“Dave and I are shooting the shit out of this flick. We’re doing very little of the static two shots we did on the first “Clerks”, with a ton of hand-held coverage planned instead. What would’ve been one set-up on the first flick will now be five set-ups, minimum. This time around, the look of the flick will be as important as the performances and what’s being said.”

…

“Jeff’s electric. He’s got the whole script memorized, and every piece of his delivery is gold. After working at it for an hour, we finally find Trevor’s voice for Elias, the character he plays, and the scenes begin to really sing, cracking me up (a good sign, as I believed I was already too familiar with the material to find it laugh-out-loud funny anymore). After four hours of rehearsal, going over all their shared scenes, we call it a day, and I head back to the house.”

…

“I shower and head down to the office, where Mos, Dave and I watch a chunk of “25th Hour”, a film whose look I like quite a bit for “Clerks 2”. The “C2” brain-trust then goes over the options for a digital intermediate – a process in which you shoot on film, then transfer the footage into a digital format, where you have unprecedented color correction control, and spit the results back out onto a digital master from which all the film prints are made. The process is probably most easily recognizable in the Coen Brothers’ flick “O Brother, Where Art Thou” – where colors were deeply saturated to give whole section of the flick a golden hue.

We’re going the opposite way. Amongst other things, our plans are to de-saturate the colors of all the scenes that take place at work, to give Dante and Randal’s jobs a bland, hell-ish feel. The idea is the culmination of months of back-and-forth about whether or not to hone close to the low-rent look of the first “Clerks”. At the end of the day, we figured shooting on 16mm or shooting the flick as flatly and mes-en-scene as “Clerks” would be disingenuous and feel like we were trying too hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice. The look of “Clerks” – long held to be a big part of the flicks’ charm – was born out of a lack of budget and a trio of amateurs’ eyes. This time around, we’ve got a budget and a decade of experience on our side; making the flick look bad on purpose would make us feel like we were posers. However, it doesn’t mean we can’t fuck around and try something creative with the look to invoke the first “Clerks”, while still applying everything we’ve learned since ’93.”

…

“As good as the boys have been in our previous rehearsal this past week, the introduction of a girl (a girl actress, to boot) suddenly enhances all three of their performances; i.e. – it seems like all three guys have ratcheted it up a bit. Brian’s taken a massive leap since yesterday, Jeff – who’s been camera-ready since Monday – informs today’s rendition of Randal with not just the big laughs, but also sincere pathos, and Trevor is now locked into Elias’ tone and mannerisms so completely, it’s a night-and-day difference between the actor and the role. And Dawson – gift from the acting gods Dawson – redefines the read-thru, by actually becoming Becky, raising a bar that’s well-met by Brian, Jeff, and Trevor.

Each of the guys are on point and flawless – so much so that I don’t even interject with direction/correction, speaking up only to cover the lines of cast that isn’t there. We could’ve shot that rehearsal and it would’ve been release-worthy, so excellent were the performances across the boards. Invariably, on every production, there comes a moment when the reality of what you’re doing – creating a fake world populated with people who don’t really exist – kicks in, and you know it’s time to start committing it to celluloid. For me, that moment was triggered in that room. It’s time to actually take “Clerks 2” from theoretical to film.”