blocking the john

it was a good little weekend coming back to the film.

on saturday we were scheduled to shoot the scene where joe's and alicia's characters silently flirt at a coffee shop as well as alicia's "oath of honesty" bit. however, due to unfortunate timing issues, we were unable to confirm the location. which is bad because alicia's scenes seem to keep getting pushed around and shoved into the odd corner of the schedule more and more. but it wasn't so bad because it meant that we didn't have to be at the coffee shop at 530am (yet). instead, we all met up at the basement at 8:30 to finish off the final joe-and-mike-have-a-beer-and-chat scene. and it went really well... we had way more extras than we needed (a nice surprise) and tim, the owner of the basement, was, as always, so great for coming in early and letting us have our run of the place. joe and mike were totally on the ball and solid with the scene and we finished up in a timely manner. there was one amusing anecdote, but mike stole it and already posted it on his blog, so i'll just refer you there (www.reclinerlandhq.com/blog.html) to read about payam's mad pinball skills.

sunday, joe and mike and alicia and myself all met-up down in eugene to shoot at the airport (we were originally planning on shooting at the portland airport, but... i'll keep this diplomatic and say it "didn't work out" much the same way our conversations with the doug fir "didn't work out" - i may rant about certain conversations with certain parties later on down the line... but not now). much to my suprise (i had only been there once - more than seven years ago) the eugene airport is pretty scenic and i don't think it will look to small or woodsy (which was a minor concern for me). plus, the only trouble they gave us was via a pompous lady janitor who advised us that we were "blocking the john" by setting up the tripod seven feet out from the entrance. also, since we weren't directing foot traffic in the place, we had a number of takes ruined by jet-lagged travelers walking toward us, craning their necks to look into the lens and then, a good thiry seconds later, realizing that they might actually be IN THE SHOT and suddenly shifting directions and walking off screen. but it would out extremely well... mike did a top notch job and everything looked great.

then... we drove the two hours (actually two and half thanks to an accident on I-5) back to portland to re-shoot the dreaded basketball scene (it had a smudge on the lens last time and a bad audio cable) as well as joe's close-up in the stalking scene (also a shabby image with no audio). the basketball scene was... frustrating to shoot. people say you shouldn't try to shoot a movie with kids and animals. i'd like to amend that adivce to include basketballs. even joe, who's got a gentle touch, had a hard time as a stunt shooter for mike and at one point an errant shot sent the ball right into the side of the camera. luckily nothing was broken, but the stress levels went through the roof after that. but you wouldn't know if from the performances. joe and mike were so much more relaxed and natural this time around (amazing how much easier it is when the weather cools down and you don't have the afternoon sun in your face). but yeah, we ended up shooting the scene more or less in chronological order, with mostly singles to cut-away to and the occassional two shot to keep things in perspective. when were starting i had decided to keep things fluid by not over-blocking the action (and going slightly off-book for some of the less important physical beats). again, all this was much more difficult that you might imagine and it took us a good couple of hours to get it right, but i'm very happy with how things seem to have turned out.

and gerry rigged up a very nice make-shift flag to help us get a better image on joe's stalking close-up.

props for the weekend:
1. alicia - for toughing it out in spite of a pending fever.
2. mike - for nailing a half-page of convoluted dialogue in one take at the park.
3. jason hughes - for changing colin's car's alternator in time for us to drive to eugene
4. joe and mike - for getting up early and driving 4 hours (round-trip) to shoot the airport stuff and then still being fantastic during the afternoon scenes.
5. gerry and peter - for being excellent c-stands.
6. everybody else.