Adventures In Short Movie Making

I recently finished shooting all the scenes for my next short movie Shady Brady’s, a comedy based on my short story Diridon Station. I shot one scene on Friday August 22 in a house in Santa Cruz. The scene will be about a minute long and shooting took just under an hour, which is light speed compared to most movie making.

Next step was shooting an outdoor scene the following Friday on August 29. The scene was going to take place on a residential street either in Berkeley or the Rockridge neighborhood in northern Oakland. Originally I wanted to shoot in a BART station parking lot, but after contacting BART I found out that it costs $350 just to apply to film at one of their stations, so I decided to shoot the scene elsewhere.

Day of the shoot my older brother Steve generously drove me and the rented camera up to the East Bay. The actors and I agreed to meet at Ain’t Normal, a cafe on College Ave in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood. We were all there by about noon and the cafe was just across the street from Rockridge BART Station, perfect because I wanted to get an establishment shot of one of the BART trains pulling into the station. We walked around the station looking for the perfect spot and Steve found one on a staircase leading up to the station. Then Miguel Wacher, one of the actors who also has tech experience, helped me center the camera through the stairway grate so I could get the Salesforce Tower centered in the background.

Getting the BART shots was the easy part. Then came time to shoot the scene with the two main actors. Because I didn’t have a specific location in mind we had to look for one. So the five of us walked north up College Ave looking down the residential cross streets for the right spot. We finally found one on one of the side streets that was far enough from College Ave so there wasn’t traffic noise, and it was a section of sidewalk where there were enough trees to provide shade.

The main actors got into place, I got the camera ready, and we stated shooting the scene. Since we’d rehearsed back in early July the actors were acclimated to the script and we had already blocked the shots while I took sample videos with my iPhone, click here to see pictures. Since we were on a public street I knew we’d have to move quickly before one or more of the residents got suspicious.

The premise of Shady Brady’s is a chance meeting between two people who’ve met before but only one of them remembers. Andy asks how, when, and where they met and as Wendy describes their earlier encounter it all comes back to him, sort of. Since I was operating the camera myself we were able to move quickly from setup to setup. In total I filmed just over 80 shots for the day. Pedestrians walked around us with only a few watching our activity for more than just a moment. At one point the people living in the house that was at our shooting location came out to take their dog for a walk, they were cool with what we were doing and didn’t tell us to leave. One person driving by screamed at us just for fun but it was at the end of the take so she didn’t ruin the shot.

After about an hour and a half of shooting (I think that’s how long it took, I lost track of time) we were finally done and made our way back to our vehicles. Phillip, Chloë, and Miguel all went to their next gigs, and Steve and I drove back down to the South Bay. A good time was had by all, and now onto the next step, editing. Fortunately I have a friend who’s an expert editor and I’ll get the usable clips to her later this week.

I was actually worried the night before the shoot because we didn’t have a specific location and I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to find one, plus there are always unforeseen obstacles that pop up during any creative endeavor. But once we all met up, got going, found a location, and started shooting, all my worries ebbed away.

I’ll post later once the editing is complete and Shady Brady’s can be shown to the public. Looking forward!

©2025 Robert Kirkendall