Our session started off at my house, as the whole crew gathered to set up. I began by getting Gianni cleaned up and shaved up. I talked more in depth about this experience in my "Carlos The Barber" blog post. I was trying to be extra careful so that I wouldn't mess up his hairline so I was being more of a perfectionist than I normally am. This took me a little while but I didn't want to rush even though I had the rest of the crew waiting for me. I should have planned this better so that Gianni and I could have done this ahead of time. It worked out fine and Gianni was ready to go. I had him and Geo get dressed into their cop costumes while I had a production overview with the rest of the crew.
Jessica Reales, Isabelle Miller, and JJ Hernandez came to help me with production. Roles were not preassigned but just fell into place. Jess ended up being my script supervisor while helping with production design and lighting, Isabelle helped with lighting and also took BTS photos, JJ was my grip and audio guy.Since Geo had to leave by 9 pm we had film all the shots we needed of him first. I made it so that the only scene where he had to appear was in the police brutality scene so we shot that first. Since we shot this out of order, this scene is when Khalil, Vince, and the cops are coming out of the gas station after Vince tries to steal a lighter and Khalil is trying to get him out of trouble from the cops. Sadly Officer Chase turns on Khalil and Khalil ends up brutalized, even though he had done nothing wrong. This scene was the most complex to shoot. Most of the action and drama takes place in this scene. The different angles, the movement, and the colors made this my favorite scene to shoot.The actors that I worked with were really good, in fact maybe too good because it also made this the most disturbing scene to film. They made it seem so real that Jess would say how she almost teared up watching Keon get beat and then Keon would immediately start laughing after I yelled "cut." (Props to Keon for laying with his face on the black concrete for over an hour and constantly having to pour water on his eyes to make it look like he's crying- A REAL CHAMP).
There was a shot that really stuck with me in this scene. It was a low angle medium shot of Gianni as Officer Chases as he beats Khalil with a bouton. As we were shooting it, I told Gianni to not close his eyes as he swings the bouton. The result was this very impactful shot of Officer Chase wide-eyed that radiates inhumane insanity that's driven by racism.After we concluded this scene, we shot the scene inside the gas station.
In the gas station, Khalil is minding his own business as Vince "gets a lighter." Khalil sees that Vince actually tries to steal the lighter but gets caught by Officer Chase, now Khalil is chasing the cops out of the gas station trying to get them to let Vince go. The gas station scene took a lot less time to shoot. Out of the 6 1/2 hours that we filmed, probably 30 minutes were spent filming the gas station scene. Although it was a short shoot, it did come with it's challenges. Because this was private property, I had to ask permission from the manager of that 7-11 in order to film inside. They gave us permission as long as the 7-11 logo and the address wouldn't show up in the video. When we were shooting, they were actually doing delivery and stock reloading so we only had one isle to work with. Also, the lighters were actually over the counter so Vince couldn't just reach and take one. Fortunately, one of the employees at the 7-11 was kind enough to let us borrow her lighter to shoot the scene.
Our production day had finally been concluded, now it was time to take Keon home and then go to sleep. I went to sleep at around 3 am that night.
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