What a problem to have! When I sat down last night to start syncing sound with picture for the latest footage of the film, I also began to contemplate what footage I'd like to post here on the blog, and I realized that all of the footage shot was from the pivotal second plot point of the film (where we reveal the true nature of all the characters). Suddenly, I concluded that I couldn't post any film because it would all be spoilerific! What a problem! I actually have spoilerific footage! Whoohoo!
Okay, that was one of only two whoohoo moments of the entire weekend. Most of the weekend's moments were actually more of the "whoah nelly!" variety.
We ended the first day's production with a sudden need to reschedule the entire remaining production schedule to deal with new scheduling problems. One actor had work to attend on Saturday at 3:30pm, two other actors couldn't arrive until 3:30pm because they had a wedding to attend. So I completely revamped the entire schedule and we moved up the pivotal scene 28 to Saturday's schedule. The scene, as written, is pushed by one character who makes a "breakthrough" and urges all of the other characters to similar "breakthroughs". Basically its a character driven reveal-fest where we find out the reason all of the characters are in the mental facility. Its got some of the best dialog of the entire film.
Um... except for the fact that the character who does all the pushing suddenly couldn't make it either - this after we pushed the start time to 4:30pm and changed the scene.
Oh, and the actor who plays Winestein - this might be the only night he's available until the second week of August, which is the week another actor is gone to Utah.
Whoah, Nelly! What's a producer to do?! Throw his hands up in despair and cry out to the moon for Holy vengeance?! Yeah, well that didn't work either, so I will just have to figure something out.
In the meantime, actual production news:
We met on Saturday at 4:30pm and we started rehearsing immediately. Its a long and complicated scene because we have four characters basically giving us their big performance moments (long monologues). The director, Andrew, ran them through the scene and continued to fine tune their performances while Mort and I figured out how we were going to film the scene with the one major actor we needed missing. We were also short one crew member, so I was going to have to be creative with the sound recording (the problem was actually solved by Mort, who is a genius!).
At about 6:30pm, we finally set up for the first shot. Tony, who was not in the first night's shoot, was our featured first actor and we ran him through his scene. It's a complicated scene and we started him off with it as the first thing he did. But he pulled it off admirably in only six takes (this was to be a theme).
Next up was the long monologue of Jeff - which was one of the last things that we wrote in the script (and one of the funniest). Andre played this perfectly, almost as if we'd written it with him in mind. If anyone needs a Grand Mof Tarkin impersonator for their Star Wars themed birthday parties, I'll see if he's available. Due to the long monologue that he has to deliver, though, it took seven takes to get it down.
Gabriel was the last to have a crack at it in this scene - and indeed its his reveal that's most important to the nature of the film because everything leads up to this moment. Josh, who plays Gabriel, gave it just the right amount of gravitas for the scene and I can't wait to actually watch the dailies of this scene since I was mesmerized watching his performance from the side (where I was holding the boom pole). I'm dying to see what it looks like from the camera's perspective. Josh took eight takes to get his scene down, but that was mostly because my brother-in-law who was doing quite a good job as the Doctor in this scene, was so taken by Josh's performance that he kept forgetting that he had a line to deliver.
We also shot some quick cut-away shots (a few lines here or there that we wanted to emphasize - mostly for comic effect) and a good portion of Winestein's opening scene in Scene 4 since Tony wouldn't be available again until the second week of August (it must be good to be in demand!).
Throughout the entire shoot the back and forth jokes of guys who are working together continued to fly. Everyone was bonding in a way that only guys can bond and we all spent most of the time laughing or smiling and having a good time. Still, we were plenty tired when we finally wrapped for the night around 10:30pm. It was hard work, but we had a great time anyway.
It got me to thinking about the nature of Jesus's disciples. You really can't get 12 guys together without the typical ribbing and good natured bickering going on. You can well imagine that even with the Son-of-God in their midst, there were probably a full well-placed "pull my finger" and a number of not-so-subtle nicknames thrown around. And I wouldn't even be surprised to discover that Sons of Thunder was an inside joke known to only the most "holiest" of men. My point is that you can't have that much fun and good times and not have it be of God. Laughter and camaraderie are both heaven-sent, no matter what the nature of the high jinx involved.
Anyway, we shoot bedroom sequences on Thursday and it looks as if I might be stepping into the major part that one actor couldn't perform due to other problems (so there goes the acting quality! ;) But we have added another actor and another crew member this weekend (the other whoohoo moment!) so things aren't entirely bleak yet. Come heck or high water, this movie is going to... glub, glub, glub!
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