It wasn’t a debacle on the scale of “Waterworld” or “Heaven’s Gate” or even “Ishtar” but the shoot at the Arya Bhavan restaurant  just wasn’t up to our standards and it was clear to us that we needed to do find a location that would match in quality the talent of the actors in our movie and I think we knocked it out of the park when we were able to secure the India House restaurant in Schaumburg. I can’t wait let our cast and crew loose in this new venue. Special thanks go out to producer Rahul Thakkar for helping make this happen.

Last week, thanks to the kind generosity of the Arya Bhavan Restaurant, the cast and crew were able to shoot on location on Devon Avenue.  

Arya Bhavan features “Pure Vegetarian, North, South and Gujarati Indian Cuisine”.  It’s a beautiful restaurant and having eaten there several times, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The service is fantastic and the food is to die for.  It’s located in the heart of the Indian section of Devon Avenue at 2508 West, Devon, Chicago, IL 60659. Ask Kirti about their catering. You can call them for take out or catering at 773-274-5800. 

We had a great time shooting at Arya Bhavan and will be back there this weekend. In the meantime, enjoy another trailer for The Visitor from Elsewhere. 

I want to bring to your attention an exciting new filmmaker named Daniel Williams.  We congratulate Daniel on his accomplishment and wish him much success. Mr. Williams is premiering his film, “Cigarettes for Breakfast”  this week at the Urban World Film Festival in New York City.

This week we shot three times. On Friday, Harold, Steve and I went to a park on the lake front in Evanston to shoot the “lavatory scene”, and then that night I went out and shot “B Roll” of Elsewhere, and then the next morning Kartrin Hummel, LaQuis and Rina Pignone joined us to shoot the “Cops in the Park” scene. I combined all this footage, added the extraordinary time lapse footage of Edouard Boily and Kevin MacLeod’s insistent celtic composition for the trailer and voila! – hours of footage boiled down to a 4 minute trailer. Enjoy. 

We were dark this week. Andrew was in Colorado. Dave got a call to work with the History Channel. Steve got called in to work his day job. This gave me time to work on the ending of the script and to cut a short scene for Kristina Johnson to use to get new acting jobs without my over-bearing voice over ruining it. Check it out below. This upcoming Friday and Saturday we are going to be very busy working with new actors LaQuis, Rina Pignone and Katrin Hummel and all of us are very excited. Talk to you all next week… 

 Click here to see Kristina’s clip in high definition: http://www.vimeo.com/1597050

Enjoy.

The Sid Scenes. The chemistry between Harold Dennis and Steve Parks continues to be wonderfully exhibited in these sequences directed by Dave McGuire and filmed by Andrew Heller with audio assistance provided by Devin R. Perdue. 

This weekend we were blessed  with  beautiful, sunny days with sapphire blue skies and our team took advantage of every moment of it. It was filmed on an abandoned train trestle in the Humboldt Park area of Chicago.

Look for another video post next week.

Watch it in high definition here: http://www.vimeo.com/1542731

Enjoy.

This week ‘The Visitor from Elsewhere’ found us in an abandoned rail yard near the Skokie Swift shooting the post-murder scene. Dave McGuire, not only directing, but also acting as cinematographer cantered the camera to great effect in these shots. He also climbed into the high branches of  a tree in front of my house for the high angle shot without killing himself. This man is a steely eyed movie man!

What can you say about the power of Harold Dennis’ performance?  Words can’t describe it so I won’t try.

Enjoy.

We had a great time working on the movie this week.  The crew and the talent ended up on the north side of Chicago in the ninety degree heat. If had sweat stinging my eyes most of the time operating the boom mic Harold and Steve were cool as cucumbers and gave us a grand performance. Kudos to Dave McGuire for coming up with the brilliant staging and directing and to Andrew Heller for his deft camera work.

The clip above, is as always just a rough cut. When the film is finished it will look much better as a result of post production.

Next up, more scenes featuring Harold Dennis and Steve Parks. Thanks for your support. Talk to you next week. Enjoy.

Here are the first scenes of Harold Dennis and Steve Parks working together. For the next few weeks we will continue to work on these very important scenes between Edward Bloom and Sid Yiddish. Enjoy!

The film production continues to progress. It never progresses as quickly as we would like but we are resolute in our belief in the film and continue to work very hard on bringing ‘The Visitor from Elsewhere’ complete and wrapped to a large audience. Thanks for your support. Please tell your friends about the movie and the movie blog as I will continue to try to keep it updated as time permits, with my goal remaining to be a post every week. Thanks again to all of you watching.

Shannon Edwards, Jayden Shastry, P.J. Samorian, and Joette Waters on the sidewalk in front of my place before the shoot. All photos courtesy of Nancy Stone.

Here’s everyone again, with Nancy Stone.

The Gardens were beautiful. You felt like you had taken a powerful drug that made you drunk with images and colors.

Here’s Dave applying scars to Grazianno’s face for the last scene.

Joe with Grazianno and Dave.

After long experience, Harold Dennis knows during a long day’s shoot, you have to catch a cat nap whenever you can.

This swan developed a strong dislike for Grazianno.

AFLAC!!!

]]> http://thevisitor.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/pictures-from-the-botanical-gardens-shoot/feed/ 0 Joseph Ornelas On the sidewalk in front of my place before we headed out. The gang of four, plus Nancy Stone The Chicago Botanical Gardens Dave applies makeup to Grazianno for the last scene Dave with Grazianno and Joe Catching a cat nap..... AFLAC!!!