Mionic Man Movies

No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool on You Tube! Check it out here:

No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool

I just want to let you know that all of the 2007 Coming Up Shorts
films will be airing as a block on KDHX TV Channel 21 on Sundays at
8:30pm through the end of December. After that they will be playing
randomly as filler.  This includes our film.

For those of you who couldn’t attend… good news!  We were definitely a crowd pleaser.  Pockets of laughter all throughout the theatre, and I only knew two people in the place outside of the 3 that came with me.  A loud applause came up at the end for our movie, and I was happy.  There were lots of good films in the contest, and a lot of them didn’t win, including ours.  But realize that the winner was an alumni film student from Webster University, has made many films, and has never won an award for any of them until now.  So for a debut film, I think we were among good company to even be in the running like we were.  I’m sorry John couldn’t make it because there was one other character who showed up in costume from Bodybag Man.  The director/actor of that film shuffled down the aisle as best he could entirely zipped up inside his body bag costume.  We never did see his face, or his body for that matter.  It would have been hilarious to see one of our actors there in costume as well.  But no matter!  It was a great night to be a filmmaker.  Will there be another Mionic Man Movie?  Only time will tell.  Maybe next year, Monica and I will flip-flop producer and director rolls and we’ll see her name up on the screen instead of mine for the main credit.  That would be cool.  It was kind of odd to get that kind of credit at the beginning especially since Monica wrote, directed, edited, and scored our whole project.  I just pretty much signed the paper work because I’m over 18 years of age (very much over).  So I think… yes, I know I would like to make another.  Stay tuned for more opportunities to see this one though.  I’ll keep you posted.

Hear ye, hear ye!  The first public screening of “No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool” will be August 23′rd 8:00pm at Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium.  For directions go to the following:  http://www.webster.edu/filmseries/directions.htm

They will announce award winners for the Coming Up Shorts contest that evening as well (will we win?  come and find out!).  Tickets will be on sale at the door: $6 general admission, $5 with student ID.

Farmer John

Originally uploaded by micahnova

Well, if I had any doubt that we were going to pull this off, it was removed after Saturday’s shoot. Thanks Devin, Sharon, John, and Margaret for all your hard work! We were very busy so I was unable to get any more than 3 photos from the day’s activity, but believe me, we tackled some very difficult scenes on Saturday. I took a look at the raw footage last night at KDHX and was blown away by several takes. We had such a perfect day! You can even see blue sky (and we didn’t use any filters!). The indoor scene is perfect, and in one take! I’m very impressed with it (beautiful lighting effects on that scene, Devin).

Cast, please retain your costumes in case we have to re-shoot something. Some of the outdoor night scenes were a little dark, and if we can’t correct the problem in editing, we may have to re-film some minor scenes. Don’t despair though! At most, we would only have to re-do 3 shots which would take about an hour to do. So I’ll keep you posted (John… please don’t dye your hair black, but brown is fine since it’s a night scene).

Thanks again everyone! Stay tuned for announcements on screening dates.

Everyone involved:  We will be filming Saturday (tomorrow!) starting at 2:00 and going until we run out of sun or film.  So please show up at 2:00 at the same location as last time.  If you have any questions or need directions, give me a call at 314.495.4616 (Micah).  I’m providing dinner for cast and technical crew, but all extra volunteers will need to provide their own dinner.  If you were at the original meeting at Steak ‘n Shake a month ago, that means you’re on the technical crew and your dinner is covered.  If anyone cannot make it, please let me know.  The weather forecast is calling for a sunny day, so we should be good to go.  See you there!

Film Crew:  Ignore my plea for help this Saturday.  We’ve canceled the May 26′th shoot.  The next day we are hoping to film will be June 9′th (starting again at 3:00).  Mark your calendars and get back with me as soon as you can whether this date will work or not.  Thanks.

“Monica, do you want to make a movie with me?” I asked my sister 2 months ago. Radio/TV station KDHX announced a 3 minute short film contest in which selected applicants would get to use the studio’s filming and editing equipment to produce a film to be aired this summer. After submitting an application, I thought, “We probably won’t get in,” but lo and behold, an email came to me saying that we were in! Thus began the making of “No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool,” a movie about hillbillies.

Today was our first day of filming. Our ambitions ran high. The goal: to film all outdoor scenes in one afternoon. Since our film is a silent comedy with music over-dubbed, we thought we could pull it off. However, our first trouble began before the day started. All of our volunteer techies were unable to make the shoot. This included set designers and our lighting guy. No worries, right? We managed, but it definitely slowed the process. We miss you, techies! Hope you can make the next date (June 9th). Get well soon, Sharon! You are in our prayers.

Back to the day, our location was on a beautiful plot of land in Lake Saint Louis right off the boulevard. It is the perfect place to make this film. We have cornfields and farmland surrounding the area with hardly any modern houses in view. The land is owned by a youth pastor who has his place set up as a youth group clubhouse called “Josiah’s.” He also has two large sheds called “The Sharing Sheds” that I was unaware of their existence before filming. Basically, you can take things or leave things for people to take, and we found a baby crib and a scare crow that were both very valuable props for our film. Thank-you, Sharing Shed! Also, as we were getting started, one of our actor’s dads stopped by and threw two bundles of hay off his pick-up truck for us to use. What more could we have asked for… a perfect day with cool breezy weather, perhaps? We had that too.

Everyone in the film and making the film is still in high school with the exception of myself and our hillbilly mom actress, Julie Walton. Julie is a coworker and friend of mine who was born to be in the movies. She appears in the up-coming film “Ghost Image” in the out-door cafe scene. Julie’s transformation into the mom roll was amazing… talk about a character actor! We had to stuff her costume to give us the “old cranky lady” look, and she was a totally different person to see and watch. We got all of Julie’s scenes done today, I’m proud to say. Thank you, Julie Walton!

The beautiful and talented Margaret Osler is playing the roll of “hillbilly daughter.” She seemed to be something straight out of “HeeHaw” today, and is doing a great job. The scene where she skips along towards us along the white farm yard fence (which is made out of rubber?) was full of great improvisational comedy and had us all laughing for every take. Bonus Trivia Fact #46: Margaret and Monica collaborated on the original version of “No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool” nearly 4 years ago. It was just a song then (built entirely out of Garage Band loops), and now it’s the soundtrack to the film.

John Douglas, our star, has been working on a genuine farmer’s tan just for this film. If there ever was an actor that could play the part of hillbilly son, it’s John. Kentucky bred, I think something of this character must be running through his genes. After applying make-up, hair dye, and costume, John never broke character on or off film all day long, and folks, we were there from 3 to 9:00. While setting up, John would be “missing” every once in awhile and someone would ask, “Where’s John?” We would find him standing up at the edge of the drive waving to passing cars on the boulevard, or skipping and frolicking down the gravel road, or rolling in the dirt behind the Sharing Shed. It wasn’t a matter of calling “action,” it was just a matter of rolling film.

I stood in as the hillbilly father since our first choice actor had a commitment. I’m also producer, assistant director, and stand-in set designer. After applying mullet wig and a beard, I think I looked pretty red-neck! Darn tootin’. I’m Micah Liesenfeld, by the way (just in case you were wondering).

I am one-half of the film collaborative called “Mionic Man Films.” The other half is my sister, Monica Mogerman. She is the writer, director, stand-in set designer. I must say, Monica is quite the first-time director. You would never guess that someone finishing up her junior year in high school could hold her own on a film project, but she does, and does quite well. I could relax and puzzle over the technical stuff while Monica gave each actor the coaching they needed for each scene. As stressful as it was to direct at this level with minimal crew today, I think she did smashingly.

Our Costume/hair/make-up artist, Beth Wingerter also doubled as techie 2 and 3. Thanks, Beth! Our characters looked great today thanks to her talents. I fully expect to see her in more film credits after this one.

I also want to thank my Mom for sticking around and finishing up the half-made props that I ran out of time to finish last night… so thank you, Joyce Mogerman! Also, thanks to Julie’s husband, Mike, for being our documentary photographer and taking pictures of the wacky hijinks today as well as chauffeuring people up and down the hill in the car and to a restroom when needed. What a sport!

We ran out of light before we could do John’s frolicking scene (all of that frolicking today won’t go to waste, John… I promise). Monica, ever the visionary, was disappointed that we didn’t reach our ideal objective, but I’m actually super-pleased that we got as far as we did today. The fact that we operated camera equipment we had never used before, dressed and built the sets ourselves using actors as help, and filmed at a non-home movie level for the first time made for a challenging day. The gauntlet was thrown down, and we met the challenge head on. And nobody quit and walked out! We will have to add a third day, I believe, but that’s fine. We can do it.

By-the-by, we may be doing that make-up shoot this Friday (May 25th) or Saturday (May 26th) from 3 to 8 or 9:00 again. We could use at least 1 techie and one lighting guy. Our make-up artist can’t make this date, so if anyone would volunteer as our make-up artist stand-in (if you know anything about theatrical make-up) we would highly appreciate that as well. Any takers, please call me: 314.495.4616 or email me: micahnova@micahnova.com. This is strictly volunteer work, but you’ll at least get fed, I promise.

To view more pictures of the making of this film, visit:  HERE