Break a Leg

Hey all,

Just a quick update on the weekend's festivities. With three scenes left to shoot and our actors mostly far too busy with holiday-related activities to shoot, we've dove headfirst into editing. In fact, the entire episode is completely rough cut -- meaning, it's edited, just roughly, without any sound work, music or graphics. It's also unpolished, so some of the lesser funnies may be thrown out.

The conversation should be out soon - it's done and ready to be put out. It should be noted that the whole conversation being released was improvised -- there was no script, and, in fact, no cuts. It's one, long, funny improvised take -- at least we hope you think it's funny.

 Okay! Back to editing.

-Yuri 

Oh yes, that's right. We've finally hit a million cumulative views on YouTube. Meaning at least a million people played our video for at least a second! Victory is ours!

The official number as it now stands? 1,038,273. Next stop? Two.. billion? Sure, why not.

Our numbers on Blip.tv rise swiftly as well, as we now have over 200,000 cumulative views there -- up at least five or six times over the last two-three months.

Are you listening, NBC, FOX, Home Shopping Network?

-Yuri 

This isn't the kind of blog you're used too and it's not the kind I intend to write often -- ideally, this is the last one in a long while -- but either way I'll write it and we'll all read it together.

Sometimes, it's hard to be funny. You read the news, hear people talk, see what's happening and then you sit down and say -- I'm going to write a dark comedy. Maybe humor is a way to cope with life or maybe life is just outrageously funny -- or maybe a bit of both, but sometimes, when things get a little too dark, a writer, somewhere, sometime, someplace, sits down and wonders if humor is trivial and maybe he should, I don't know, go get a real job or something.

What am I ranting about? Our grandfather died today. When I say ours, I mean Vlad and mine. He was 80, lived a long life and was really, really, really smart. When he was lying semi-conscious in his hospital bed, he could name off complex equations and when he was okay, he could sit and talk you for three hours on the same subject. And there were a lot of subjects he'd talk about. 

He was a teacher and he and my grandmother raised our Dad -- who, not to offend the rest of your Dads, is probably the best Dad you can find. He was also strong as all hell -- he survived a whole lot of things that no one thought he could and to say he put up a good fight is an understatment. 

What I'm saying is, my grandfather was a good man and he did a lot of good things and he raised two good children who raised other good children who intend to then raise their own children much in the same way.

Oh, he was also impossible to beat at chess. The only time Vlad ever came close to beating him, there was an earthquake and it ruined the board -- it was that hard to win.

So, now I'm sitting here and Vlad's sitting wherever he's sitting and we're both wondering -- how do you keep being funny? And then I think, because, second to a good dinner and a good hug, laughter's probably the best thing there is. And how can humor be trivial when it can, aside from a good hug and a good steak, make so many people smile and for a minute forget the darkness around them and realize how strangely amusing and undoubtedly amazing this waking life is.

And, how can any writer, or artist, or whatever you are, consider getting another job when life's a little too quick and a little too strange to not spend it doing what you absolutely love -- whether that means failing miserably or succeeding beyond your wildest dreams?

So, rest in peace, Grandpa. We love you, and you're happier now, you're stronger now, and you're probably frustrating the hell out of God in chess. And hey, while you're up there, keep an eye on the television -- I promise we'll be on there soon.

-Yuri and Vlad

That's right! Our year-long battle has been won! At least for now -- this website, Break a Leg (the sitcom) has defeated the Wikipedia entry for "Break a Leg" (the phrase) for the #1 result in the google search for "Break a Leg."

What does this mean? Two things.

-People now have to say, "Break a Leg (the sitcom)" to one another, when wishing luck.
-We are more famous than theater.

Good times. Now let's get famous.
-Yuri

Always, always assume that your intended shooting location is going to be quarantined.

What?

Let's go to Friday.

Friday: The beginning of our weekend shooting. We've spent the entire week playing email tag with our actors, first we cancelled a shoot, then we un-cancelled it, then we lost an actor and then Drew Lanning single-handedly saved us by finding another one.

Friday, we're set to shoot the Channukah conversation. Due to some scheduling gaffes and me completely forgetting to tell Justin that we're shooting, Justin has to have this surprisingly sitcom-ey conversation with his girlfriend.

[Paraphrased by me:]

Him: Hey, I have too --
Her: Hey! Since we never get to see each other, I wanted to surprise you by making you dinner! ...Now, what did you want to tell me?
Him: I have to shoot.

And that's how Justin lost an eye.

...we shot the conversation and, because we need to balance Break a Leg and a social life to stay sane, we went out to a few bars and went to bed at around 2-3 am...

Saturday: ...only to wake up at 9 am, crying a little. Our first shoot was at a post office, the circumstances were hilarious and I really don't want to ruin the joke, so I'm going to have to be vague. We basically had to shoot with a fake dead body in the store -- except the owner didn't actually close the store to shoot, so we'd have to stop periodically while customers bought something. The best moment was when a customer was having something shipped while one of our actors was pretending to be dead right between him and the store owner -- pure genius.

Now we move on to the quarantine.

San Francisco has a small island between Oakland and San Francisco. The Bay Bridge rests atop of it, and then continues on to Oakland, Berkeley and the East Bay. The island is called Treasure Island -- and makes you think of palm trees, white sand and pirates.

What it really looks like is the type of place a zombie infestation would happen.

It's covered with warehouses, low-income housing and a lot of abandoned, creepy buildings. Oh, and geese. There are lots of geese. There's also no gas station or grocery store on the island, so the locals have to drive to San Franciso or Oakland to get gas or food -- what if they run out of gas, you wonder? Well, it's just a cold swim to either city through shark infested waters. Oh, and I think there's some nuclear waste or something on the island. I forget what the details are, but it's ripe for zombie infestation.

Anyway, our second shooting location is scheduled to be on Treasure Island. If you remember the Pilot episode of Break a Leg, the SF montage shows a shot of the entire city with the Bay Bridge spanning to the left side -- that's the gorgeous view that Treasure Island offers. That's where we plan to shoot -- except here's the thing, due to a recent oil spill in the Bay, the entire San Francisco side of the harbor on the island was taped off so that cleaning crews can clean up.

So, our shooting location is quarantined.

This is a prime example of our luck.

Luckily, we drove around the island and managed to shoot on the Oakland side. This killed the view but made the scene make a bit more sense. However, the shooting conditions here were terrible. We had to pause every 5-10 minutes as a plane flew by, or as an armada of sail boats sailed through our shot. We even had to shoot a shot as a mirror image of itself -- in other words, our actress was supposed to be on the left side of the frame, but because the sun was blowing her out, we put her on the right side and had her do everything with her opposite hand -- so that we can flip the scene in post-production (we'll see if this actually works and we'll explain it more thoroughly once you see the footage.)

We finally got done with the shoot and took the rest of the night off as we had another shoot at 10 am on Sunday.

Sunday: We have a new actress! So far, it's a small part, but she has had roles on ER, Gilmore Girls and many more. She came to act with Mr. Drew Lanning and she was fantastic. Our first shoot with her? Inside a bunker where we lit something on fire -- take that, ER!

The shoot went surprisingly smooth. Aside from planes and people flying/talking through our location, it was done fairly quickly. Done, we went back to the Swambler House (where Dashiell, Justin and Daniela live), ate some sushi, laid on the couch and stared at the ceiling blankly for a few minutes, then went to finish up the edits on the Channukah conversation.

I know this isn't a production note, but we did something really interesting that shows the power of editing in this one.

The ending of the conversation wasn't quite working. We had Stan name off a bunch of Yiddish phrases with David getting more and more irritated and then telling him to leave. It wasn't working, so we just went with him climbing back into his ceiling vent, where he says the borscht/mensch lines and then David says, "I have to get a new publicist."

The new publicist line was falling flat and the ending wasn't working. So, going off the idea that it'd be hilarious if Stan fell through the ceiling again, we sifted through the footage to find another take of him breaking the ornament. We found what's now become my favorite line, "Tazel mov, heeey!" and added the sound of Stan not only falling through the ceiling but also of him breaking through glass. Add that take of "Tazel Mov," put a few filters on it to make it seem like it's in another room and voila -- we've got an ending. And a hilarious one at that.

And that was our weekend. Three more scenes left before we're wrapped! Oh, it's coming soon, Swamblers, it's coming soon...

-Yuri