Interview Room 3

Our May production, Interview Room 3, went very well.  Here is a photo of most of the cast and crew (not me, though… I must have been getting lunch or something.)

photo by Judy Garlow

“Interview Room 3″ is a police drama that I co-produced that centers on a college student (Morgan) who is brought into a police interview room and finds out that her father was killed.  As the two detectives talk to her, we find out there may be more to the story…

Production-wise, I have to say I was relieved to have only one location.  Not like on Tomboys, where we were driving all over town trying to film all the different scenes.  We had some problems finding an actual interview room, though…  It needed to be a sparse, windowless room.  We tried actual police stations, but none of them were interested in having a cast and crew of 30 people hanging around their station for eight hours, for some reason.  I contacted a local community college to see if we could use one of their classrooms, and no one would return my calls.  Then it occurred to me that my place of employment has conference rooms that are outside the “secure” area, and are used when we want to meet with customers or vendors without having to jump through hoops with security to get them through the security gates.  No one would have a need for the rooms on a weekend, and when I asked the appropriate people if I could use it to shoot a short film, they were surprisingly accepting of it.  So it all worked out very well from a location standpoint.

Another thing that I was very proud of was getting a food sponsor for our shoot.  Drew’s Pastry Place–a local cafe that in my opinion is WONDERFUL–agreed to cater our shoot in exchange for product placement.  So we showed the detectives drinking coffee with Drew’s logo on it.  And in exchange, Drew made us wonderful turkey sandwiches, with chips, his famous homemade cookies, and… chocolate dipped strawberries!   If you live in the Houston area, I’m not kidding you, you need to go there–Drew’s is really, really good.

The film was produced by our organizer Manny Mireles and directed by Jillian Nolan, a local theater director, teacher, actor, and writer.  David Masters was the writer, and Brad Ferrell was our DP (once again).  The actors were wonderful, and so was the crew.  And I think the fact that I was bored for most of the shoot was an indicator that I did my job well too!  No emergencies broke out!  Besides, they say that producers are just glorified PA’s once they get onset.