From April to June in 2013 our rag-tag group of filmmakers and actors traversed the cities of San Francisco and Guerneville, California to film “All the Others Were Practice”. We stole quick scenes on the streets and in shops, and spent entire days taking over apartments.

Here is a peek Behind the Scenes of “All the Others Were Practice”.
day 1
The first day of filming took place at the apartment of writer/director Brian Tolle. The familiar environment helped us ease into filming with some b-roll.
day 2
After a few days off, the main characters all convened at Travis’s apartment, the location of Pam and Glen’s house. We had to schedule all of Chantelle’s scenes in the first week – she was actually pregnant, and very close to due.
day 5
We finished out our first full week of filming with a mad dash across San Francisco, picking up random shots all day – Jôrge walking around the city, taking transit, and eating ice cream in the park. We ended the day at the beauty store, thank you Peninsula Beauty!
day 6
We took over a small office on our sixth day of filming. We covered anything that happened at work that wasn’t in the cubicle or the cafeteria, including all the elevator rides.
day 7
This was George day, with us at back at our first location of Jôrge’s apartment, down to the St. Francis Fountain for their date, then over to the Oakland hills for George’s house location. We had to push the scenes of them meeting, because this was one of the few days where we didn’t make our shot list for the day.
day 10
Back at Pam and Glen’s house, we filmed a party with no extras, then headed to The Lookout to film Jôrge and Ivan get to know each other. We filmed while the bar was open to the public.
day 14
“All the Others Were Practice” is a very small film. There were no equipment trucks, practically no crew, and absolutely no rules. With a lot of planning and dedication we were able to work within our limitations.
Every day Director Brian Tolle brought all of the camera, light, and sound equipment to set, in his Smart car
day 15
We kicked off our fifth week of filming by catching up with Mr. Abbot. We started at his apartment in the Haight and ended up in Civic Center.
We had the next day off, but it was all about preparation for our trip to Guerneville for filming days 16, 17 & 18.
Day sixteen was a make-up for missing Jôrge and George Meet at lunch downtown, then we met Gus and Becky and headed north.
days 17 &18
In Guerneville we filmed for two full days. We got in the evening of the 16th. We had hoped to get the scene at the fruit stand, but the stand we were going use closed early that day. We didn’t make up that scene, but we had a a pretty good dinner from the veg.
The first full day we covered all of the vacation interiors and exteriors around the house, plus the driving sequence. The second day was all about the hike and picnic, then we packed up and drove back to SF to film George driving away. We made that day without any overtime.
break
And then, we took two weeks off.
We had filmed for five weeks and we had covered all of the connective tissue of the story. But we didn’t have any of the muscle. We had not filmed any of the office interiors or cafeteria scenes. And we were having trouble securing locations.
So we took two weeks off and focused on pulling something together. We ended up building a set for the office cubicle at the Boxcar Theater studio space. It is the only set used in the filming, but it allowed us to remove the walls and get close in with the characters in a way we would not have been able to on location.
days 19 & 20
On our office set, we packed four days of filming into two. We never would have made these days days without all of the help we had with sound, camera and grip.
day 21
The cafeteria sequences were originally scheduled over nearly three days. We had a long one day, and we got a version of every scene on the schedule. As written the cafeteria was intended to be a bustling place full of employees. We could only rustle up two extras. But we made it through the day.
After twenty-one days of filming, spread over eight weeks, we were finished, filming.
We strived to keep the actor’s filming days to 8 hours, and most days we did. We filmed all of the pages we intended to most days. The only scene we missed outright was the Jôrge and Larry at the bbq, but we missed it on the second day and it seemed we would have time to make it up, but we did not.
It was crazy and hectic and impossible, but we made it through with something resembling the film we had set out to make.