Official Idea Productions

Don of La Mancha in Five Weeks

September 8th, 2006

Thank God that August is a long month because I never could have finished Don of La Mancha if it wasn’t. Jeff always finds these contests at the last minute…or maybe he just holds on to them to make me have to jump…j/k…but anyway it’s been a fast and furious ride for the last 32 days, and I want to take a rest, but there’s no rest for me these days.

There never really was a script for this thing until about two days before the shoot because I kept having to change the scenarios as problems crept up. I basically knew within a day of finding out about the contest that I wanted to do something with a Don Quixote theme; from there I just needed to figure out how it would be done. I pulled in a lot of help from friends at the office and pretty much everyone I knew. They gave me a lot of ideas for locations and props I could use to create a surreal landscape for my Quixote story. Also, they gave me a lot of encouragement.

My first week was pretty much buying stuff from ebay and trying to figure out the costume. I wanted something that looked like it had been put together peicemeal out of kitchen supplies…so I went to Target and spent entirely too much on a colinder, tin foil, a cake dish, and a bunch of other strange stuff that no one but a little kid would ever think to make a suit of armor out of. Then it was off to Manards to round out the rest of the costume. I took all this stuff home and spent about 5 hours banging holes in things and covering other things in tinfoil. I live in an apartment and my neighbors probably think I’m nuts by now. Who builds a six foot windmill and a suit of armor in an Eagan apartment building? I got some wierd looks that night. Anyway, here’s what it looked like when I was finished. Very idiotic…but very cool.

I scouted out locations before the shoot and found several different parks and places that could work for my shoot. I wanted a lot of differnet locations to go along with Sancho’s narration and I wanted all the locations to be fairly close together. My only real scene specific location was the Windmill Cafe which is situated on HWY 13 between Eagan and Savage in the lower Twin Cities area. I was a little worried that the owner might back out on my. I’d called them up and even shown up for a visit to chat, but you never know what you may get come shoot date. The owner was really nice and we didn’t have any problems shooting.

The footage that day was gorgeous and I wish I could have used more of it. I’d love to shoot a film or something there one day.

You can’t see it, but the woman that throws Don out of the Windmill Cafe is dressed as Dulcinea. Unfortunately I opted for using the wide angle lens to capture both the epic feel of the surroundings and to add a Monty Pythonesque feel to Don Quixote’s running about. It looks better on a television, but I can’t complain with the final result.

I shot four scenes that afternoon, including the baseball diamond scene…in which I added the background windmills in CG…and one that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Check out the before and after pics of the windmills, they turned out great!

I would have liked to have shot more on the first day, but I had yet to receive my windmills…and such is the problem with ebay, as well as the plight of filmakers everywhere: nothing goes like you planned.

I received my windmills a few days later. We had planned to shoot the first shot of Tim destroying the windmill in a nearby field before finishing the indoor scene with Sancho in my living room. I was on a tight schedule and we didn’t have a lot of time to mess around. Unfortunatly it was raining out and tornados were dropping all around the Twin Cities area. Tim got suited up and we waited, watching the storm clouds pass overhead.

A few cast and crew memebers called their families. Most were all right though Tims sister’s car had been destroyed by tennis ball sized hail earlier that evening. We kind of laughed it off, but it wasn’t really all that funny and after one failed attempt to shoot the outdoor scene, we gave up.

A few days later the weather still wasn’t cooperating. Beyond that, I still had to find an actor willing to play the man with the hose. The first few people I asked decline..which I guess in retrospect was a good thing because the ultimate result of that was my asking Ray to play the part. Rays a talented guy and was way over qualified, but he loves doing this stuff and it’s great working with him. We had to move the shoot date to accomodate and I nearly had a conniption thinking about how many times I’d have to go to the equiptment rental places just to get a single shot, but it all worked out. I got my last parting shots, broke a couple golf clubs in the process, and everything was in the can.

Overall, this was one of the most complicated shoots I’ve ever worked on. It had its ups and downs but turned out really well in the end. If you get the chance, check out the short over at windblow.us, and vote for “Don of La Mancha”. Voting polls are open through the end of September, 9-30-06.

If you have comments on the video, or anything on the site then feel free to let me know. Also, check out the rest of the pictures on the Official Photos page.

Later.

Matt Kudej

Resident Director

Entry Filed under: Commercials, Don of La Mancha