something

yesterday at approximately 1:20 pm, pacific daylight savings time, joe ballman noted: "i feel like we sort of accomplished something this weekend." indeed, joe, we did.

(i'll try and keep the record short this week.)

saturday, we were back up in washougal at 8:30am. again, invading the home of dennis and misty plock. we were (supposed to be) wrapping up keira and colin's scenes at keira's house. which also featured zach (keira's son) and keith (keira's loser anarchist brother)... funny story about keith... we didn't hold any auditions for this role because we already knew someone who would be great in it. we contacted this person, and were happy to find out he was interested and would make himself available. then we had more than a month of radio silence. none of our phone calls or emails were returned. we thought that was a little odd (he's not the kind of guy to just flake out like that), but we really couldn't afford not to explore other options. in our brainstorming, we came up with a second name - another old friend who would bring a totally different energy to the part, but who would be perfect in his own way. we contacted him and, luckily, he was interested. his schedule was tight, but he would try to make it work. as the date approached, it seemed less and less likely that he could make the time to shoot for a full day with us. so we started brainstorming for third options. and alicia suggested her brother-in-law dennis (whose house we shooting at anyway). i liked the idea - he actually looked like he could be lisa's (keira's) brother; he was the correct age; and, from all reports, he was not entirely unlike keith back in the day. but he had no acting or performing experience. we talked to him about it and he agreed to help us out, if it came down to it. the next day, joe ran into the first person we had lined up for the role. his phone number and email had both changed (and he had changed jobs) and somehow our contact info had been lost in the mix. he was still very interested, but we were only two weeks away from shooting. at that point, we got a pretty firm commitment from him. the following day, i got an email from the second guy saying that he really really wanted to do it and would, happily, play the part... if we could schedule the scenes on sunday instead of saturday. since we had the first guy in place, i told the second guy that we were pretty well locked in and that we appreciated his enthusiasm. five days later, the first guy had to drop out. his new job was sending him out of town for the weekend. normally, we may have considered rescheduling the scenes, but this was the last weekend we were going to get with dylan before he left for a three-week vacation and that was just too much time to break between locations. so we called dennis... and after an hour of rehearsal on wednesday, he had it down. additionally, he had wardrobe that would work for the character and was more than happy to cut his hair into a pretty sweet mohawk for us. and he did extremely well - even with the difficult physical comedy that was written into his scenes.

the rest of saturday went pretty well... there were some difficult times as we were shooting a couple of intense, intimate scenes between joe and lisa (who really don't know each other very well). and we slipped just a little behind schedule (but only a brief couple of scenes didn't get finished). andre, the founder of pizza schmizza, actually delivered our lunch to us that day - it was good to finally meet him after all the back and forth between him and alicia. and the big weird moment of the day - gerry was feeling a little fatigued after lunch and excused himself to get some fresh air. a few minutes later, when i checked on him, he said he had it all figured out. before we ate, he went to his car to take some pain pills for his back. however, he accidentally popped a couple of sleeping pills instead (half a pill usually knocks him out at night). luckily, dennis had a rockstar in the refridgerator. so gerry chugged that and was a-okay (especially for the first hour or so). we wrapped the day just after 11pm.

sunday was hot. we started 9am at sewallcrest park shooting a basketball scene between colin and aaron as well as the scene where colin get caught stalking keira. we got off to a slightly rocky start as i had given nearly everyone the wrong cross-street for the park. but eventually people wandered the four blocks down and we got going only a few minutes behind schedule.

the basketball scene was really tough to shoot. as a lot of the continuity depends on the bounce of the ball, it's almost impossible to match action from the (wide) master shot to the (medium) sub-masters. we got plenty of cut-aways, though. and a few bridging shots and worked out the dialogue so it wasn't falling in the middle of any major movement and it should cut together pretty well. but it was incredibly stressful for everyone. (and it was bright too - the sun was incredibly harsh that day.)

so after lunch we moved on to the stalking scene and, inspite of the heat and a few tricky angles, and working in a public space, it all turned out just fine. and we took a nice three hour break.

that evening, gerry had to excuse himself for a family commitment, so i was handling the camera as we shot colin and keira's first date at the wine/coffee bar at southpark. the staff there was extremely accomodating and the crew really worked to keep things efficient. and so, we managed to a 2.5 page scene in 3 hours and wrap a pretty grueling weekend at 11:30pm.

and so yesterday, at approximately 1:21 pm, joe, having just noted that we did accomplish "something" this weekend, insisted that we not shoot for more than 24 hours in a single weekend again. i think that's not an entirely unreasonable request...