Feb 2, 2013 —
Let me tell you about a very cool project I worked on last year! For starters, here is the finished product..
In February 2012, my friends and I started training Kali Escrima with a really cool guy named Kimo Keoke. We would have training sessions once or twice a week in his backyard, and our martial art backgrounds allowed us to start picking this new style up relatively quickly. After training there for several weeks, an opportunity presented itself. Kimo was to coordinate stunts on a commercial which was looking for a lead actor who could also do his own Parkour/Freerunning and stunts. I was recommended, and sent my 2011 reel off to the director..
Tim Hendrix (the director) loved what he saw and asked me to play the role of the protagonist. He sent me the script, along with a video storyboard he created. I was immediately interested in working on this project, the whole endeavour projected excitement onto me, and reminded me of the videos I used to make for Kouro Media when I lived in Scotland. Also, I had just booked my first lead role, AND I would get to do my own stunts? Sign me up!
The first meeting I went to was between the director (Tim), stunt coordinator (Kimo), and myself. We checked out the planned locations at the south campus of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Afterwards, Kimo and I went around and felt out the possible movement achievable within the space. We created a handful of stunts which would fit in with the storyboards, that we would later show to production. After the meeting was over and everyone was happy, I found I had a couple of days to prepare.. Wardrobe called me that evening and got my sizes, and I went for a training session at the Tempest Freerunning Academy.
Morning, day 1. Spirits were high and everyone was excited to get to work. I warmed up with Kimo in a corner and we started choreographing the final sequence. The first shot of the day was to be the last shot of the action sequence, where I run up a wall to grab the “pill”, flip, and destroy one of the ghosts. I did about 10-15 variations of wallflips with different “finishing moves”, and once the director chose his favorite, we were set.
I don’t think I will ever forget those first 2 hours. I think I did somewhere in the region of 50-60 sprints/wallflips/finishing move combos in an hour and a half window. I remember the wardrobe lady (Amber Wrigley) would come up to me and help me hang my shirt up between takes, as we only had 2 and I was getting pretty sweaty in the intense atmosphere.. I also remember misjudging where the wall stud was. I kept thinking the beam holding up the drywall was in one place, but once I saw the wall start to cave more and more on each take, I changed my footing. The outcome was inevitable either way, and I ended up putting my foot through the wall. I’m sure the footage is still floating around somewhere, but we found out the hard way that the wall beam was of a new design, and only one inch wide.
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No matter, noone was hurt and the shoot went on!
The remainder of the first day was dedicated to filming the rest of the action sequence, with me scaling walls, sprinting down random hallways, leaping up and down sets of stairs, and playing around in an elevator. (We could only use the elevator for a 30min window and ended up blasting through that part)..we wrapped around 2pm on the first day, and I drove to my girlfriend’s house to relax and wait for day 2.
The 2 day shoot took place in Pasadena, and the 40 minute drive I had to make each morning at 7 am was mostly uneventful, except for the highway tire blow-out (I used to drive a 99 Volvo convertible with shot shocks and a roof that didn’t work).. So, on the second morning of the shoot, as I was getting on the 210 (I drove from Santa Clarita), I felt a sudden shaking take over the car. A glance at my passenger mirror showed me flying chunks of rubber coming from my car. I made my way off of the highway and parked. This was at 7am on a Sunday morning, and I am still extremely grateful for the gentleman who answered his doorbell and let me borrow a jack to switch out the stripped rim for a spare. Anyways..the second day of the shoot was dedicated to filming all of the acting scenes. We were set up in a makeshift hallway, and the day was carried through with interesting conversations from the production, other actors, and various people all around.
We got all of the shots we needed, wrapped on time, and everyone said their goodbyes to newly found friends and colleagues. The excitement from those 2 days in Pasadena still stays with me, it was definitely one of the funnest projects I’ve worked on to this day. I found everyone’s work ethic, skill level, and sincerity to be outstanding, and I couldn’t wait to see the final project! Unfortunately there were some complications with post-production, but Tim Hendrix pulled through and edited the finished product you see at the top of this page 🙂
This past year, I was lucky enough to get to work with Kimo Keoke several more times, and on another project with Tim Hendrix. The second project with Tim and Kimo was the music video for Koan Sound’s “80s Fitness”, which you can see here.
Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day!
Namaste,
Rustic