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That's a wrap!

Principal photography on "Son of Tiny" has wrapped! Below is a brief overview of the two nights of filming.

Wednesday night: This was the night that we shot all of the exteriors for the film. I moved the filming location from Trumbull to Norwalk to give us a longer shooting night. With Trumbull being 30 mins passed Norwalk (during rush hour), we were able to shoot for an entire extra hour. Plus the starring actress needed to take a train back to Brooklyn, so I found this would maximize what little time we had. We couldn't start shoot it until it was dark so I set the crew call for 6:30 so we could have the whole scene lit and ready to go by 8:00. Everything went according to schedule. (Something that rarely happens with filmmaking) While we were breaking for dinner halfway through the shoot, I noticed that it had begun to rain. It was light rain but was noticeable on film. I crossed my fingers and fortunately the rain had stopped by the time dinner was over. It did frighten me a little bit, but what is Halloween without at least a little scare?

We wrapped the lead actress at about 10:30 so we could get her back on the train so she could get a little rest for the next day. Tiny showed up at about 10:30 and we shot him and our titular character and wrapped up filming about 11:15. Our nine year old actor had a hard time staying awake but did a commendable job fighting through exhaustion. 

Something frightening did happen on set. Tiny's mask began to melt! I had received the first Tiny mask back in 2009 for the first movie. It lasted for filming of the first three Tiny movies as well as his wrestling matches in the Horror Wrestling Federation. It had lasted me through a special Halloween back in 2010 when I wore the Tiny costume in Salem, MA and took pictures with at least 100 people. Finally the mask began to wear out. When worn a lot, the condensation on a mask could start to wear down the rubber and they begin to fall apart. I keep these masks well protected during the off-season but, the wear and tear finally did it in. I had purchased a back up mask, but unfortunately I had lent that to the haunted house this year for Tiny's appearance. I could imagine that the mask being worn all night for the entire Halloween season, the back up mask may suffer the same fate. So now I need to try to get a new mask made for any future Tiny movies.

Thursday night: We shot all of the interiors for the movie. We ended up having to eliminate and condense many locations in the house just to make sure we had enough time to film everything we needed. Each time we would have needed to change locations in the house would have cost us at least 45 minutes of time to reset. So by condensing many of the scenes into one room, we were able to make sure we got everything we needed. I found that the film may be strengthened by our decision to change the script. Our changes, based out of necessity, gave us a new theme to build upon, that I think will make for a more effective piece. Filming wrapped up at 1 in the morning. Amazingly, with our tireless crew, we were able to have the car packed with a large amount of gear in 15 minutes!

To ensure we were able to shoot everything that we needed, I decided to drive the actress back home to Brooklyn to avoid bring at the mercy of the last train to New York. It would add three hours of driving, but it would give us an extra hour and a half of filming time. At three in the morning, we were almost at the actresses house when I was pulled over for turning right on a green light. (I never knew that was a thing until then.) An officer told me that a lot of people make that same mistake so they are usually parked right by the light. So if no one likes the movie, at least the Borough of Brooklyn benefitted from production on "Son of Tiny".

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