Hope Bridge - Day 2

Well, there’s no doubt about it. Hope Bridge is now in full production mode. We’ve moved from Wilmore to Lawrenceburg where a significant part of our film will be shot. Lawrenceburg is as Americana as it gets, especially its classic representation of “Main Street USA”. It is a perfect place to open our production office and get to work.

With that in mind, day 2 of production was a full day lasting well into the night and ending at 3:00 a.m. We upped our game and shot six and a half minutes of screen time. I’m sure the crew was exhausted, but there was a sense of satisfaction in our continued progress of making a movie that we can be proud of and that will undoubtedly make an impact on culture.

Our main location for the day was a downtown bar located on Main Street. Our art department had the responsibility of transforming the location into Jim’s Pool Hall. It’s really amazing when you walk into a location and you think “we’re really going to shoot here”.

Teresa Strebler is our production designer. Teresa and her team performed their magic by transforming the bar into a place that actually became a character in our film. It’s amazing watching them make the impossible possible.

Teresa said that they came in with a blank canvas, and three hours later she and her crew of three turned over the set to our director, Joshua Overbay. She went on to say that there were a number of logos that had to be covered up. “We produced 20 band posters to decorate the walls. We also used classic road signs and state license plates to give the place a finished look. The DP wanted to use the existing lights over the pool tables. So we had to make that work with fake covers over existing logos. Overall, I was happy with the results considering the time we had.”

I had a chance to see some of the footage, and all I can say is, “It looks impressive”. The smoke effect added a whole new dimension. Teresa is a graduate of Ohio University. She got interested in production design in college when she began to wonder why there wasn’t anything on the walls in the student films she was working on. She says, “What I do is not to look at things as they are but how they can be.” Her goal is to embellish each set to actually become a character in the story.

Usually, after a few days of preparation and a couple of days of actual production, you usually see a few cracks. To tell you the truth, I don’t see any signs of tension or conflict. There are good things going on in Lawrenceburg, and Hope Bridge looks like it’s shaping up to be something special.

Sunday is a day off, and I hope everybody gets some well-needed rest. There’s much more to come.