the shoot rather than have to build it with green screen. Some creative lighting, framing, and focus, and we end up with the inside of a space ship instead of a room where they test everything from spacecraft parts to SUVs.

Huge room with large centrifuge!

We still needed some green screen work, though, and for that, we rigged up a large piece of green screen cloth for some scenes. It can be challenging to act in an environment that isn’t there but will added in post-production, but everyone did a great job.

Green screen shoot

Folks behind the camera also worked hard on this shoot, too. Chris Smith was directing and on camera, Ryan Fitzgibbons handled the continuity (which can be a pain when everyone’s running around a giant room all day), Mike Velle was on sound, and Sarah kept track of the shots and took pictures of the shoot.

Ryan, Chris Smith, and Mike Velle respectively

One fun part of this movie are the costumes. These space suits are constructed of flight suits, neck braces (you can get anything online), motorcycle helmets, vacuum cleaner accessories, water bottles, carefully placed LED lights, random odds and ends, and luck. So, after this is all done, if somebody breaks their neck, needs water, wants to light their kitchen cabinet, or needs to fix an antique Kirby vacuum cleaner, call us.

Chris Meaney, Trent, and Mike McClare wearing the crazy costumes

But the backpacks with straps and hoses and weight are not the easiest thing to get on. A little help?

suiting up

Of course, at the end of the day, everyone helps clean and wrap up. This was a fun shoot with both “on location” and green screen shooting. It was a long day– we had to make sure all scenes in the centrifuge room were good and done because we weren’t coming back here.

a great shot!