AIR Set Construction

The decision is to build the cave into an 8' x 20' container on the equipment yard. The whole set goes up in one week. Charlie plasma-torches support beams across a six foot section of the container.

Peter clears out the space to begin hanging aluminum mesh.  He also does a lot of math to figure out how much weight and pressure the water will exert.

Peter drops in lumber against the welded bars, and begins hanging aluminum to shape the cave.

The aluminum is screwed into the iron container, which Peter reinforces with several tons of concrete and dirt.  Then Peter fits the inside of the cave with a heavy, waterproof liner.

Chuck and Peter spray foaming. It is freezing cold in the mountains at night. We're working off of Peter's flashlight.

11pm on Friday night.  Foam party!

These are my hands at my ballroom dance competition the day after spray-foaming. My poor dance partner had to hold these crusty hands.

Lesson learned: gloves.  The only way to get spray foam off your hands is sandpaper.

Production Designer Michael Barton puts in three coats of paint in three tints to texture the cave walls.

Finally, a fiberglass resin layer is added to water-proof the paint. The resin is toxic so Peter and I have to wear a protective suit with an oxygen mask to apply the coat. I wish I had a picture of this - the outfit is post-apocalyptic.

Spray foam, $200.  Waterproof cave, priceless.

Peter fills the cave with 1400 gallons of water off a water truck and fills two 750 gallon water tanks for standby. If you peek inside the container you can see the cave set.

AIR - Location Scouting

My next film shoot of 2009 is a 16 page thriller short I wrote called "AIR."  The premise... Six soldiers are trapped in a cave. The water level is rising and oxygen is running out. In order to survive long enough to be rescued, the soldiers begin killing each other off, one by one.

The shoot is technically challenging but I think we've raised enough money to see us through production. To see if this shoot is possible, Cinematographer Chuck and Producer Peter and I location scouted an equipment yard up in the Verdugo Mountains.

Chuck, in a contemplative pose...

The trick is we need to build a cave that can gradually fill with water. This proves to be much more complicated than I imagined when writing the script. For one thing, this equipment yard has no running water. So we need to figure out how to move 3,000 gallons of water to this location, and then find a place to put it.

Chuck and Peter in deep thought.

We have a few ideas. My main goal is to get this set built well before production, to give us as much time as possible to test camera and lighting.  We need to make sure this is feasible before we drag a crew up here and put them in the water!

Can we fit a cave in a flat bed?