Michael Mannix (posted by Brian Yang)

I wish we had kept a production blog while we were filming, but the truth is, if you have time to do so while you're in physical production, you're a) a sleepless monster - your 5-6 hours away from set should be spent unconscious to the world, b) you're not doing your job during the shoot as you should be way too preoccupied from doing anything social media related other than the occasional tweet or FB post as those are quicky and dirty (even checking friends' statuses and newsfeed in general is off limits.)

12 hours before shooting, Caleb was 1 of our 3 confirmed boys.

There were so many stories about the filming of NDB that should be shared.  Perhaps they'll continue to keep coming out after the fact in this blog in due time now that we've decompressed from it a bit.  There were challenges, triumphs, improvisations, laughter, tears, wins, losses, dented trucks and anything and everything else you might imagine that could happen during a shoot that all made the journey of the experience blogworthy.

Today, I want to share the one story that stood out the most in my mind from the entire shoot.  When I look back on the filming of NDB, I will never forget the story of Michael Mannix. 

One of the challenges of our shoot was wrangling extras for certain scenes.  Not uncommon to a lot of small budgeted indies, calling upon your friends and their friends and any randoms you come across to come spend a day on a film set for nothing other than some food was met with a lot empty stares and unresponded emails and Facebook posts as the day to shoot a big soccer scene approached us.

As the scene called for young boys around the age of 10-12 and as a regulation soccer game is comprised of 22 people in total and as the week leading up to this scene we had a grand total of exactly 3 boys, we were, in a word, screwed.

Our scene was set to start at 11am on a Sunday morning and I distinctly recall that at about 9-10pm the night before, in doing a last minute check in with one of our producers, we had a grand total of...those same 3 boys.  There were a couple of, "Oh, so and so's son may come, but there is no confirmation" and that was about 2 additional kids.  So, we were looking at about 5 kids, 2 of them maybe's in about 12 hours.

Well, then.

Our director Nadine, who is always as calm and cool as the other side of a pillow, didn't seem to be worried.  A good filmmaker works with what she has.  If we only had 5 kids, we'd find a way to make the scene work.  Tighter shots, doubling kids somehow in different uniforms running around to cheat the footage to make it seem like there were more kids, finding a real soccer game going on somewhere and shooting b-roll coverage of it and matching our actors to it somehow, whatever we had to do, we'd make it work.  Somehow, we were going to make 3-5 kids look like they were in a real game.

I love the spirit.  But I had an ulcer.

As we went to sleep (did we sleep?), we decided that in the morning, we were going to go out to surrounding soccer fields to look for kids and just ask them on the spot to partake.  Hopefully, we could wrangle a few more and get our kids up to 10-11 to make the cheating a bit more manageable?

Michael Mannix made this happen.

The problem with this, other than the obvious, was that the soccer field we secured was in the middle of nowhere.  We were shooting at a park in somewhere east, way east, of LA.  I can't even remember the name of the city right now, but suffice it to say, we didn't know the area at all, we couldn't go to fields we knew closer to LA and then ask people to drive an hour east to do this, and, well, just who was going to go out and scout all these parks, people, etc.?  A lot of time, good ideas fail to materialize because people talk about it, but then no one actually goes out and does it, thinking someone else has it handled.

Enter Michael Mannix.

Right before production began, we were doing some location scouting for something else, and, in a scramble, my own mother wound up introducing me to one of her best friends and her husband, Michael, who live in Rancho Cucomonga (I'm not spell checking that one), which is as far from central LA as it sounds.  We took a ride out to their place to examine something, but we wound up deciding not to go with the location for various reasons, one of which was the fact that we'd have to spend 2+ hours/day commuting out there if we went with their location.

After I hung up the phone with Michael a couple days later to thank him for allowing us to consider his place but that we weren't going to use it, little did I think that I'd be calling Michael again a few days later for something else.

8:00 something that soccer Sunday morning, not as calm as the other side of the pillow, I knew I had to make something happen.  Something, anything.  Yes, go down to fields around to try to pull kids, but for some reason, Michael popped into my head.  I didn't think about this before, but the park we were shooting at was within spittin' distance to Rancho Cucamango (I'm still not spell checking).  Michael?  Does Michael Mannix maybe know neighbors, relatives in the area who have young kids who might be able to pop in to film?  I mean, at this point, every single one counted.  If Michael maybe could get 1, 2, 3 kids to come, it all helped.  We could pull 1, 2, or 3 ourselves and suddenly we'd get to our 10-11 we were at best hoping for.

Michael was a very friendly Englishman which is why it occurred to me, albeit so last minute, that he just might be willing to help.  Well, to my dismay, Michael personally knew of no such kids in his area, but he instantly said he knew of a couple fields in his area and that he'd go check them for kids, just as we were going to do.  Thank you, Michael.  It's all I could ask at this 11th hour.  We were just lucky to have another set of eyes pounding the pavement for us.  Was I expecting anything though?  I'd be lying if I said yes.

Within the hour, Michael Mannix called me back and told me (not verbatim), "Brian, so I came down to the park near my home and it was empty save for this one man who was cleaning out a shed.   I went up to him and explained to him your situation.  It turns out he is a soccer coach in the area.  I'm going to connect you guys.  He's already making some calls to his soccer friends in the area to get the chain going."

(If I could insert a happy shocked face here, I would.)

Coach Dave in yellow breaking things down.

Another 30 minutes passed and I was on the phone with soccer coach Dave.  Details were passed and he said he would do the best he could, but that he didn't know what to expect as we had about an hour to go until 11am when we had to start.

Totally fair, Dave.  The fact that he already assured me he could bring at least a few kids was good enough for me at this point.  We definitely had more than our 3!  He also felt confident that at least several more would show up.  He knew all the soccer parents in the area, he knew exactly the field we were shooting at, and he thought on this lazy Sunday (they played AYSO on Saturdays so Sundays were an off day), kids would be up for it - to get out on the field and run around some more.

60 minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of the field, exactly at the same time as Coach Dave who I figured was Coach Dave because who else would be pulling into this lot on a Sunday morning that wasn't part of our crew?

"I don't know how many are going to show up, but the calls are out and I think we'll get several more."

I wanted to hug the man.  I think I may have.

As the 11:00 hour rolled onwards, in a scene out of Field of Dreams, slowly but surely, cars kept rolling up into the parking lot, out of which rolled bouncy boys in soccer uniforms with their smiley parents, all curious as to what this film thing was all about in their hometown.  (LA is Hollywood, but somewhere near Rancho Kokomo is most certainly not.)  I kid you not, by the time all the cars stopped rolling, we had a full count of 20-some odd kids (I lost count) to simulate a real game of 11 on 11.  I think we actually had more than enough as some kids didn't even get into the shot.

The kids were just happy to get in their cleats again to kick a ball around.  The fact that there was a camera on them was secondary.  Parents filled the seats on the sidelines, sipping coffee, eating snacks, and taking in the wonderment of having their children be in a movie.

Off to the side was Michael Mannix.

Nadine works with talent we didn't know we'd have just hours prior.

Remember, 2 hours prior, Michael didn't know Dave, much less any of these soccer parents.  He barely knew me.  And he certainly didn't know West Liang, our writer, who was talking his ear off upon finding out who this facilitator of a man was.

Michael's gesture was so simple and yet it had such a huge impact.  I'm not sure he even knew the magnitude of what it meant to me and our team.  The production value of having all these kids present meant the world to us.

I had to cut out early to catch a flight that afternoon and couldn't see everyone off until the end, but I think I skipped out of there with a smile on my face (and probably a bit of a knot in my throat), understanding that Michael Mannix made me believe and have faith again in mankind.

Don't get me wrong, Coach Dave did a lot too.  A TON in fact as he turned into our de facto set soccer consultant (with gracious help from his soccer dad friends too), but Michael was our angel who nudged our hopes into reality.

Rancho Cucamonga.  That's how it's spelled.  In that great town lives one Michael Mannix, my hero who saved us one Sunday in September of 2011.