Brass knuckles and skate punks: The making of "Chapel: Battered"

When I woke up Monday morning this week, it felt like the entire right side of my body had been hit by a truck. I was sore from deltoids to wrist, but it wasn't from any accident--I had done this to myself on purpose.

The things we do for art.

You see, all last weekend was spent shooting the next episode of our web series, "Chapel," in a dank, off-the-grid indoor skate park known affectionately as the Dust Bowl. Hidden among a series of nondescript warehouses somewhere in the sprawling (well, sort of) city of Madison--and that's as specific as I can get--the Dust Bowl was a location sent to us from dingy heaven. We'd been introduced to the place by our good friend and collaborator B, and knew from the second we saw it that we had to film something there.

Enter the next episode of the series, "Battered." This is the first (and probably only) episode based directly off a sequence in the prequel novel I wrote (that'd be The Fix Up) about the main character. Originally, the scene took place in an empty storefront, but once we knew we could use the skate park, changes had to be made. I'm not so attached to my writing that I would pass up such an opportunity. In fact, Rob Matsushita--the director of the series and writer of most episodes--did some very decent adaptation of my original work.

Honestly, as opposed to being insulted or frustrated by someone adapting and changing something I wrote, I was flattered. Rob did a great job of interpreting the story and making it fit within the context of the new series. And he kept enough of my work that I didn't feel completely left out of the process. Some day, if I ever sell any work to be turned into a big studio movie, I should only be so lucky as to have it work out in a similar fashion.

So all day Saturday and Sunday we worked to film this two-part behemoth of an episode (the longest we've done for this series so far). That involved, among other things, maneuvering ourselves and our gear up and down the walls and lips of the bowls in the park, coordinating a small mob of unruly skater dudes, and enduring near freezing temperatures.

As an actor, though, you do your best never to complain. I've learned over time--through working with far more talented people than myself and through simple personal observation--that the rehearsal and performance process is made about a million times more enjoyable if the actors go through it all cheerfully. Your job as a performer, after all, is to be game for pretty much anything.

Fortunately, that's usually my natural state, but there are times when you want nothing more than to curl up in a blanket with a bottle of rum and hate the world. I distinctly remember beginning to feel that way on the set of "High School Sweethearts," the horror film in which my role involved sitting in pools of cold, fake blood on a cement basement floor in the middle of January. Thankfully everyone on set was very supportive and cooperative, which went a long way toward keeping me sane.

The Chapel shoot wasn't nearly so taxing. Plus, I had the chance to scoot around on a skateboard and re-learn some of the very, very basic moves I'd once actually been good at (oh, fifteen years ago? cripes). It also helped keep me warm between shots.

That sore right side, though? That was the result of a scene in which my character, Chapel, beats the living hell out of someone (with a pair of brass knuckles, I should add, an unexpected prop brought to us by one of said skater dudes--hooligans!). I knew going in what was likely to be the result of letting myself really go to it. I took boxing lessons for an all-too short time (plans to pick it up again soon) and learned very quickly that, pretty much no matter how much you stretch and are otherwise in good shape, the act of punching will inevitably leave you feeling like your arm is going to separate from your body and fall off. Unless you're an at least semi-professional boxer, that is. Which I am not. Quite obviously.

We got some really excellent shots, though, and I'm told that my performance wasn't half bad, either. I was especially impressed by one of the skaters we got to do the big stunt in the fight scene. The script called for a skater to get air over a lip between two bowls while firing a gun at Chapel, who would in turn be firing back, hitting the skater mid-air. The guy pulled the trick off over and over again and never seemed to hurt himself, even though he was pretending to be hit and fall instead of actually landing the jump. Impressive stuff, and I can't wait to see it in the final cut.

Special props must also go to my co-star and Little Red Wolf bandmate Meghan, who spent much of the shoot covered in fake blood and bungee corded to a chair. I've been there, so I have sympathy for the position, but she still pulled out the stops with her performance.

At this point we've still about two more days of pick-up shooting to do before both episodes are done (scheduled release at the end of March), but the really tough parts are done.

I have to say that I'm incredibly fortunate to be part of this project. It is beyond awesome to work with a crew that is so motivated, organized, fun, and also that gets shit done. Really the only thing missing at this point is a budget. But that's a story for another time.

The horror and the gory glory

Yesterday morning, as I stumbled in to work all bleary-eyed and with the slightest hint of something pink stained along the sides of my mouth, a few people stopped to inquire about how I'd spent my Sunday. My response? "I passed several hours soaking in a pool of blood."

As you might imagine, that response earned me more than my fair share of raised eyebrows. Allow me to explain.

My friends and I like to make movies. I'm more of the dirty actor type, but fortunately I know quite a few people of the directorial persuasion and so I end up getting to be involved in several film projects. Even more amazing is that these director types that I know make actually a habit of finishing any given project, which is definitely an added bonus.

Currently, we're wrapping up "principal photography" on a new horror/dark comedy called "High School Sweethearts." It's a little something dreamed up by the twisted mind of Will Gartside, with assistance from the indomitable Rob Matsushita--the same crew that brought about 2007's horror-musical-comedy smash sensation, "Massacre! The Musical."

I worked on the soundtrack for that particular opus, but this time yours truly gets to take a turn in front of the cameras. They were even kind enough to go completely against my usual type casting by having me play the role of the ingenue. They're making me work for it, though. I've now spent more time than I'd care to recall covered in cold, sticky, fake blood. I also spent 40 minutes in near total sensory deprivation, fighting off panic attacks, to get my head cast in alginate. And through the vast majority of this, I've been duct-taped to a rickety wooden chair in a tarp-lined basement during the middle of a Wisconsin winter.

But what can I say? I love it.

Working on such extremely low-budget films can be a pretty thankless task. None of us are being paid in anything more than free food (which is a lot, considering). I don't think there's one of us who thinks being involved in this project is going to break us big in the movie world, and we're all giving up fairly copious amounts of our free time to allow our director free reign to torture us for hours on end.

So why do we do it? Because we love to create, try new things, make art we think will entertain, and probably most of all, because we enjoy working with each other. I can't stress enough how having a good crew can make or break productions like this. After all, if your director is a pompous jerk, your fellow cast members are complete nincompoops, and the guy holding the boom mic keeps hitting you in the head with it - why on Earth would you want to stick around?

In my case, I have been incredibly fortunate to find myself fallen in amongst people who do what they do because they truly love it, who treat everyone with respect, and who are very much down in the trenches with you through the whole process. They're also motivated, creative, and hard-working, which certainly helps when you're lying on a chilly cement floor, wallowing in pools of red Caro syrup and the shards of a broken flower vase, trying to look like a glassy-eyed corpse.

Jealous?

Anyway, I've put together a little photo collage to illustrate some of the shenanigans and general trials of making a low-budget film. These were all taken this Sunday, but if you'd like to see more from the whole filming process, I will be periodically uploading quite a few shots to my Flickr pool. If you're not into fake blood and the like, though, feel free to steer clear.

We took time out from shooting to practice our hair cuttery skills.

All that pink makes it hard to be intimidated...until the blood starts gushing out of the dummy.

Being horribly tortured makes my eyes go all hooey.

This may well be my favorite shot of them all. Kelly makes an excellent axe murderer.

Yep, that's me with my head between the legs of a mannequin, about to be covered in blood. Good times.

If all of that hasn't effectively scared you off from ever seeing one of the film projects I'm involved in, be sure you keep you eyes peeled this fall for the release of a DVD that will include "High School Sweethearts," its double feature, "The Girls," and a bonus in the form of "Massacre! The Musical."