How did 3 college students who had very little experience with shooting film hunker down and create the short version of 'A Tip for the Pizzaman?'

Read on.

If you haven't already read how the script was written and eventually condensed, click here for the  history page.

Brown, Hnatow and Krcil were spurred into action by the rapidly approaching date of a street fair to be held in Selinsgrove.  As it so happens, one of the film's key scenes, and the final scene of the short version, takes place at a street fair.  Rather than cast a bunch of people and try to create a street fair, the trio chose to take the film to the street fair.

The casting process, out of necessity to be ready for the street fair, had to be conducted as quickly as possible.

The weekend before the street fair, Krcil hung flyers all over Susquehanna's campus telling of auditions to be held on the coming Wednesday.  People interested in helping out with on- or off- camera duties were encouraged to show or to call or e-mail with questions.

The turnout at auditions was fairly small, but it was sufficient to fill the roles provided by the script and, more importantly, the roles needed for the street fair scene, slated for filming three days later.

There were also enough people willing to help behind the camera.
 

An arduous task for a week-long span, especially when other classwork required some attention.  Krcil took it upon himself to draw the storyboard for the street fair scene.

And Krcil can't draw to save his grandmother.

Brown and Hnatow were making posters that would be needed for the scene, locating props, or arranging to borrow technical equipment.
 

The wallet budget began as the trio purchased some clothing, hard-to-locate cotton candy (finally found some at a Wal-Mart in Lewisburg), grape juice for the (in)famous spill scene, tofu and some shish kebab sticks for the (in)famous tofu-on-a-stick scene, and even some rope and a large teddy bear/badger looking stuffed animal for the band's brief 3-second cameo.

Most of the equipment was borrowed the university.  A couple of cameras belonged to cast and crew members, a boom mic was provided by Hnatow, and the extension for the mic was borrowed from the campus radio station, WQSU-FM.

The shooting lasted from the last weekend in September all the way through the days before Thanksgiving.  Many of the delays resulted from schedule conflicts with cast members who were to be in the same scene, acquiring the appropriate number of technical personnel (believe it or not, it was hard to find 2 people (one for camera, one for boom mic) some days), or even the weather conditions not being quite right.

During this time, Brown, Hnatow, and Krcil were searching for locales for future shoots.  Everything from a place to pose as the pizza parlor Paul worked for to the ever-present pothole in the parking lot.
 

The scenes were shot out of sequence, as they usually are in film, with the last scene of the movie being the first scene that was shot.

The cast and crew worked miracle after miracle as the deadline to complete the project (Krcil's early graduation) rapidly approached.  Procuring the basement of Brown's landlady to use in the very important 'Paco prays to his father' scene (a credit that was omitted inadvertently) and running to the Bloomsburg Fair to complete the final scene due to washout in the final sequence (even though Brown and Krcil forgot to turn the mic on) were some of the things they had to wing.

One things they thought of that wasn't used was paying for a helicopter ride to get an aeriel shot of the fair.  Some of the scenery turned out all right, but Krcil, who was recording from the helicopter, couldn't hold the camera steady enough to use any of the footage, and wasn't able to find the fair.

Uh-huh...
 

The directing was interesting, as Brown and Hnatow directed most of the time from off-camera, while Krcil directed from on-camera.  Overall, this teamwork led to a thorough exploration of all the options, a number of petty squabbles and temper flares, and a fairly-well directed project for first-time filmmakers.

Ain't that the truth.  Krcil and Brown can particularly attest to this, as they spent a total of about 24-26 hours putting together a 25-minute production from about 5 hours worth of footage on 7 tapes.

Originally, they were going to hire an outside source to edit the project with one or the other looking over the shoulder.  They drew up an edit decision list in under 2 days, and Krcil began calling production companies in the Pittsburgh area.  Finding none within the wallet budget, he settled for an independent editor.  Then, after determining that it would go nowhere after an hour's worth of work (and cost a lot of $$$$), Krcil realized that he was going to have to wing the editing job on his own on an editor that was not exactly state of the art.

The character generator was also not up to the level he'd hoped, but the project had to be edited within 2 weeks...in the midst of finals, looking for a job, and everything else.  Copies also had to be made for all of the dedicated souls who had been so kind as to help Brown, Hnatow, and Krcil with their college career-long endeavor.

Krcil had to overcome such difficulties as finding alternate footage when a source was too washed out, was recorded at the wrong speed, or, in one instance, didn't even EXIST!

Ad-libbing as best he could, he was able to insert a critical sound effect, a closing music track, create a multiple-dissolve effect on an editor that did not allow such a thing to be done under normal circumstances (which impressed Dr. Burns...see quote above), and splice scenes that were taped weeks apart with clever(?) L-cuts.

Dr. Hastings even commented on the editing without being asked.  (Hmm...is the author of this webpage bragging?)  By the way, she said it was good.

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If you're interested in this work and have any questions WHATsoever about it, e-mail me and ask.  More than likely, I'll be happy to answer in more words than will be needed.