Lights, Camera, Action – Filming Twelve Hours (a movie) by Aidan Macaluso

On Wednesday before our long weekend in upstate NY, I updated my FB status to George, Tina, Suzan, Are you ready for us?, along with a photo of a shopping cart full of lemons (for the lemon drops). This prompted several responses:

It’s the 24 hour countdown… can’t wait to see you all.

ALL of NY awaits your arrival (from a friend in a neighboring town).

It’s been very quiet here… (George)

Well George, it’s about to get noisy...

And it did!  The weekend was crazy busy.  We had a friend’s birthday to celebrate, a garden party festival to attend, friends to see, a barbeque to host, go-carts to ride and unexpectedly a movie scene to film.  The weekend got so busy in fact, that I had to cancel a spa appointment I was looking forward to.

It was over a very loud and animated dinner for eight on Friday at the 204 Bistro in Sharon Springs that George, owner of the inn we stay at mentioned to David that his 17 year old son Aidan was making a movie to enter in a school sponsored film festival.  The movie needed to be completed within a week and David would be perfect as The Producer.  So David said yes, figuring he could do a few lines to help Aidan out.  George & Aidan gave David his script late Saturday morning.  There were 7 pages of dialog.  David needed to learn it for Sunday at noon, when Aidan would film this scene! 

While David had delusions of being DeNiro, truth be told, he was worried about the amount of lines he needed to memorize.  He studied the script at breakfast, on the throne, at lunch during the festival we were attending, in the shower getting ready for dinner.  David, Jr. was coaching him.   They rehearsed the lines in the car, after drinks and before bed.  He studied all Sunday morning, during breakfast and in the shower, with David, Jr helping him.

George, Aidan, David, the boys and I all met up in Cherry Valley a little after noon.  The coffee shop we were supposed to film the scene in was closed and the owner forgot to tell his employees that we would be filming.  While we sought shelter from a pop up thunderstorm, George met up with Matt, the owner of the Rose & Kettle Restaurant across the street from the coffee shop.  He agreed to let us do our scene there.

The lighting had to be analyzed, camera was set up, sound checks were done and soon it was time to actually shoot.  Over and over, from several angles, the scene was filmed.  Lines were butchered, there were many ‘takes’, the SD card filled up, and the camera battery ran out.  Luckily I had my Nikon with me and gave Aidan the SD card.  While charging the battery, David ran some more lines.  We filmed several takes of my 4 waitress lines which I learned pretty much at film time as DeNiro (I mean my husband) hogged the script.  

   

The Rose & Kettle was opening at 5:00 

and the real waitresses were coming in at 4:00.  We just got out in time!

Twelve Hours is a 30 minute movie.  While David & I read the one scene we were part of, we really didn’t know much about what the movie was about, other than The Writer (Aidan) had a deadline to submit a script to The Producer in 12 hours. 

Originally created for a local film festival at Cooperstown High School, the teacher running the festival decided to rent a hall for a private screening with a question and answer session later.  She felt Aidan’s movie far exceeded the other films submitted and that a festival was not appropriate.  So congrats to Aidan for his wonderful job in creating this movie and congrats to my husband for his big film debut!

Please spend the 30 minutes to check out this film.  Aidan is an incredibly talented filmmaker, and he edited this film to perfection.  I will say with confidence we will be seeing more of his work in the future, most likely in Hollywood!

View Twelve Hours by Aidan Macaluso