I get a lot of questions about the process and thought I would include some of my rare journal notes, random thoughts, rants, comments, etc in this section. If you have a question or comment, email me, Daniel Millican. From time to time, I may have a pinch hitter fill in.

What I call the 6 Phases of Filmmaking:

And also...

 

PRODUCTION

Monday morning, December 9, 2002 -- In the darkness before sunrise, everything was cold and wet. A rain had settled in the day before and would stick around for a couple more. Normally this could have dire consequences-- some of our crew had just wrapped another film in Austin that had massive weather delays. But we were okay because the first three days were all indoor shots. That didn't make it any easier for the guys in Grip and Electric who had to stand out in the rain to focus the HMI's.

The first day on the set is always a magical one. It's still hard to believe you're there. But when my cell phone rang, reality brought me right back. Brian McNamara (the actor playing the lead "Roland") was on the phone saying that it was already 15 minutes past the pickup time and nobody was at the hotel to pick him, Sean and Tom up. Oh goody, our first mini-crises. Like any adroit, on-the-job director, I turned around and yelled "Joey!!!" -- the 1st AD. He took care of it. The driver was just a wee bit late and the crises had no effect on the schedule.

The first shot was Scene 22. Ben (Sean Patrick Flanery) is back at work after a tragedy in his life and he is spiraling down. Captain Carlton (Tom Wright) tries to get his attention. The scene will play in a music sequence and will be fairly short. When the AD works out a schedule, it's always good to start with something simple. This was. I needed lots of frentic activity behind Ben so the extras were choreographed. When we were finally ready to begin, I had Susan Kirr, our Line Producer, clap the first sticks. I had had her do the same on the last movie. We did a couple of takes and then moved on. The first scene (out of 122) was in the can.

The first three days were all at the same location -- interior police station. We were at the High Flex business park in North Austin and the people there were very helpful and hospitable. The first two days were pretty much all steadicam cam with operator George Niedson whom I've used for a bunch of things through the years. The third day was a long one as we hurried to finish everything there before we left that location for good. But we made our day.

Also on the third day, Jeff Speakman and Mimi Rogers arrived to town. That night, our executive producers Dan and Lisa Palmer, our local casting director Jeff Rodgers and I took the two new arrivals out to a nice dinner. I was pretty much dead meat tired, but it was a nice time anyway.

The next morning was a foggy one near Lake Travis as we setup at the Mansions at Steiner Ranch. This beautiful, 25,000 square foot mansion had just been completed a few days before after nearly two years of construction. This would serve as the home for Mimi's character, the wealth widow Eve Richards and her personal assistant Scott Sherwin (played by Speakman).

We spent two days here and as the second one winded down, Sean Patrick Flanery and Joey Lauren Adams sprang for a Starbucks run for the crew. It wouldn't be the first one but now I can see why the crews love these two. Besides being very good at what they do, the recognize and appreciate the hard work all the crew does around them.

Also, I finally got the first days "dailes" back from the lab in LA. Because of all the shipping, the dailes would arrive usually 5 working days after the photography was shot. This was a little nerve-wracking because if something was messed up from the police station shoot, we were already gone. Fortunately, most everything looked good and there was nothing that required re-shooting.

The 6th day of shooting -- the last day of the first week, were shooting Uncle Bob's house. Uncle Bob in our story is not a nice guy. This day featured some of our first real stunt work where our Vigilante and Uncle Bob get into a fight. In addition, there were exterior scenes and the day was going to be a tough one. The location we got was a great one. One our of investor's friend has a very nice house in a gated community and it was perfect. It was pretty close to Lake Travis. Transportation had a little trouble finding places to park the entire unit, but it got done. It was a good close to a good first week.

For our one day off, Brian McNamara and I played a round of golf at Barton Creek-- one of the highest rated courses in Texas. Sean, very much an athelete, let his feelings be known about golf: it wasn't a sport. He did tell us that maybe if it was timed and everyone teed off at the same moment and the winner was the one who finished first, then it might be a sport.

Brian regaled our little group with great stories about when he was in Caddyshack II and other good actor anecdotes. I was glad to be in a relaxing situation. Plus, my family was coming in that Sunday ngiht.

Jill, Joseph and Erin arrived and we went out to eat. Our biggest problem in Austin is that hardly any of the McDonald's have indoor playlands and it was getting a bit cold. Our children are not the type who can sit still inside a restaurant, but we found a McDonalds with a dark, cold outdoor playland and ate our dinner. It was wonderful to be with them.

Monday, the first day of shooting for week two had been a bit of a concern for me. It was going to be at a park in North Austin and outdoors the whole time and I needed lots of children extras. What if it was 35 degrees? Or raining? Or both? It was a December day in the upper 70's. There was a bit of cloudcover to start the day and before long it was sunny and partly cloudy. Absolutely gorgeous.

Plus, this day was our 13th anniversary. Amazing that Jill was still with me. Even more amzing is that she's renewing the contract for another year. I've always been afraid I'd lose out to free agency... But she is my biggest supporter. Without Jill, none of this would be happening. At least not from me. After the day of shooting, we had a nice quiet dinner while Mike Higgins volunteered to watch the kids. More on Mike below.

The morning was spent shooting a playground scene with lots of children. The afternoon was at the same playground, but the aftermath of an attack. Again, everything went according to schedule and no crises. We even finished a bit early. Now some of the crew is marveling at how smooth the shooting is going... which worries me. When will that other shoe drop?

It dropped the next day. It was another stunt day at the same park. In the scene, our bad guy, Cutter, abducts a little girl and is about to do bad things when the Vigilante shows up to save the day. We shot all the setup with Cutter and the little girl for the morning and planned on shooting the fight in the afternoon. In addition, we had to get a magic hour shot at a duck pond at the same park.

Everything was going smooth for the first part. The actress playing the little girl did a wonderful job. Steve Krieger, playing "Cutter" had walked up to her in the morning to introduce himself to the 8 year old and to let her know that in real life, he's really a good guy and that he had to rpetend to be a bad guy today. Krieger related that she looked at him and said, "I know, we're acting." Steve had his first acting lesson right then.

So I was a little bit worried about how our wonderful 8 year actress would handle the attack. Finally the time came for Steve to grab her and tie her up and take her to the ground. We did the take and she was fine. Even laughing. But the laughter turned to tears on the next scene where Cutter takes his knife and starts popping buttons... She got mad at herself for crying. She felt it wasn't professional. Actually it was very professional and that's the scary part of acting-- you go and find these emotions and sometimes the reaction can surprise yourself.

I got through two very tough takes that took some time and we all breathed a sigh of relief because now it was time for the Vigilante to kick Cutter's behind. It would feel good to all of us. We set up two cameras as we usually did for stunts and began shooting the fight scene. Finally Atom Vyvial, our key grip noticed that the numbers were running backwards on the A camera. The first AC's face got white. JP, the Director of Photography looked over and they all conferred. There was conjecture about what had happened, but I told JP find out for sure what happened... no guesses allowed. Everyone makes mistakes, let's find out what it is exactly without anyone trying to cover up-- that way we could fix it.

Atom, Dan and Victoria in the woods during the fight scene.

Well, the camera had accidentally gotten put in reverse, which means all those exposed takes were re-exposed. Later it led to some quite interesting footage. But by the footage calculations, our little actress would have to do the button popping scene one more time. And we lost a couple of hours.

And I want it clear that our 1st AC did an outstanding job and I would go into battle with her any day.

I was truly proud that day of everyone. We hit our first glitch and nobody worried about pointing fingers. Stuff happens on a shoot. It's how you handle the problems that can mean the difference. In the long run, everyone pulled together and in spite of the re-shooting, we still finished early. Truly amazing. And that magic hour sunset stuff? Some of the most beautiful photography in the movie. This ended up being our biggest crises and it wasn't very big at all. We were incredibly fortunate.

The next day was karate time at a large church gym. As far as extras, this would be our biggest day. Rob Hazlewood, my son's karate instructor brought 30 people down from the Dallas area. The local kenpo school of Brian Duffy provided a ton of people and we had some San Antonio folks as well. Close to a hundred people. As Jeff Speakman says, there is quite a loyal following in the Kenpo community and it's true.

The last part of the day involved us shooting some karate demonstrations for the main title credits. It all turned out great. I wish I could have used more of it... oh well, maybe in the DVD version.

Fight Consultant Rob Hazlewood: Dan told me that he needed a lot of extras for the school scene in the movie, and also that he wanted me to come to Austin to help set up the fight scenes. I told my students that they could be in the film if they could go to Austin for the day. As this was in the middle of the week and a school day for the kids I wasn't sure how many people I could come up with, but I guess 15 minutes of fame works on everybody and we had about 36 parents, adult students, and children who were able to go to Austin for the location shoot. Then Dan told me that he wanted me to be IN the film too! At the same time I had suggested that Kenpo Action star Jeff Speakman might be great for the part of Scott Sherwin. Dan attempted to contact Jeff thru his agent, but was unable to make the connection, and Dan wanted Jeff after watching some of his films that I loaned him. Finally, I e-mailed Jeff who was traveling the seminar circuit around the world and working on his own movie deal at the time. I wasn't sure Jeff would want to do the film as it was not a leading role and he had already done at least 6 films as the lead. Jeff was excited about the role and being in the movie with the other quality actors already signed. He agreed. Dan also told me that he was going to give me a couple of lines in the film! Well, I wasn't going to be able to hide in the background was I? The day of the shoot in Austin I was uneasy about everything, getting my caravan of students to the location, first time on the set, etc, but Dan's crew was great and were more than courteous and helpful to everyone. I did my first scenes with the other actors, and was surprised to learn how little time is spent on rehersal of lines. I had done stage plays when I was younger where you had to learn all the lines for a 90 minutes play and you are on stage 90% of the time. Movies are much easier! And you don't have to do the same play every night for weeks! Then I was tasked with working with Emma, the child actor playing Cassie. I was concerned that I would have enough time to train her as she did not have a martial arts background. I didn't need to wory, as Emma was a great trooper and a quick study. She did very well with everything. Jeff Speakman, who has done dynamic fight scenes in many action movies was very gracious in allowing me to work these scenes as Dan had promised me that I could do these before Jeff came aboard. Jeff's only direction to me was, "Make sure they do Kenpo and not some ridiculous thing we would never do in a real life or death situation" I also wanted to do things that would be believeable and practical for a small girl to do to adult men. Emma did it so well that she really kicked me in the face in the actual take hard enough to make my teeth chatter!!! All the extras from my school, as well as Brian Duffy's school in Austin, really enjoyed seeing how a film is made. But we started at 9am and didn't finish until about 8pm! One funny incident I remember was Bradley, one of my little students came up to Mimi Rogers while the cameras were still rolling and told her how good she did her scene!! Cut! Retake!

Jill and the kids went home that night. It was so good to have them down for the four days. I wish it could have been more. Joseph, my 5 year old, got really bitten by the movie bug, but more on that later.

Thursday, in our second week of shooting saw us at one set we would have to re-visit after the Christmas holidays. Withg the huge two week split our our shooting schedule, you try and go location by location. But because of some actor schedules, we would have to shoot in "Ben's house" once during the December portion and then again when we returned after the break.

Jeff Rodgers, Tucker Etheredge and Mike Higgins on the set at Ben's house.

Shooting in a small house can be hard. There's not much room to manuever. Plus, we had to setup base camp several blocks away. We got our shooting done and then shot a big nightime scene outside the house where Ben pulls up after his daughter has been kidnapped.

We have some very funny outtakes. Sean was to pull up quickly, jump out and ask Joey Lauren Adams some questions then they run back to the car and they both take off. Sometimes, Sean would purposely leave Joey's door locked. Then there was the take where he yells his line "Let's go!" and they both dove into the car through the windows. Ahh.... I think craft service was putting something in the beverages.

Mike Higgins wasn't happy about Sean slamming to a stop. Well you see, Mike had volunteered his car, not knowing what he was getting into...

When I was in college, I did a local access Christian music video show. One of the guys helping to put that together was an Arlington Police detective named Mike Higgins. I stayed in contact with Mike through the years and when the seeds of the idea for this story first hit me back in the mid-nineties, I remember buying him lunch and picking his brain about what all a detective would do.

Mike went on to be our police consultant on the set. I wanted to make sure that we didn't just "Hollywood" everything. I remember Mike and other police buddies laughing at how in the movies and on tv, our hero police detective sneaks down the alleyway with the gun pointed up. What's up with that? They turn the corner and they're ready to shoot any birds that may flock down on them. Real police keep the gun pointed straight ahead towards danger so they don't have to take the time of lowering the gun to the target. Mike kept us correct on that and things like detectives will clip the badge to their belt on the same side as the holster so that people that might spot the gun will also see the badge. Wow. I didn't know that.

Police Consultant Mike Higgins: I volunteered to let the production use my car to #1-save the production (Dan) money and #2-use a car (Ford Taurus) like the detective cars most police departments use. During the filming of a scene where Ben (Sean) sees the vigilante's car driving past him and in the opposite direction, Ben does a 180 degree spin around in the street (in MY car!) to chase after the vigilante. Of course Dan didn't like the first take and so he had Sean do it over and over again (I didn't know my car had it in it). It was at this time that Tucker (Dan's assistant) told me that Sean was a professional race car driver in his off time. I started breathing normally again. And I just thought the guy was messing around and showing off (he was, but professionally of course.........riiiiiiight). Another memory was when we were shooting a scene in a condo complex and Dan and Sean were in my car (again!) talking about the scene. Sean had Elvis songs playing on the CD player (as he was inclined to do during down times in the car) and he and Dan were singing and rocking out to the music. Sean got out and did his Elvis karate kicks and a couple of the ladies from the crew started singing and dancing to Elvis tunes while Sean sang to the them. It really loosened up everyone. I shot some of the shenanigans on video but Dan has the tapes and has probably burned them. I was really impressed on how well everyone on the crew worked together. Some of them had been together on other productions. They all knew their jobs and did them without prompting just as if this film was an Oscar contender. Not being on a film set before, I expected a lot of snobbishnes but I didn't see any of that. Great bunch of people. They accepted my being on the set as if I knew what I was doing.

So now we were down to the last 2 days of shooting in the year 2002... December 20 and 21st... all nighters at "the Barn."

Well actually, the 20th started while the sun was still up. I wanted to shoot our closing scene for the movie and some of the other final scenes. They involved a helicopter so I wanted it to come early so that we could get our closing shot, just as the sun went down, so that it might look like dawn as we pull up and away. When the helicopter arrived, somebody behind me said "where's the rest of it?" It was a very small helicopter. Another crew person looked around for who had the remote control for it. Well, I was the operator on this shot and would be hanging out the door filming. The camera people gave the camera 3 or 4 safety straps. I got two. I guess I know where I rate. Plenty of people would be glad to step in to direct. We did about 7 takes. I knew the amount of sunlight would be real critical-- it had to look like night but with just enough ambient light. You who watch the movie can judge if we got it right.

The rest of the night we shot our most important scene featuring Mimi. It wasn't an easy one because there was lots of emotion plus it was in the 30's. And at one point, the lama's or whatever other livestock at this ranch started making some pretty interesting noise. I don't know what the AD department did, but we didn't hear them again. Actually, come to think about it, I'm pretty sure the noise came from within the barn-- some peacocks were up there.

After Mimi's scene, it was a picture wrap for her and Jeff Speakman. I enjoyed working with them both and wished it had been longer.

Our last night was a tough one shooting a fight sequence in the barn. Besides being cold, the hay and dust was causing everyone's allergies to go crazy. It was now almost Christmas and the two week break was just so close...

Ashley Hallford was one of the girls who froze with us int he barn that night. Ashley was put into the uneviable position that going in her part might be cut. I try to be upfront with everyone. She took it like a real professional. She writes:

Actress Ashley Hallford: Hello, my name is Ashley Hallford and I'm 14 years old. I was cast for Shelly, but Dan said they might go with the younger Shelly they cast, so you will definitely be seeing me in the barn as one of the abducted kids but I'm not sure about the other scenes! When my agent called me about the audition, I couldn't wait. I went to the audition, and then received a call for a callback! I went back and soon after got the call saying I got the part! I was thrilled! My experience with Dan Millican for A Promise Kept was really enjoyable. He is really professional and fun to work with. Dan didn't make everything so strict; he made sure everyone had a good time. Dan was really hilarious so at first when I was kind of shy, he made me feel like I fit right in. Everyone was really nice making it a really comfortable environment. All the actors and crew were really professional when needed, but a blast when they weren't working. Emma Nicolas did an awesome job even though she was pretty young, Sean Patrick Flannery was astounding like always, Mimi Rogers made her legend live on doing an amazing performance, Joey Lauren Adams was very witty and an incredible actor, Steve Krieger did a great job being evil and all the other actors did fabulous. Even though it was really cold a lot, I loved the experience and hope to be working with Dan again!

It was Joey Lauren Adams picture wrap on that last night in December. Her final shot was shattering a board on Roland's back and being pistol whipped. We finished at 4 or 5 am or something like that. I went to the hotel room and took some allergy medicine and tried to breathe but only succeeding in hacking up some remnants of the barn.

First half done. Seond half coming!

One early January Sunday evening I got a call on my cell phone. Caller ID not available. Lately this means somebody from LA. Tomorrow was the day I was driving back to Austin and then in mid-week we begin shooting again. I answered the phone. It was Sean Flanery. He was wondering where everyone was. He was at the hotel but there was no call sheet for tomorrow. Shoot, somehow communicatio wires got crossed and he thought we were resuming on the first Monday after the holidays. But he was okay with the news-- he just was afraid we'd all given up and decided not to resume. haha.

The next two days were like Pre-Production days. We met with Department Heads and went over schedules and visited locations for tech scouts. Then came our first day back-- Wednesday January 6. Over the holidays, I had a great chance to look at the footage and edit what we had together. I noticed that I wasn't keeping my eyes as open as I like to do and had missed a couple of shots that I could have added. We were on schedule and sometimes ahead of schedule... I needed to get my head up and look around.

The first couple of days I did catch some extras. We had gorgeous Austin weather and I moved one scene between Ben and Cassie from the kitchen to the backyard. I also saw this great swingset and I quickly had wardrobe find something black for Cassie and decided to add a shot where Cassie is mourning her mothers loss. I got that one plus at the end of the day, we were slightly ahead of schedule and twilight was coming. I always try to get something shot during "magic hour." I put Cassie on the curb of her house waiting and watching for her mother to come home. At that moment, a cold front moved in and blew the trees and Cassie's hair and for a moment, everything was perfect. And we got it. You can see both shots in the montage in the first part of the movie right after Ben's wife's death.

Friday was out at a farmhouse out in the boonies. I remember Tucker (my assistant) and I got a late start. I think it's because I mentally misjudged the drive and did not give us enough time. So as we drove out there I called the set to tell them I would be late. I also asked JP to get some Sunrise b-roll (which I also used in the first part of the movie). While driving I came up with another idea-- I remembered from our tech scout that there was an old derelict school bus just sitting there in the weeds. I made myself a note that if we got ahead, I would take "John Cutter", our early child predator out there and have him sing "Wheels on the Bus."

It is really hard for me to be late. I was really chomping on the bit as we drove. When we got there, we were set up for a shot where the Vigilante is practicing with the huge Barret 50 caliber sniper rifle. We had the weapons master on site because we were actually firing it this morning (blanks of course).

After the rifle and a special effects shot where we blow up a bullet proof vest, we moved inside to the farmhouse for one of our early scenes where police detective Roland fights Cutter and rescues a little girl. One of my concerns from researching this story with distributors is that they don't like young children in peril. But as a filmmaker, the emotion elicited from seeing someone so little being abused is so much stronger. So to cover myself I shot this scene twice-- one with a little girl and one with a teenager (played by Ashley Hallford-- see above). So all day we shot this sequence.

We finished inside with the big fight scene. What was really a pleasure with this one is that one of my actors was a stuntman anyway and the other (Brian McNamara playing "Roland") was an incredible trooper and did all his own stunts. The last one inside was where Roland is against the wall and Cutter fires two near misses through the wall (in this case a closed door) right by Roland's head. Steve Krieger playing Cutter is the Special Effects Coordinator anyway so it was his job to fire a pellet gun and just miss Brian's face. I think Brian didn't have to go far to find that emotion called fear. Look for that in the movie as well.

We still had to get one special effects shot (a tire popping flat) but I really wanted to get that school bus scene. So against the better judgement of Joey Stewart (the 1st AD), I split off the camera crew and took the "B Camera" and the sound guys over to the school bus. All I can say was that it was freaky great. For the next three weeks my thoughts were "where in the world am I going to put this scene?" You'll find the answer in the movie. It ends up introducing the Cutter character.

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