Wouldn’t it have been great if I could have updated this after every day of production? Unfortunately, I am usually way too exhausted by the time I get home and I have to review scenes and shot lists for the following day.

So, regarding this past week… One of the most fun (and sometimes frustrating) aspects of filmmaking for me is the little challenges that come up through the day. Take yesterday for example. We were shooting a scene in which Victoria tries to go on a date and completely falls apart while getting ready. Sophie comes in to comfort her. We shot the first take and it was really good – Pat (our wonderful actress playing Victoria) gave a great performance, but she was so into it that she landed with her back to the camera. Naturally, I wanted to see her face, so we tried it again. The blocking still wasn’t quite right and the performance wasn’t as good. We rethought the blocking and realized that we needed to push a dresser further down the wall to give Pat enough space to fall and still allow Sarah (Sophie) to make it through the door. However, once we pushed the dresser down, we found that the wall behind it wasn’t wallpapered (our art department is very economical). So we took ten minutes or so adding the wallpaper (thankfully we had enough extra to work with). So we tried it again. The performance still wasn’t there. So Pat requested that we give her a few minutes to go off alone and let her get in the proper state of mind. We decided we could shoot it as a pick up and only do the second half (the most emotional part) of the scene.

So we sat in the very hot bedroom for about ten minutes, waiting for her to come back. We wanted to be able to start rolling as soon as she walked in the door. When she came back in, however, she started apologizing to me. She said she needed me to yell at her, to tell her how she’d disappointed me, because she just couldn’t get there emotionally. While saying this, she started getting really upset and choked up, so we rolled and she just went right into the performance. It was completely amazing – the best performance I’ve seen her give (and that’s really saying something). However, our process had been that when I was ready for Sarah to come into the room, I would signal Mike, our first AD, and he would whisper into his walkie talkie to someone that was waiting out in the hallway, who would then signal Sarah. Worked like a charm the first three takes.

But on this particular take, Pat had gotten into the performance and had pushed Mike out into the hallway. So when it reached the point where Sarah was supposed to enter, I realized that we had no way to signal for her. So the performance went on and on (and Pat was still completely blowing us away) and the entire crew was waving their arms, hoping Sarah would see through the slightly cracked door. She finally did (after probably 2 minutes or so) and they finished the scene. I was nearly in tears afterwards, because I thought we couldn’t use the performance because it took so long and I didn’t want coverage – I couldn’t make Pat go through that again. So quickly Jay, Marco (our DP), and I put our heads together to figure out what we could use as a cutaway – something we could shoot to cut to and then come back at a later point in the scene, thereby cutting down the duration. So we shot two options – Sophie’s entrance from a different angle and a really cool reflection in Victoria’s mirror. So it was a terrific way to end the day and I couldn’t be more pleased.

This week we have been on a 7:30 – 7 or so schedule. I’m not really a morning person, so it’s been kind of a rough schedule, but it is really nice to have evenings off. We shot the entire downstairs this week, so next week we just have the upstairs. The rooms looks absolutely gorgeous on camera. Christine, our production designer, and her team did a great job.

This week was really pretty smooth for the most part. A few minor setbacks (such as yesterday, we lost half an hour trying to find stuffing for a dinner scene) but nothing too terrible. It gets pretty questionable sometimes as to whether or not we’re going to make our day, but so far, so good! Let’s hope this coming week is as good.

Ah, Sunday. Quickly becoming my favorite day of the week. Today is greatly needed, for everyone I think. It has been a really amazing and exhausting couple of weeks.

Overall, everything is going amazingly well. Our cast is phenomenal and our crew is fantastic. It’s really a joy to go to set every day. We have our bumps and our frustrations, but everyone gets along really well and we’re all having a great time. I often have to cut my shot list down considerably for the day, but it’s really coming to life how I pictured it (if not better) and everyone’s doing such a great job.

Our first week was almost all exteriors. If you live in Florida, you might have noticed this has been a particularly rainy summer. The first day, we got really lucky – we shot for 9 1/2 hours or so (short day!) in Deland and it didn’t rain until we wrapped. The second day, it stormed on our way there and then stopped. It drizzled most of the day, but not bad enough for the camera to read it, so that was fine too. Wednesday it stormed. Bad. Thankfully, we were on a porch. So we shut down for 15 minutes or so and then decided to just shoot in the rain. The storm lasted for the duration of one entire scene and then cleared up.

Thursday we were scheduled to start the day at our primary location (interiors) and then move to the cemetery. We had a beautiful morning, but when we arrived at the cemetery, it started storming. So there we were, with a fake headstone that had taken 5 days to finish and that couldn’t get wet, in a severe storm under several dozen massive oak trees. We managed to shoot one scene, but the other one needed a beautiful sky and the rain had cost us too much time. We had an actor that day that we only had access to for a few days because he was also working on another feature. We were able to quickly shuffle things around and go back to the house to shoot a few interior scenes with him and save the cemetery for the other day we had scheduled with him. It all somehow worked out.

Friday was our toughest day on paper, but it somehow ended up being one of our easier days. Because of child labor laws, we are only able to have our lead actress on set for 10 hours a day. Since she is in almost every scene, this makes scheduling quite difficult and strict. Friday we shot half of the scenes involving our other child actress, so we were able to schedule a 12 hour day. It also involved a 45 minute location change – from Deland to Mt Dora. The day was really tight, but we were miraculously able to get everything we needed and wrap exactly on time. The major problem that day – a next door neighbor and her lawnmower. It frustrates me to no end that people can be so inconsiderate. We politely asked the man mowing the lawn if he would mind waiting for an hour so we could finish shooting (we were outside and shooting a very important scene and the mower was rather loud). He obliged. About 25 minutes later, we heard it start up again. Apparently, his very unpleasant wife had decided that she didn’t want to wait an hour and was bound and determined to finish mowing her lawn right then. So Jay went over to try to explain to her that this was a climactic scene and that I had spent 2 1/2 years working on this film and if she could just give us 30 minutes, we would really appreciate it. She responded that it was her lawn and she could mow it whenever she wanted, or something to that effect. So he stood and waited and she ignored him. Several more people went over and tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t have it at all. I was really frustrated, because it was a very emotional scene and a resolution for one character and this woman couldn’t stand to be inconvenienced for 30 minutes. What kind of person finds joy in shutting down a student film? Did her crappy lawn really benefit that much for being mowed at that particular instant?

Saturday: We started the day in Mt. Dora. We shot downtown early in the morning to avoid all of the antique hunters. We got some gorgeous footage on the street and then moved inside a boutique. The day was just slow in general and we quickly got behind. We had a car mount that day for some driving scenes and that took quite a while to rig (but was well worth it). We finished up the driving stuff about 2 1/2 hours behind schedule and rushed over to our next location to shoot the opening sequence of the film. That location is a house off a tiny bumpy dirt road way off a main street. We got there and started setting up and then the sky got dark. Really dark. We checked the radar and it was coming our way and wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. Plus, we had shot something the previous day at a different location that would be part of the same scene and the sky didn’t match at all. So the rain started coming down and we decided to shut down. So we are now adding a half a day to the end of our shoot, which I’m not thrilled about, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Okay, time to go work on stuff for the upcoming week (our last full week!), but I’ll try to post later about the second week.