Sunday was the last scheduled filming day and it couldn't have come any sooner. Things were already starting to unravel before Sunday and things were definitely not entirely kosher during the final shoot. The end result, however, is that the main shooting of the film is done.
We started the final film day by setting up for a church thank you barbeque. We bought enough hot dogs, potato salad, green salad, buns, etc... for 80 people and cooked them all up in the kitchen, while I went around and figured out where we would be setting up the camera and in what order we would shoot the scenes. That amount of organization done, the rest of the day pretty much came willy-nilly.
We had about forty people for the barbeque (so we had a lot of leftovers) and the entire cast was there, so that was good. The Blumenthals came and agreed to play the parents of Monica and my Dad's friends, Rita and Jamie, came and agreed to play the parents of Gabriel. But more importantly, Andy from A Mile From the Beach fame came and brought his children (and my former T-Ball players) Margaret and Henry to play Harry's children. So I had managed to fill every single named character position in the entire script before shooting started.
Quite frankly, the energy just wasn't there. I can't blame the cast or the crew when I felt the lack of energy myself. It was like the entire weight of nine previous shooting days was upon us. I rushed around to get my "extras" into place and to get my actors to understand how they were supposed to move and react and then I ran and started filming them. Sherman became my backup cameraman for the day for most of the shots where Harry was required - mostly since it was his camera that I've been using. But between all the setting up, directing, producing, barbequing, limited acting, and hosting I was doing, there just wasn't any energy left for enthusiasm.
And we could have really used it. There was an unexploded bomb in our midst (of which I'd only been appraised of the night before - and then without any gory details) of a social/personal nature and it seemed to sap the energy of all the regular cast members at the same time. These sorts of bombs go off all the time behind the scenes in movies/plays, etc... So I've been through them before. But as this was the last shooting day, there was really nothing I could about it. I didn't have the energy to also be the pep-squad for the cast. Fortunately, most of the footage didn't require a lot of energetic acting. There was a lot of moving around from one place to the next.
Finally, we were forced out of the set by the incoming Indonesian church (and our allotted time frame ended) and we wrapped photography and I dropped off all the remaining actors and then went home and crashed - hard. I fell into an immediate two hour nap, only to wake long enough to go share my leftovers with my sister for dinner, before coming home and lasting another hour or so before I simply dropped into my bed and fell asleep again. It was my bodies way of restoring all the sleep I had missed in the previous three weeks.
So, now, the filming is "done". There are actually two more shooting days that have yet to be scheduled. But at this point, more than 90% of the filming is done. I will now move into post-production by, first, putting together a rough cut of the film so that I can determine if there's any missing footage. If there is missing footage, then I'll try to schedule additional shooting time on the last day (when we wrap the filming with our final outdoor scene). And if there is no additional shooting time available, then we will simply wrap the film as is and call it a day.
After the final shooting is finished, I will put together a final edit of the film. And then, I will build a final sound track to go with the edited film. Only after all that is completed will a premiere be possible. In my mind, the original premiere date of the end of September is still in effect. But in reality, I'm thinking that date might be sometime in December - during the holiday season when all the Oscar caliber films come out. ;)
Either way, this is the last of the Production Diaries. But stay tuned to this blog for further updates, as I have them. In the meantime, it's been great to have you all along for the journey and I hope you enjoyed this inside look at the making of a film.
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