weekend eight: part two of "the date"

As far as my Indie film experiences have gone, I've had a very exciting, pleasant, and vibrant time "playing movies" for the last few years. I've engaged in several learning experiences that run the gamut of pre-production decisions to post-production deadline issues. I've loved them all (as much as some have frustrated the ever-living-shit-out-of-me).

Lately, we've been dealing with scheduling issues. These problems will undoubtedly occur when your cast and crew are working FOR FREE. So, you deal with them. Luckily, we have been able to squeeze some last minute shoots together before a very talented actor (and good friend) left for New York once again. Thanks to the amazing producing talents of our crew (and some long nights worth of scouring through script and paperwork by Christine) we made this weekend's shoot happen. It was actually scheduled to a relatively smooth-as-glass sensibility... which lightens the load on my skull and stretches a smile across my face by the end of the day. I was very happy that this weekend's shoot was going to go off without a hitch. Then... it started to rain.

As a shook off a hangover and started getting dressed for our Sunday 9AM crew call, the earth shaking rumbles of lightning and thunder loomed overhead. "FUCK!" I thought to myself. "This is the one item that is out of our control." I hung my head and started off towards downtown with the hopes that we could "wait it out." Thankfully, we only ran about an hour behind schedule.

We started shooting downtown Sunday morning, focusing on TRACY ADAIR and KONG. I will state this as a firmly as I can... Chris Ross and Freddy Mitchell are (hands-down) one of the funniest pairs of comic relief actors I have ever seen. Even though there were bits of scripted dialogue and ideas that had to be conveyed from one point to another... most of the time I just let the camera continue to roll to see what madness we would capture. Those two goofy bastards really made the humor of the scene come alive. I feel confident that people will be rolling in the aisles when this film premieres. I can say this with assurance because of several key items that just "went above and beyond what we were expecting." They even had a security guard that was completely unaware of what was going on laughing out loud.

I would like to thank those that saw us filming on the city streets for not being too disruptive.

We finished our daytime shoots around 2PM... had a length lunch at Movie and Pizza Co. on Mud Island... watched the dailies... and took a much needed nap. We would gather again for our night-shoots around 9PM. Chris and Freddy continued to thrill and make us laugh with the silliest of improv.

Since the temperature has dropped a few key degrees in the last week, Jennifer froze during the evening but kept in great spirits. We were actually able to shoot a few extra moments on the "date night" scene... This really made me happy. Getting in extra shots along with making the scheduled production day is an added bonus to an already enlightened day. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of those people that made it happen (Chris, Freddy, Muck, Jovan, Nick, Marcus, Joe, Robert, Christine, Brad, Anthony, and anyone that may have slipped my memory of the long day). Sunday was a fantastic day.

d i v i n e m a n i p u l a t i o n o f t h e t h r e a d s is going to be one funny-ass movie. For now we'll continue chipping away at the shooting schedule, get some more scenes in the can, and keep rough cutting the scenes we do have shot. I just love watching it all come together. The coming weekend is going to take a lot of time and effort. I'll try to keep my head together... I said... try.

HERE IS THE ONLY THREAD I CAN REMEMBER:

JOE: "What the hell time is it, 42 o'clock?" (Joe explains why the church bell tower had been ringing for five minutes straight)