The Garland Village

Movie for First Night Spokane by Brynne Boltjes

I was asked to play a part in this short film made by my boyfriends co-worker, Jesse, for a contest for First Night Spokane. Everyone participating were given rules to make it by. The filmmakers for the Spokane First Night 2009/2010 48 Hour Film Contest had only 48 hours to make a short film no longer than 5 minutes within the following parameters.

1.Location- Restaurant
2.Line of Dialog that has to be spoken-Is it your head, arms, legs, what?! Just tell me!
3.Theme-In the Land of make believe
4.Prop-Zip Lock Bag
5.Genre-Horror

I believe each team was given everything the same except the Genre. I know some teams were given comedy, romance, and drama as some genres.We were lucky and recieved horror, which is one of my favorites. Although it was my first time ever doing something like this I had so much fun. Our film was called Bag, because it was the main subject of the film.

The restaurant our directors chose was Luigis, because one of them worked there so they had easy access to it. Having only 48 hours to decide where to shoot we were lucky to be able to use the whole kitchen area in the restaurant.

This film was written and directed by Jesse James Hennessy and Steve St George and editing was done by Jesse James Hennessy. Jesse is the one on the left holding the camera and Steve is next to him.

This was our prop, the plastic bag. In the film it had regular eyes and then it would change to those crazy eyes when it became evil and started to kill people. The bag became evil when a cook got upset because his boss yelled at him to hurry up. He became frustrated and spilled a special sauce when he was reaching for some crackers. The special sauce landed on the plastic bag and it rose to become evil! It first killed the cook who had spilt the special sauce by jumping over his face and suffocating him. When the boss came to look for the cook the bag jumped in his mouth and rolled up into a ball and choked him to death.

This is where that all took place. The murder scene! I was in the next scene and played a waitress. I come into the back looking for everybody.

I can't find anyone and when I go to look around the corner I see the dead boss and the dead cook. I scream and grab a knife. I look around cautiously and step forward and slip on the Bag and fall backwards and stab myself with the knife.

Here I am all bloody! The bag thinks I am dead but I pull the knife out of my chest and stab the bag killing it.

Then I walk a little bit wounded, drop the knife, fall to the ground and crawl to the door to get outside.

It was really hard crawling on my stomach because the fake blood we used was made with corn syrup and I kept sticking to the floor. It was a good thing he was filming from behind at that point because I was smiling a lot because of how sticky it was. When I finally made it to the door I pushed it open and crawled out screaming for help. Now Jesse is across the street and runs over. This is the part where he uses the lines he has to use in the film, "Is it your head, arms, legs, what?! Just tell me!" I mumble "help me." Jesse says, "I'll call the police hold on."

Then like all great horror movies the monster is alive again.

The Bag now has blood and a bandaid on it.

 The Bag is suddenly by Jesse's head making a weird noise, Jesse turns to look at what is there and screams! The Bag jumps on Jesse's head and begins to suffocate him. Jesse and the bag begin to struggle...

The End.

                                                   This was a shot of the whole cast after the film was finished. The man to the right of Jesse is the cook named Mario played by John Mullins. He did a great job too.

Please check out our film on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-OoVsfRkf0

And I will let you all know on my Blogger if our film made the final cut on December 19th. If so you should go down to the First Night Spokane on December 31st to watch one of the several screenings. I'll let you know where and when if we make it. Wish us luck

 
 

Family Dinner by Brynne Boltjes

Yummm. Family Dinner. What could be better than home made cooking? Well I guess it could be when you don't have to cook it at your own home. Since all of my siblings have moved out of my parents house my Mom and Dad have family dinner almost every Sunday. My dad usually does the cooking, he has always been our head chef in the family when it came to dinner. Not that my mom never made dinner, I think he just enjoyed it more. This Sunday it was a crab salad. Oh, I forgot to mention, my parents have also become some sort of wine cynosures since their children have left nest. My dad usually always has a glass of wine near by when he cooks. I think my mom drinks a glass of wine when my dad cooks too.

I do believe this was her glass poured from the "Hey Mambo" bottle filled with California Red Wine. Sitting next to an International Retail Imports magazine she was going to go read with her wine while my dad finished cooking.

It didn't look like he minded much. He really does enjoy cooking for his children, or perhaps it is seeing his children that he really enjoys. He does have the knowledge that home cooked meals bring familys together from near and far.

It brought my sister in town from Bellingham for this meal. While she moved there to go to college at Western Washington University five years ago, she ended up falling in love and now lives with her boyfriend. It took her a long time after graduating to find a job (other than waitressing) in her B.A. of International Business. She finally found one but it is also located in Western Washington.

As my mom is drinking her glass of Red Wine and talking to my younger sister, Jessie, my dad claps his hands back and forth as if to say "Let's Eat!"

The salad looks good. But my dad make me something extra special. Usually he makes me something special every Sunday dinner I come to,

This night it's pizza! I am actually a vegetarian and my dad goes to all this trouble to make me my special vegetarian meals so I can join in and eat with my family. This pizza is actually one of his specialties; one sauce is pesto and the other is barbecue. It's delicious!

After dinner to repay my parents for my meal and for them putting up with me taking photographs all night, they have a request for a family portrait. So we all go downstairs after the dishes are put away and withough a lighting kit or meter I set up the automatic timer and rush back by my family and smile just in time...

If you ask me it turned out pretty good. This photograph just so happens to be the last portrait type photograph taken in this house of my parents. I moved into this house in the third grade of 1991 and my parents moved out in November 2009

BANDS by Brynne Boltjes

There are rarely bands I want to see play in Spokane. We don't have the greatest music scene here. But when a band does come around that I like I make sure I make it there. So on a Monday night two punk bands were in town playing that I knew I wanted to watch. Granted they were playing at the Cretin Hop which doesn't seem to have heat and has a lot of little teenagers running around the place, but they do offer some great punk shows once in awhile. The main band I wanted to see was called The Cobra Skulls.

The first band to play was called Nuetral Boy, and they actually ended up being my favorite band to watch that night. The lead singer/guitar player Mike said they barely made it to the show because of a crazy story that actually happened. Mike told the crowd that his brother, the rody, beat up their drummer so bad he had to go to the hospital. They set the drummer up at Deaconess Hospital and Mike made his brother go to the train station to go home.

So the third guitar player ended up taking over on the drums and he did a great job. No one in the crowd noticed a difference in the music.

The crowd really started to hype up when the next band Cobra Skulls started to play. I couldn't believe how many people were taking pictures of the band at this time.

Wow that was a lot of picture taking for a punkrock band that is farely new to the scene. The last band I watched were called Teenage Bottle Rocket. They were pretty good but they had a part in there set that was the highlight of the night. A teenage boy from Spokane loved their band and knew how to play bass to every single song they had made. The boy had made YouTube videos of himself playing Teenage Bottle Rocket's songs and posted them on their myspace page and fan website. During their set the lead singer saw this boy and asked him to come play a song with them on their bass player's bass. The boys face was so excited that it was like a dream come true for him.

While the boy didn't know how to fix the bass strap to fit his size, or he was probably too nervous to mess with it, he rocked out so hard that the crowd went wild.

Halloween

While in Seattle during Halloween we go out for breakfast. After parking we start to walk out of the parking lot and come upon a little boy dressed up as a garbage can holding his trick or treating pumpkin basket in hand.

As we round the corner we are amazed at the site of a huge line of kids in costumes going trick or treating at ten in the morning. The shops in West Seattle are letting kids come in and trick or treat for candy. It's something I have never seen in Spokane. I have only seen kids trick or treating at daytime carnivals or sometimes at the mall.

We sat down at Easy Street Records which is a record store and a small cafe. Not too soon after kids started coming in there too.

Waiting to place my order I looked out the window at the many costumed characters passing by the window. One mom was holding her baby that was dressed in a yellow bird or duck costume.

There was a dad inside the cafe wearing a wizard hat and holding his daughter. She must not have wanted to dress up that day, but still looked like she was having a lot of fun.

I decided to go look around the store at the records and CD's. I looked up for a moment and saw Homer Simpson passing by me. Halloween is definitly a holiday for the young and the young at heart.

Finally our waitress comes around and takes our orders. She looks like she is dressed up by wearing a bear hat, but I am not exactly sure. Almost all of the staff is dressed up too. I order hashbrowns and eggs and a mocha latte.

I noticed the scary costume of the guy that's going to make my coffee and he had fake blood all over him. Luckily none of it got in my coffee. It looks like a really fun place to work and has a great atmosphere, even when it's not Halloween.

I get my coffee before the food comes and it looks delicious. I took a drink and it tasted as good as it looked. We enjoyed our breakfast a lot and I tried not to anoy my company by taking anymore photographs.

But as we were leaving I couldn't help myself. I saw a man wearing a scary looking mask and had to photograph him. I adjusted the shutterspeed to see if I could add to the creepy atmoshpere.

Road Trips

I love road trips. The very first thing you do before you go on a road trip is to fill up your gas tank and I make sure I have lots of music to listen to along the way. I spent a lot of time when I was younger traveling all over Washington in the car traveling to my different sporting events. Mostly soccer and when I was in the premier league we would have to travel to Seattle every other weekend. My favorite thing to do on road trips is take in the scenery. I get lost staring out the window for hours.

Passing by the beautiful clouds and pounds and trees that seem to change shapes from one moment to the next. I get lost following the lines in the road as they whiz past me.

I enjoy looking at powerlines for some reason. Perhaps it's the shapes they make or all of the energy they hold in them. They seem so important but so out of place when all you have seen for hours is the simple landscapes of fields, trees, and clouds.

It is always fun on any road trip to stop at the cute shops and gas stations that one would never see in the city. I usually grab a snack and a drink and look around at all of their original nick nacks they have for sale.

I always hold my breathe when I see police around. It seems so easy to speed on the open roads during a road trip. I've found myself a few times not paying attention to how fast I was traveling and all of sudden I am pulled over and ticketed like that red truck. I have even resorted to using a radar detector in my car a couple of times. But I try not to speed too fast most of the time.

I love driving around curves and not knowing what the landscape will look like around the other side. Most of the time it is the same thing you've been staring at for the last hour, but once in awhile you do get a suprise. Sometime your further along in your road trip than you thought you were.

After miles of flat land it's nice to see the shapes of trees again, and little houses off in the background. I imagine living in one of those houses and my mind wonders off into a day dream.

I've passed this bridge many times before but always enjoy the site. This day the clouds look amazing and the mountains frame the bridge perfectly at this angle. I enjoy this site significantly and know in moments I will be on the bridge.

Driving throught the bridge I enjoy the architecture and design of it. I tend to daydream again about what it took the builders to build it and wonder if the top of the bridge serves a purpose or if it is just used for aesthetics.

My favorite site to take in on every road trip is when the sun starts to come down. Sunsets are a spectacular site on road trips. While driving in the car, every moment changes and at the same time the sun is coming down. You get to experience a sunset at different places with different looks and that is the one thing I think is the most amazing about road trips.

The Garland Village...By Brynne Boltjes

I take a walk down the Garland District and it feels like I am walking back in time. The little privately owned shops, 64 of them line the street of 500 W. Garland and ending at Monroe. Each shop has it's own identity that adds an artistic flare to the district. I can spend all day here and not even make it into every shop. It has a comfortable feeling that you can't get walking through any mall or shopping center. I stop first at The Rocket Bakery where I go almost weekly for my favorite coffee and bakery items, which include the whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, no bake cookies, and raspberry bars.

Today I am low on cash and simply order a delicious warm Chai Tea. I take my Chai Tea with me as I head out to window shop.

Next to the Rocket is a printing store right next to a framing store. Next time I need a photograph printed and framed I will know right where to go.

Down the street is a shoe store called The Ruby Slipper. It has the most beautiful shoes in the window and is known for it's one of a kind shoes. If I wasn't just window shopping I would definitely go in and try a pair on, but then that would lead to me buying a pair or two, so I just keep walking.

I decide I am ready for lunch and look across the street. There is the Milk Bottle, but I decide to go to Ferguson's Cafe, which makes every meal homemade. I order my favorite vegetarian omelet.

Ferguson's Cafe is famous for being filmed in several movies made in Spokane. The most famous one would be Benny and June, which starred Johnny Depp.

After lunch I walk further west down the street to my favorite guitar store, Mark's Guitar Shop. They sell new and used electric guitars, acoustic guitars, basses, and amplification. My parents bought me my first acoustic guitar from Mark's for Christmas in 2004.

While I decide what next to do I see The Garland Theatre next to Mark's. Since it's not Wednesday I decide not to catch a movie, because they sell movie tickets for a dollar on Wednesdays until summer starts again.

Instead I head across the street to The Blue Door Theatre. The Blue Door Theatre is Spokane's Improv Company. It is a nonprofit organization that puts on improv shows by volunteers Friday and Saturday nights. It made me laugh so hard you will have to go and check it out.

After the show I am in a great mood and want to meet up with some friends for some drinks, so I head across the street to The Brown Derby, which is one of Spokane's oldest bars.

It has a mural hung on the wall of the original customers in the original bar.

After laughing at the funny characters on the mural a man comes over and pulls out a photograph of the original Brown Derby building in 1932. This bar has a lot of history.

Before I call it a night I have to stop by Price-Rite Foods. No not for the late night munchies, but to admire the mural someone has painted on the building walls. It includes most of the Garland District painted on the walls. My favorite painting is the green trolley that seems to be bringing people to and from the Garland Village, to visit back in time.