Tyler was very excited for winter break because he thought he'd have all kinds of time to shoot movies. What he hadn't considered was that it's a tough time to get his actors all together because of their own family plans, and that his dad was still working on weekdays and wouldn't always be available to chauffeur him and all his gear around town. He's been wanting to shoot this one particular scene for awhile, but it had to be done on a weekend because it takes place in an empty parking garage. The one he had scoped out was in downtown Mesa near the courthouse. He managed to get his actors all together (Peyton and Camryn from school, Lacy and Ava) for a day of shooting. Have I mentioned how cold it's been here lately? It was another cold and windy day, so being inside a parking garage with the wind blowing through it did not make for a comfortable shoot. Grandpa met up with them too, and I showed up with some pizzas after I got done flying. Here is what I found when I arrived.
Here they are taking a break for some pizza, and so Tyler could apply some makeup on his actors. Peyton is supposed to look like he just survived an explosion.
I forgot to mention that Dave is one of the actors too. He plays a character named Michael, and he's the father of Ava and Lacy (who are sisters with super powers).
This looks pretty harmless, right? They're not disturbing anyone, despite the sign overhead that said No Trespassing. We saw two other cars drive through the garage and didn't think much of it, other than to assume they were probably wondering what the heck we were doing there in the corner of the garage.
Well, apparently one of those passersby was concerned enough to call the police. Three Mesa Police cars came flying into the garage, clearly prepared for there to be some serious crimes being committed there in the corner of the garage. The one guy got out and asked what was going on and I explained that our son was shooting a movie with some friends. "Do you have a permit?" Um...no. I said something like, "our 12 year old son is an aspiring film maker and he's just shooting a little scene with a couple friends from school." The officer was really nice, and acknowledged that if it was any kind of 'real movie' (he obviously hasn't seen Tyler's work), we'd need to get a permit, which is quite a bit of work. He also said they got a call from someone who said they thought they saw a shotgun when they drove by. I'm not sure what they would have thought was a gun, but we obviously didn't have anything even remotely gun-like. They stuck around for a couple minutes, but didn't tell us to go home. They were really nice about it. As they were getting ready to leave, I joked with the one officer that he probably has a scene somewhere in his script where he'd need a police officer, but he laughed that off and said they're not allowed to do that. It was a good lesson to Tyler that confirmed what we've been telling him about using fake guns in his films--you never know when the cops are going to get called and come upon a scene when they think there are guns present. It's just not something you mess with. Sorry dude, no guns! It was nice to see the quick response by our Mesa PD though--and I'm glad they didn't make him shut down. I'm actually a little surprised that they didn't. It was pretty exciting!
