Hello again, welcome back to the adventures of Brian Sarvis and Joe Carabeo, as they try to get their feature film (Working Title) Help Wanted, made. Right now we’re at the construction stage. A lot has been done so far, but now our heroes must deal with the winter cold, lack of electricity, dying spirits and now…
a broken boom box.
Besides that, everything is coming together with hard work and inspiration.
But on this day, a deal was struck.
Electricity is coming!
Now it’s time to clear everything that didn’t need to be there , so that in the process of the electricity coming through, we don’t set the whole place on fire. Just in case.
So it’s time to clean up.
Good bye to all of our fine art.
Below – Where did these pans come from?
Below – This is how the cabinets will look like, but imagine it sitting up.
Below – Another view next to our blue corner.
It’s time to get that chalk board up. We start by places the braces.
Then Brian lays in the final touches, cleaning up little sections of glue.
And up it goes!
Not bad.
I can’t wait till there’s electricy, then we can put the over head lights in.
Anyone want to buy some stools, they really are for sale. Just contact us or leave a message below.
Below – The chalk board.
I also can’t wait for the set dressing to come in and really make this place a full character.
Below – The on lookers
Below – The look of the diner with the sun coming in.
A lot is gonna happen in these booths. Watch and see.
You’re not gonna believe this, but chalkboards don’t exist any more.
How do we know? Well, basically we thought that the task of buying a chalk board was gonna be the easiest step for us. Nope. We searched in ever single store that we could drive to, in the normal driving vicinity, and guess what? They were no where to be found. We couldn’t find chalkboards anywhere. Ether that, or we really are in the middle of no where.
But in truth, it’s hard believe that in this day and age chalkboards do NOT exist.
So we found us a sink instead.
But back to the chalk board.
So basically what had to happen is the same exact process that seemed to happen with everything on this project.
We had to make it ourselves.
Below – Brian creates the frame for the what would be the size of the chalk board, which is gonna be placed on the wall as our menu.
With that frame done, it was now time to make the black board section of our chalk board. It amazed me that you can really just buy the material for a chalk board and lay it down anywhere, then boom, you have a place to write with chalk.
Below – Brian lays down the black of the black board.
At the same that Brian was putting the works on the chalk board, it was also time we finished up the cabinet doors that were gonna be placed on the back counter. This would be another bit of fakery for the sake of movie making, because there is not gonna be any cabinet’s, just the door. But these doors needed color though. So what batter color than the awesome blue that we’ve been rocking the whole time.
Below – Brian has finished the black board section of the chalk board.
Below – The back cabinets getting their coat.
Below – The cabinet doors with their new coat of blue.
Below – The doors now with their knobs.
And now it’s dark outside.
Which means its time to stop working cause we can’t see, and it’s very cold at night time.
Below- Our only warmth is this working light.
It’s so nice.
Tune in next time as there’s a possibility that our hair styles will change even more!
I wish there was a story to tell about this, but there really isn’t. We rode up to the set like we usually do and…
There it was.
Long story short (I guess) I’m just gonna say that I wanted that thing knocked down anyway.
Below – The Diner so far. Now with it’s newly created stools. I dig.
A real cool thing came with the stools when we bought them, AGE!
You really can’t buy that type of age anywhere. We just thought it was a cool incentive. In the ad it said that the stools came with 60 years of history. I wonder what type of people have sat in these stools in the past 60 years? Who’s butts have glided across leather, what stories their asses can tell, where did they go, who they’ve met. Where are they now??
I bet they didn’t know that 60 years later that they would be in a feature film by two crazy film makers.
But we did.
The stools still had to be melded together to complete the illusion, but that could wait.
Below -After a lot of rubber mallet hammering, we have the beginning looks of the wall slot. Soon will come the kitchen set dressing behind the wall and then we can slide plates of food across it all day long. That should really put it together.
Below – Ohh spacious.
Below – A view from the “kitchen”
We also took some aluminum and connected it to the wall. Will it stay, will we take it off, time will can only tell.
Below – Things are getting messy again.
Below – Another view of the stools, the booths and our floor. Where do we go from here?
I know that some of the stools are gonna go to a stool hospital. Their heads have fallen off.
It’s also about time to start thinking about what the outside of the diner is gonna look like. We have the ideas, but stay tuned to see what we actually do.
Remember back in the day when we were thinking about make diner stools that would be a conglomerate of car parts?
Well, we never gave up on the idea. That’s why we took another road trip, back to the Sarvis shop!
Today we play with steel!
So as you could tell from the images from the last few posts, the new stools “Look” the part, but they don’t quiet measure up. But we found a solution, and that solution came from the mind of the man of steel himself, Brian Sarvis.
Below – The devices that make the impossible, possible.
So, what Brian proposed that we do, is basically take muffler piping, cut it to the length that we would need to expand the stools to, and squeeze the ends down so that they would fit snug into the holes of the bases and that rest the chair together as one piece. Easy right?
Oh yeah, none of that can be done with human hands. But that never stopped him before.
Since the last time you joined us, we finished the diner floors and jumped up and down for days.
Then it was time to get back to work. There was still much much more work to do.
Like for instance, one of those holes in the wall the food travels through needs to be made (Image below)
Also, it was about time that we started thinking about the exterior of the diner.
Say…like how the diner’s front would look like?
While traveling to the Pittsburgh Comic Con (For those of you who don’t know, I also write comic books for Curls Studio, which you can also check out here. We’ve toured up and down the east coast and have been apart of such great conventions as Heroes Con, SPX, Baltimore Comic Con and New York Comic Con every year. The comic book art form is actually where I get a lot of my inspiration)
So, while traveling late at night to the Pittsburgh Comic Con, we stumbled upon great inspiration for the exterior tone of the diner.
If you were wondering how our diner set is supposed to look like at night, here are few inspiration from real life bel0w.
The greatest part about finding these locations was how we stumbled upon them.
So basically we took a wrong turn on the highway and thought we should just get off on an exit and turn around. Well, that wasn’t so easy and actually it made us more lost. What ended up happening next was that we took a turn and started driving down a dark and desolate road. Then whoa! Suddenly we found these buildings. SO of course the first thing that popped up in my head was, “That’s totally perfect for our set!!” So, while peeking out the window of the car (Cause I was too scared to get out) I took photos. It was a pretty scary area. In actuality, the images are a million times brighter than how it was in real life. But it was perfect to capture for inspiration. Because that scariness is what we want.
I just have to say that Esta Esta in Pittsburgh has some great food. I’m just sayin…
So after the convention was over, it was time to get back to work.
We need to cut out that rectangle.
Watch as Brian slices and dices. Yes indeed, VIDEO!
Below – The next step is to add the platform for where the dishes and meals will be passing on.
Below – We were surprised too.
When I was looking at the diner as a whole, something was bothering me, and that something was the counter top. You see, the mixture that we placed on the counter top wasn’t exactly working the way we wanted it too. It was too shiny, there were air bubbles, blah blah blah. We decided to start over, sand it down and put a deeper color on it. Actually, the same color that was on the love booths. The diner needed more of that color.
Brian and I are back at the Diner, and things are getting messy!
During the course of laying down these tiles, there were certain sections where the tile needed to be that were just josh darn painful. For instance, if you can tell there are about half tile spaces left underneath the platform where the booths and the stools sit on. We had a choice of ether meticulously cutting each of the tiles so that they fit in they’re proper spots, or we can, with our Superman strength, lift up the platforms and place the tile down easily in their spots.
No, nothing comes easily.
So we chose which path to take and decided to do something else first. Like make cabinets behind the counter.
And clean up our mess.
Then we did it.
There was no easy choice. But we didn’t want to do all that math that could have been wrong. So we decided to lift each platform and slide and glue each tile into place.
Sorry, but there are no images of that process because it was a serious moment. Brian is indeed strong ladies.
But…here’s the aftermath!
The tiles are almost done!
Below – A wider view of the diner with the tiles laid in.
Below – Just a few more to go. Brian sculpts the last tiles that will be placed behind the counter.
Below – One last spot.
And it’s done!
Below – More of our modern art.
Check out our diner floors!
ohhhhhh…
Below – A shot of the life behind the counter.
Below – The view from behind the pathway.
Below – Our “Kitchen”
Below – New stools with finished floor.
Below – Old Stools – On sale now! Contact us if your interested. I bet we can work something out. (I’m serious)
Below – Where does everything go. It’s like the land of forgotten toys.
Yes indeed, we are still trying to get this movie made. If you guys haven’t had a chance to read what the movie HELP WANTED is all about, please have a peek at the links to the right of the page and you’ll find a link labeled “Help Wanted the movie” and that should give you a clue towards the type of movie that we’re constructing here.
The process may be tiring, but we’re dedicated to giving you guys a tale that will shock you till you smoke.
But now back to the creation of the diner set.
Today Jacob Pulliam is joining us once again, but this time we’re gonna focus on the layout of the overhead lights. Jake saw the diner that we have now and thought that he had something that would fit perfectly with what we were going for. So he donated to us these aluminum over head lamps. Great guy. Now lets start planning on how to get them into the ceiling.
One thing to note is that this building does not have drop down ceilings. So we can’t exactly just push the ceiling up, make a hole and drop the lights in then cover it AND we can’t just attach a helicopter clamp and hang the light. Yes, like always, fate has handed us the “Life is Funny” card. So we had to plan accordingly.
Below – Jake looks very happy about the situation.
So of course we went out and searched for some sort of workable inspiration. This search did not take us very far. We stopped by a very close UNO’s Chicago style restaurant and looked up. They had exposed piping that traveled the wiring of their overhead lamps, and it looked pretty damn cool. We all looked at this and thought, “Lets go for that.”
So, the process now is to assemble the lamps that would attach to some sort of exposed design in the ceiling.
Below – Jake, starts the drilling, while I take the photos
Just like always, a problem arises. Our drill is not powerful enough to pass through the wiring box for the lamps. Great!
Below – But at least we can lay out where the lamps would go in the ceiling.
Below – Empty boxes of tile.
Below – Some how our sign moved…
Below – Still going…
Below – Jake knows a guy that could get the drilling job done for us.
So we arrived in the Diner set today and found something staring right at us.
A dolly!
What fun!
Some of us use dolly’s to make a living, but here we are face to face with a rouge one. Apparently this single dolly found his way into our diner set and decided to take a nap. But not on our watch, no one falls asleep while on set. So we woke him right up and immediately started testing out how smooth our new diner floor is with the newly placed tiles. Jake did the honors.
And oh it was so smooth!
But then we found something…
A script!
And not a page from the Help Wanted script ether…
It was to another movie!
Does that mean while we were out that another film crew slid in and filmed in our unfinished diner set before we could be have a chance at doing so ourselves?!?!?
I think so…
Heartbreaking…
Below – Even worst, they left a calling card!
Three big scratches on our beautful new floor!
Was this from them or someone else, we would never know. But the sight of it almost brought a tear to our eyes. But we held it in.
It’s best for me to keep in my anger. This is just how the business works sometimes. Besides, it adds to the “Set Design”
So here we are again. More tiles to be placed on the ground. This time they were would be placed underneath the red booths. Which is why Jake came along, lifting these booths is definitely a two person job.
Bam! And the tiles are laid.
Below – New tiles with red booths on top of them. Looks good.
Below – Jake is excited about the progress.
One final thing had to be done before we leave.
We have finally found a set of stools that we thought matched the look that we were going for. Something with a chrome finish. So yes, yet again we have new stools to be placed into the diner. But the colors matched perfectly and the chrome was already aged like it’s been around for 60 years. It was a good price so we couldn’t pass up on them. But it does pose a new question. The amount of money that we spent on the stools so far, would that equal buying completely new original soulless stools. The would never know. But I believe character wise that these are the stools that will take us into the movie.
I bet your asking. “But what would happen to the other stools, the black ones?”
Well, since you’re asking…They’re for sale!
Just contact Astray Production if you’re interested in buying stools that have never been used. Images can be seen in postings before this one. I bet they would fit perfectly in any place you wanna put them. They can also be mounting into flooring. The sky is the limit! We only have 8, so offer only stands until we run out. Buy one or buy them all! It would be ground if you could pick them up, but I bet we can figure out shipping in some form.
WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!
You may have noticed that the stools that we have in place now are a bit short. Well, we have an idea, and it could fit back to the original theme that we were working on before.
So at this point, Brian and I have been taking turns, at random times, laying tile at the diner. There’s no real reason for both of us to be there if we have the free time to just stop by for a few hours. SO we chose to just come in whenever we’re free and chip away at all the tile laying. It has now become a nice place to gather our thoughts and think about the problems of our real life while we still conjure up ideas about this on going project.
Pretty soon we’re gonna start audition for this film and bringing in more people to help us out, so the alone time really helped set things into perspective and on what we have to look forward to in the incoming future. Which is a lot more work. But someone might see this and miraculous be THE right person, you never know. Everything is luck and hard work. We got the hard work and now it’s luck’s turn.
But on the day that I chose to come into the studio, the sun set was amazing.
I loved how the light came into the diner, it was perfect, almost romantic. I could really envision this being real.
Below – This is how the sunset looked outside.
Below – More interior sunset light coming into the Diner.
It was really a calming moment to have. Usually at the diner we would just fear the sun going down like as if it were the dinosaur age and predators were gonna kill us at night. But the moment I stepped outside and saw the entire sky a shade of cloudy gold, it was a heavenly feeling, and it was only me and my camera.
It was truly a Smallville moment.
Below – Our sign is now gold
So when I continued to walk out into the field in front of the diner, I turned around and was instantly taken back by the hugest rainbow that I have ever seen in my entire life. It was the whole entire sky. I’m not a rainbow person, and I might now start losing my street cred for saying this, but damn it was nice…
At one point the rainbow attached from the diner to the sound stage. These words and pictures will never come close to the experience, but I still wanted to share it with you.
On the way back home it rained like crazy. That was cool too.
Armed with his trademark Vans shirt, Brian and I are ready to get down to it. (It would be awesome to get a sponsorship from vans)
It’s time to lay down some tiles.
BUT, before we get to that piece of business, we decided to make a little bit further progress on our counter top.
It was feeling a little bit bland with it’s roadster blue, so we decided to gloss it up a bit. So we did our usual number of inquiries and bought a coating that would finish up the look of our counter top. This material, to tell you the truth, like I always have, was intense. It truly became the theme of the day of us having to deal with material that could only be used for a short time before completely hardening and ruining our set goal.
So the material that we were using was a liquid gloss that we would evenly apply to the counter top to give it it’s shine. The challenge was that we had to do it in under 10 minutes. That means it had to be smooth, bubbleless and evenly applied to the whole space, or it would just harden into a lumpy muck. Also, lets add to the game that we had really no tools to do this with, so we just improvised with sticks that you get when you buy paint. (I know…)
But we got it done.
Now were were ready to get to tiling the floor. First thing that we had to do was set our starting point on the ground and that would be our guide so that hopefully all of our lines will be straight when we apply the tiles.
Below – A lot of snooty contact glue.
Below – Time to roll up our sleeves, it’s about to get sticky in here.
Below – The first tile to be glued to the diner floor (Yippie!)
Below – The second tile to be glued to the diner floor (Yes!)
And then we repeat this process…
And repeat…
It was pretty exciting seeing the floor come together. It was also nice and super smooth. I almost didn’t want to touch it when it was settle in. But then I had to come to the realization that this was made for people to walk on.
Below – The sign still stands.
Below – Our doors are turning blue.
Below – Our addictions
Below – Whoops. It’s ok, it’s gonna be covered by tile anyway. But it sure does look cool.
Below – A closer shot of the glossy counter. Hmmmm….
Below – We also spotted a deer on the lot.
So the process of laying down the tile has begun. Where will it take us from here…?
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