More photos are now up from inspections, courtesy of Jeff Hopwood.  There are also some other photos from Jeff added to the Washita trip (May ‘09) and Duke’s Halloween Run (October ‘09).  Jeff was able to transfer a large number of photos using the new FTP method, so if you have any pics for me, let me know and I’ll send the directions.

Photos are up so far from the Bardings.  If you’ve got photos to give me, let me know.  We now have the ability for you to upload these directly to a holding tank on the website via FTP.  FTP is not subject to the file size limitations that e-mail is, so you can upload large-sized and/or large quantities of photos or even video files.  This should hopefully make it easier for you guys to submit your media for the website and the video.

Dan Barding test-piloted the FTP procedure today and it works great.  It’s really quite simple… no special software is required, and I have step-by-step instructions in a PDF.  For security reasons I can’t post these on the site for the world to see, but e-mail me and I’ll send them to you.

One last thing, while I have your attention: check your member page and see if anything’s missing.  If you have information or photos you’d like to add, let me know and I’ll stick ‘em up there.

Rain in the morning turned out to be a sunny afternoon, and Jon and I were coincidentally both off work early.  After extensive research looking at photos of Bluesmobiles online (including the original model used when the car has to flip end over end), I got the star stencils for the doors printed out on the large-format printer at work.  Looking at the photos online, I found that the star actually has an inset circle, something that was part of the actual 70’s badge logo for the Mount Prospect Police Department.  Since I wasn’t sure exactly how big the star logo should be relative to the door, I printed a 14” and 16” version so we could hold them up to the door and pick what looked best.

Back at my house, we opted for the 14” star.  The 16” is probably closer to the size that was on the actual car, but as Jon pointed out, it’s more about the relative size of the star to the door, and for that the 14” seemed to look better.  I cut out the stencil and we shot a light and purposely spotty and uneven coat of flat black onto it.  15 minutes later it was dry and ready for “distressing”, which we did with steel wool.  We tried to make it look as close as possible to the real Bluesmobile.  I may hit them again later with some sandpaper.

Next we dug out my hard top, which had been sitting next to the garage for about 18 months.  There was some wood on top of it which was now full of worms, and there were several dozen spiders living inside it.  After a rinse-off we bolted it on the Jeep.  I haven’t used the top much since we did the cage on the Jeep, as it’s never really fit right since.  Luckily the doors do actually close, although they don’t fit right either.

NEW INFO: Since it’s going to be relatively warm, Jill’s thinking we’ll line up in the driveway and bring the Jeeps in through the old barn and into the new barn.  If you need to unload your Jeep from a trailer, continue past Jill’s driveway around to the softball diamond parking lot and unload there, then drive your Jeep back to the house.  Click here for a Google maps link if you don’t know how to get there.  See you Saturday!

Today I prepped and painted the CJ’s hard doors flat white.  The next step is to add the distressed, aged-looking star to them.  Jon had an idea to paint the star stencil then use steel wool to rub parts of it out.  I’m going to look at some photos online tonight and see if anyone else online has any good techniques.

It occurred to me today that once the doors are painted, my CJ cannot make any appearances in public with the doors on it.  I can’t risk having any MIJC members find out the subject of this year’s movie.

More scripting and planning today with Jon.  We’ve now got the dialogue modifications made and have pared down the scenes we’re going to shoot.  We also fleshed out more shooting locations and Jon came up with a great idea for making it look like the prison gate is opening for when Jake is released at the start of the movie, something that we cannot in reality do when we shoot in Joliet.

I think what we have on paper may end up being too long, but we’re going to go ahead and shoot and edit what we have planned.  Once we’re finished, we’ll determine if it’s too long, and if so, what we might be able to cut.  Either way people will see all of it, as any footage not used in the final cut will make great DVD extras as deleted scenes.

Primary shooting will begin next weekend at Jill’s house.

July 11, 2009 (1 hour)

Shot the kids (and Butch) saying their lines.  We’re now committed to the name of the movie.

Today Jon and I made a camera mount for a fullsize video camera that mounts to the passenger or driver’s side rocker panel (the door must be in place), or to the front bumper for a shot from over the hood.  Jon and I combined our ideas to come up with a mount that clamps onto the 1-3/4” tubing present in all three locations using exhaust clamps.  It’s easy to swap to all three locations and does not leave anything hanging off the Jeep when it’s removed. 

The genius of the mount is that we used the old flex plate and ring gear assembly taken off my 6-cylinder motor.  The flex plate was OK but the ring gear was trashed, so it wouldn’t have been reusable on a motor anyway.  This provided the flat surface which we mounted the camera to.  The rest of the rig was made from scrap steel we had lying around, so the total cost was about $5, the cost of the two exhaust clamps.  The whole assembly is incredibly stout and I’m not at all worried about losing the camera.

We took the Jeep for some test drives with the camera mounted on the passenger side and also the front, and also tested the audio pickup using lapel microphones while driving.  My initial concern was that the tires and exhaust would be so loud that you would not be able to hear the people talking inside the Jeep, even though both Jon and Frank would each have their own mic.  We were even talking about swapping tires out to some all-terrains or something else that wouldn’t have as aggressive a tread as the Boggers on my Jeep do.  Turns out that although it’s noisy, it’s easy to hear what the people are saying on the tape.  The noise that you DO hear just adds to the atmosphere of it being a Jeep.  Surprisingly, wind noise was not really a factor.  Having the doors on (which we will during the shoot) will help block the wind even more.

With the side mount, vibration was not much of an issue.  What little there was looked normal and natural.  The front mount seemed to have more bounciness, so we may need to use some additional ratchet straps and perhaps fabricate a standoff to help keep the bounce out of the camera.  I don’t mind a LITTLE shake; what we have is not horrible but we can improve on it.

For now, the paint is drying on the camera mount parts.

No other events are scheduled for the month, so keep the heat on in the garage and get ready for inspections on March 6th at Jill’s house.  For a list of what we’re inspecting for, there’s a pdf download on the Info page.  And of course, keep tuning in right here every Sunday night for more entries in the 2009 MIJC video production log!

June 27, 2009 (10 hours)

After some online research into shooting locations, Jon and I made an exploratory trip to Joliet to see if shooting at any of the original locations would be possible.  The prison from the beginning of the movie (Joliet Correctional Center, which was an active prison in 1980) was decommissioned in 2002 but is still standing.  We found great locations to shoot exteriors that would be nearly identical to the movie, and we also plan on reusing a few of the establishing shots from the original movie that would be too difficult to get now, such as the crane shots of prisoners marching through the yard and aerials of smokestacks in Joliet.

While we were at the prison taking pictures, several other people saw what we were doing and stopped to take pictures themselves, including an off-duty police officer who told us we should have no trouble shooting our scenes when we come back.  When we drove by later, there were even MORE people there taking pictures.  We’re not sure if we started this or if it’s an everyday occurrence.

Since it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, we decided to try and visit some of the other original Chicago shooting locations, most of which are in or near the downtown area.  We started heading north out of Joliet, looking for someplace that would have free wireless Internet so we could look up the other original shooting locations.  We finally found the Lemont Public Library and looked up a dozen or so addresses to try in downtown Chicago from a helpful website.

We got to Lake Shore Drive and unsuccessfully looked for the “Illinois Nazi Bridge”  for about 20 minutes.  This is the scene near the beginning of the movie where the Bluesmobile runs the Nazi Party off the bridge into the river.  The bridge is supposed to be in Jackson Park, just south of the Museum of Science and Industry on Lake Shore Drive.  We think it may not be reachable by car but we were running out of time and wanted to see more, so we skipped it and forged ahead.

Ray’s Music Exchange was next, which was in a shifty neighborhood on 47^th Street.  It is now Shelly’s Loan Company, the sign for which looks similar to the Ray’s sign in the movie.  The mural is still on the side wall where everyone was dancing in the movie.  We snapped a couple pictures and got back in the car.

We then looked for the Soul Food Café, which was Aretha Franklin’s restaurant in the movie (it was in reality called Nate’s Deli).  It was originally on Maxwell Street, just off Halstead.  On paper it looked close, but it took us awhile to get there.  Turns out the weekend we picked to go up there was actually Gay Pride weekend, so there were some parades going on clogging up traffic… not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I was prepared for another pretty bad neighborhood, but as it turns out, the entire neighborhood was demolished in the 1990’s to put up brand-new condos, apartments and stores in an effort to spruce up the neighborhood around UIC’s campus.  In retrospect, we would have known that if we had clicked one more link on the website we were using back at the Lemont Library!  Instead, Jon’s GPS told us we had arrived at our destination and the restaurant was nowhere in sight.  Ahh, progress.

Next was Lower Wacker Drive, and the entrance/exit ramps at Monroe Street where the Bluesmobile jumped over the police cars and caused one of the smaller police-car pileups near the end of the movie.  We found the ramps, but I missed the turn and not knowing the downtown area very well, it took us awhile to get onto Lower Wacker itself.  We finally found our way down there and after Jon’s obligatory delivery of Elwood’s line; “this is definitely Lower Wacker Drive!!”, we got dumped onto the Eisenhower Expressway headed away from town.  It was starting to get late, so we decided to head back to Peoria.

We had wanted to visit more locations, like the Palace Hotel, the tunnel where they parked for the hotel gig, the school playground where they stole the giant speaker, the orphanage, and Elwood’s residence: the Plymouth Hotel.  But we were out of time, and navigating the downtown area was pretty stressful.

All in all, it was a successful trip.  Shooting at the prison is definitely a go (we’ll probably do an early morning shoot to avoid traffic) but we’ll need to think long and hard about the logistics of a downtown Chicago shoot.  I suspect we would need permits to shoot on city streets, or we’d risk getting hassled by cops.  Even just finding a place to park and unload the Jeep from a trailer would be difficult.

Here are the photos from our eventful day…