Drew Murray (Williams, class of 2011) made his first short film DIE WITH ME as a Winter Study project. It screens at WFF in the “Strange Behavior” slot on Friday, October 28th at 11:30pm. Here are excerpts from the journal Drew kept as he was getting ready to shoot the film…

Entry #1/December 21, 2010

I had my first meeting with John on Saturday. It went well. He seems like a really cool dude, and he’s definitely very excited about the project. He’s my point man on this short. Our meeting was scheduled for 10:30 AM ‐ extremely early for a college boy such as myself, but I’m working on adjusting the body clock for professional hours. He said that we would meet at the Moonstruck diner on Varick and Spring, the only issue was that when I looked it up it didn’t exist. I panicked a little, worrying we’d end up in different places, because there was a Moonstruck diner on 23rd Street in Chelsea. We straightened it out; apparently it had been torn down as evidenced by our drive‐by of the location. It actually worked out so that he was able to pick me up in SoHo near the six‐train subway stop and drive me over to the West Village, which was nice because it was cold and windy. We drove around for a while looking at streets that might be good locations. We eventually found a parking spot in the meat of the Village and walked around for an hour and a half. We were looking for smaller, narrower streets with character –nice buildings, some trees, possibly a cobblestone street. The issue with the cobblestone is that most of them are like the wider streets in Tribeca and Chelsea. After combing through the maze between Morton and Bank, we bumped into a great little spot at the intersection of Grove and Bedford. Grove runs out to Seventh Ave, but where we looked the street kinked which gave the option of a shot down the street that captures more of the buildings, which make the street look so cool. There is a great white/cream colored house at the corner, which provides a nice contrast to the other, darker buildings.

Entry #2/January 5, 2011

Today was our location‐scouting day. Lauri McCarthy, our primary PA came to my place in the morning, and we drove out to Bayville (Long Island) to check out the restaurant that we initially thought we were going to shoot at. It takes about an hour to get out there, and we had to wait 30 minutes for the owner to get there and open up. We met John Towse and Dave Morabito out there. Dave is going to be the DP, and from what Lauri told me, he’s supposed to be really good, which is nice. I just have to pay for his babysitter on the days he’ shooting. It was a very basic restaurant, what you’d expect to see in a small town. I wasn’t that impressed by the space, and I never felt fully comfortable there, but it would work fine if we used it.

After checking out The Mill Creek Tavern, we moved on to my family friend’s restaurant in Bayside (Queens), Valentino’s on the Green. It’s about 20 minutes out of the city, which would make transporting everyone much easier. The restaurant was the old mansion of silent film star Rudolph Valentino, so it has some Hollywood history. After going through the different sections of the restaurant, we found a nook that we liked a lot. The color tones were very rich, and played nicely to the dark motif of the film. The restaurant is closed on Mondays, so we could have it for the whole day. My family friend, Don Pintabona said he would come open for us, and they would throw some food together for us (penne vodka, salad, etc.). We agreed this was our restaurant, and went on our way… but not until after a little lunch, which was delicious!

Later in the evening I find out that there are actually a couple of parties in the banquet room directly above us, which lead to issues with sound, and people walking through the front door, which could interfere with some shots and lighting. Guess it’s back to the other place.