Went yesterday to the set of Keith Snyder's movie. They're filming in a factory in Long Island City (which is in Queens, not on Long Island) (although actually Queens is on Long Island, but that's a technicality). I walked from the subway through a deserted landscape of low industrial buildings. Sun was hard and bright, air was frigid, lots of wind. Crossed a bridge over Dutch Kills, a slow-moving inlet, narrow and stagnant. But with a pair of mallards on it. (Like the way I snuck the ducks in there?) I love this kind of landscape, these buildings from another time, when manufacturing was the future, when the men getting out of the Army after WWII went to work on the line or as middle management, bought houses in newly built suburbs to start their families in and no one had any idea what a mess the American dream was going to make, and become. One of these buildings is particularly good: what's now the 1-800-mattress building on Hunter's Point Ave. Anonymous, and now crapped up, but you can see what it used to be.

Keith's movie takes place at night, so I got there late afternoon, stayed while the set was being "built." By which I mean, I watched the photography director decide how to light the room for shooting in "reverses" -- that is, both directions in a conversation -- and then watched as the power was tapped and the lights were hung; watched (and helped a little) as equipment was moved, cartoons were taped to the walls, boxes artistically arranged to get the effect the director -- that's Keith -- wanted: "a place that looks like they do everything half-assed." I watched the makeup guy experiment on his own hand to create a convincing burn, and then paint a bruise on the actor who'd be getting the burn later on; watched the set designer draping fabric over a conference-room sofa to create a Victorian settee; watched Keith and the makeup guy decide the order of the shots because the actor gets more and more beat-up in the sequence and you can't undo the makeup effects; but between, say, the sweat and the burn, those shots can be done in any order in case anyone else (the lighting guy, the set designer) has an order that works better for them. The whole thing was completely fascinating and a real gas. Everyone there was a total professional, focusing on his/her own work, making the thing ready to be a movie. I loved it. The only thing I never got to see was Keith actually directing actors. Shooting was scheduled to start at 7; but I was a communications major in college, have made a (very amateur) film or two of my own, and I had a feeling the schedule would shift. I was right; I left at 9 (had to get home early enough to go to bed early enough to wake up early enough to play early-morning basketball) and they weren't ready for the actors yet.

But I can't wait to see this flick.