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Geezers Diary
The Production
Geezers Cast
Toll Booth Scene
Locations
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Title:
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Geezers |
Type:
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Comedy |
Format:
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Digital Video |
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Peter Bohush |
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Sam d'Entremont --
Willie
Howie Nickerson -- Vic
David Morwick -- Wily
Jennifer Lynn Jones -- Arleen
Cecilia d'Entremont -- Mrs. Schmidt
John Indge -- Frank
Stephen Parks -- Magic Dan |
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Elderly widower Willie McKee and his army
buddy Vic embark on a road trip to find the woman who broke Willie's heart 60
years ago. The love story is revealed through flashbacks to the young lovers in 1939,
while the old guys take a strange trip from Boston to the fictional town of Ranway, Mass. |
Market:
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Film festivals, cable television, Internet
broadcast. |
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Shot on miniDV (digital video) with a
Sony TRV900, the world's smallest 3-chip camcorder. Principal photography
took 6 days over two weekends in May/June 1999. Approximately ten hours of footage was
shot (20:1 ratio).
Geezers was the first movie production ever allowed to use a Mass. Pike toll
booth as a location. Other locations included Boston's
North End, Shrewsbury town common and Municipal Office Building, Quinsigamond State Park,
Worcester, Northboro and the Green Line "T".
Script length was 30 pages. There were 58 scenes at 29 locations. A little more
than half of the script takes place in present-day Massachusetts, the rest in 1939.
The production utilized the Internet extensively for posting casting and crew
notices, sending scripts and production schedules, and publicity. No scripts were printed
until casting was complete.
Cast and crew were all volunteer, participating for experience, meals and a copy
of the finished tape.
Eight antique cars from the 1920s and 1930 appear in the production, provided by
The Old Car Club (Shrewsbury).
No kewpie dolls were harmed in the making of this production. |
Food consumption:
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68 Ham and cheese sandwiches, 4 cases of
Coke, one case of Diet Coke, 17 cups of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (by the director), seven
bagels. |
Schedule:
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Earliest call time: 6am.
Latest wrap time: 1:30am.
Longest day: 12 1/2 hours. |
Favorite director's quote:
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"That's perfect! Let's do one
more." |
Budget:
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Included food, props,
videotape and insurance.
The production company purchased the camera, lights and
post-production equipment.
Note: the budget went up in post-production, due
to licensing a piece of music over the Internet for $12. |
Equipment:
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Sony TRV900 camcorder, Ettore boom pole,
Optimus microphone, Sony shotgun mic, SteadyTracker camera support, Sony headphones,
Vivitar VPT-360 tripod. Editing equipment and software
included a Hewlett
Packard 8480Z Pentium II computer, Adobe Premiere 5.1 and After Effects, DDClip, Sound
Forge 4.5, SmartSound for Multimedia, Roland W-30 digital workstation. Re-editing
the 2001 version was done on an Apple G4 with Final Cut Pro 2, Adobe
After Effects and SmartSound Sonicfire Pro. |
Director's notes:
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Going into production, I knew I had a
cast, but was not sure whether or not any of the volunteer crew was going to show up. I
only started calling them two days before we started shooting, because I learned that we
had to get all of Howie's scenes done by the end of the upcoming weekend, before he left
town for a month. But when I arrived on set the first day at 7am, there
were eight crew people waiting. One drove up from Rhode Island, another from the South
Shore. The dedication of these people was incredible, as they totally committed themselves
to the production.
The first hour of production is the strangest for a director. People you don't
know are standing around, looking at you, waiting to be told what to do. Putting all these
people into motion for the first set up is like trying to get a dozen plates
spinning on sticks. Somehow you have to concentrate both on the plate in front of you as
well as all the others simultaneously. Starting all the other days are easy. You just say,
"Okay, let's get to work," and everybody starts moving.
Whatever comes from this film, I owe it all to the cast and crew who donated
their time and talents to making it. Without them, it's just a screenplay. With them, it
became a film.
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Special Thanks:
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The people of Shrewsbury and Northboro
were great, from the business owners who opened their businesses as locations, to the Old
Car Club members and local actors who came out on a scorching hot afternoon to help us get
additional footage for the 1939-era scenes. Special thanks to the state agencies who
provided location assistance: the Dept. of Environmental Affairs, Mass. Film Office,
Boston Film Office, MBTA and especially the Mass. Turnpike Authority. Special
thanks also to the number  . |
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