weekend seven: making a movie with Bevan

Okay, I won't lie. When we have some changes that can move toward the possibility of setbacks, I start to freak out a little. On our last film venture, A Cowboy's Silver Lining, we lost an actress for an undetermined amount of time. I don't mean that we couldn't actually find her (though that did become a problem after a while), I mean that she wasn't able to film for a portion of time and we didn't know when she was coming back. So, when hurricane Katrina hit, we fell into the same situation as before. Thankfully, there are still a few scenes and shoots that we can put into a Saturday motion picture extravaganza before those absences will effect the pleasing forward direction of status thus far. Well, I could also keep loading tapes and rough cutting to buy a little more time before we run ashore. I'm not blaming anyone (with the exception of a hurricane and perhaps God). Our absentees are good people doing good work for a good reason. I'm proud of them and are willing to wait as long as I possibly can for them to return "home" to us.

Now, with that said... we rescheduled our Saturday shoot for Friday night... for three reasons. One was the previous message about people being out of town for disaster relief. The second is that I was trying to squeeze a funny scene about DOPPELGANGERS involving the Green Twins. Kelly Green was leaving town at 12noon on Saturday... forcing us to move the shoot up a day... directly afterwork... only allowing us an hour and a half to shoot an entire scene. Yes, a scene can be shot in that time and still look and sound great. The third reason is that the Cooper/Young Festival was taking place on Saturday. Yes, the last reason seems selfish but I'll explain myself in a moment.

The Friday night shoot was pressed for time. Because of the Cooper/Young 4K run... I was fifteen minutes late to set... with our other actor, Joe Smith. I had to pick him up because if he had moved his car out of the Cooper/Young area he would lose the space and have to walk 5 blocks to his car until Sunday. We got caught behind the runners on the way in and out of the area... eating away our precious Friday night. The scene was really, really funny. We pressed everyone with the time, stayed a few minutes late, and diverted a near catastrophe when Kelly couldn't find his car key (which was still in the door). I suppose that it's no real surprise that we named the newly purchased boom-mic stand "Kelly" (it's a long story that I'll save for another entry... or the documentary). Thanks to Joe, Shaun, and Kelly for giving us your Friday night... thanks to Brad, Anthony, and Christine for putting up with me. Thanks to Cafe' Francisco for allowing us to film with short notice and keeping a smile on when we went 10 minutes over.

Later that night, Christine and I drank with Joe at dish (a favorite local bar and a location for a later scene). The following day we drank for 12 hours straight (or so) at the Cooper/Young Festival. Okay, now the Cooper/Young festival is something that I have attended since before my days of living in Midtown Memphis. Now, I mentioned that scheduling the shoot for Friday was a little selfish. That's because I would have scheduled the shoot around that Saturday anyway. I love this festival. It's an art festival with a great atmosphere, good friends, cheap finds, cheap beer (if you have good friends), and carnie food. I can't help it... I love corndogs. After you've had a few barley-pops you really don't give a crap about what you're eating... as long as it sobers you up a bit. Perhaps one day I'll be able to replicate that whole scenario for a film... or at least have the money to do it if I wanted to. That would be fun, I think... well, probably a nightmare because I'd be sober.

So, Sunday I acted in two other films (the two other films that I had committed to before we started shooting on Divine Manipulation of the Threads). I've finished shooting on M. David Lee III's film Slow Down... You're Dating Too Fast. I was married off in the movie. That kind of scared me a little. But David was finally able to wrap the shoots for the film. Yes, I held him back for about a month... but he understands. I also filmed on Robert Saba's movie, Delusions. Robert says that he wrapped principle photography yesterday... which is pretty exciting... but we still have a few "pick ups" to do for that production.

Again, it's been a busy weekend. I'm sure this week will be just as full... because now I have to figure out what we're going to film this weekend (or just fall back to loading tapes and editing).

Whew.... sorry Ralph, I can't think of any threads (I drank them away Saturday)