Day Three Is A Wrap!

Production on Hold My Beer continued this past Sunday, with fun and successful shoots taking place at my house (for a montage scene) as well as Seize the Bagel's Cascade Park location (a place you might have seen in these previous posts).

Big thanks to Seize the Bagel owners Cindy and Bruce Yamamura for generously allowing us to use their space, and also for being extras in the scene!

And so with that, we are now halfway done with principal photography. Day Four is scheduled for next month and will take place at another of our most favorite places in town. Stay tuned...

Second Player Software

Guess what? In addition to music, novels, comics, podcasts, beer, and film, my band-slash-multimedia production team Second Player Score is now getting into (insert drum roll here)...video game development!

That's right, video game development. More specifically, we're developing a video game that will be a tie-in to the Hold My Beer film project. We have a concept and a storyline for an old-school Zelda-style adventure game that isn't a direct adaptation of the film itself but is still tangentially connected to it.

However, we don't have the resources to develop that entire idea right now, so what we're doing instead is making one of the minigames that will be part of the larger game. It's an arcade-style game where the player, an apprentice beer-brewer, needs to earn their stripes by washing kegs. The picture you see above is an early prototype of the player character (the final version will be a bit different).

The goal is to have this game completed and ready for launch at the same time as the film. Keep watching this space for updates!

Movie Roundup: Rom-Com Edition

Confession: I am an unapologetic fan of the romantic comedy/dramedy genre (if you've been following this blog, then you probably already knew that). Have any other fellow fans noticed that there seems to have been an uptick in new movies of this ilk recently? Or does it just seem like that to me? Anyway, here's a bunch that I've watched:

The Idea of You

Haiku commentary:

Divorced single mom

Dates younger boy band member

Unlikely meet-cute

Anyone But You

Loosely based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, this was predictable but fun, which, really, is kind of the point. Also, I said out loud to my TV, "Hey, that's President Ritson from the MCU!" 

Irish Wish

This one got bonus points in my book for being publishing-industry-adjacent (the main character is a book editor), having a light magical element, and showing scenes of people drinking Guinness. Mmm, Guinness.

Upgraded

This one (loosely based on Cinderella) kind of confused me a little at first, because the promo materials seemed to imply that the plot was airport/airplane-centric, when in fact an airport/airplane was just the location of the meet-cute. Oh well, whatever. Also, I said out loud to my TV, "Hey, that's Mal from Shadow and Bone!"

Yesterday

Not really a new movie (it's from 2019), but relatively-recently released on Netflix, so it's new to me. Delightful premise (struggling musician wakes up to an alternate reality where he's the only one who remembers the Beatles), and yes, it's a romantic comedy. Wikipedia says so!

Plus One

Not really a new movie (like Yesterday, it's also from 2019), but relatively-recently released on Netflix, so it's new to me. Predictable but fun, which, really, is kind of the point. Also, as I've said before, Maya Erskine is hilarious and amazing. Also also, I said out loud to my TV, "Hey, that's Hughie from The Boys!"

Day Two Is A Wrap!

A fun and successful day of shooting a couple of scenes (plus parts of two montages) for Hold My Beer was had this past Sunday!

("Look into the light!")

Thanks again to our amazing cast and crew, we had a lot of fun and everything went quite smoothly, despite the fact that the director/producer (ahem) budgeted too little time for one big scene and too much time for the montages, causing one of our actors to have to sit around doing nothing for longer than was expected (sorry, Rich!) Still, we managed to wrap an hour early, and the food was excellent once again (thanks, Bobbie!)

Day Three is scheduled for later this month, and will be our first shoot at a commercial location. Wish us luck! In the meantime, besides doing editing and pre-production, I'll also be heading up the development of a video game that will be a tie-in to the film. More on that to come!

Behind The Scenes

Filming for Hold My Beer resumes this weekend! And in preparation, we did some preproduction work on location this past Sunday, which included moving lights around, figuring out how to manually open a garage door, and pretending to drink beer samples (pictured below).

Ah, the glamour of show business. Stay tuned for another update next week!