Well filming's going good now. It seems the crew's finally gotten into a groove and the weather is cooperating for a change. We've had a couple of Assistant Camera people stopping by on and off to help speed up Spencer our DP who before had to load the film himself after each mag (the casing that holds the film) ran out causing big delays because it took him about 15-20 minutes to load it. Not to mention the fact that before we got the ACs Spencer was using Jean Michael, our amazing Key Grip, as a Camera Assistant which was great for the camera dept. but sucked for the grip dept since it consisted of just Jean Michael.
Actually Simon our best boy is also amazing though. He's a whiz with electrical stuff (nobody understands how he hooks certain things up to other things but since they always seem to work, nobody's asking any questions). He also fills in on every other dept. for some reason which is both a blessing and a hinderance since he is never around to help out with the electrical stuff when he is needed. He is handy with a gun though which is great because we have all those prop guns to keep an eye on which are basically real guns with a partially blocked barrel. He handles them for the cast and they trust him when he loads the blanks and checks to see if they're loaded or not. So far no deaths. But everyone is always super-careful when we use them (nobody can be standing anywhere near where the things are pointed when they fire, no rehearsing with loaded weapons, etc) and I feel very comfortable when we use them.
We got our dailies back from the lab (from the first few days of shooting) and the stuff looks great. The rain is barely noticeable in every raining shot (which is good) except one shot where it was pouring out. During that particular shot we had our DP laying on a long dirt driveway that was slowly turning into a river while we repeatedly shot a truck rolling past the camera as it went up the driveway. We stood over the DP and his camera with a makeshift, blue tarp as what seemed like buckets poured down on top of us. It was an amazing experience and the shot is utterly beautiful but unfortunately is unuseable because of all the rain which won't match up with any other shot we have for the scene when it's hardly raining... maybe it'll make it into the trailer.
Another blessing that I wasn't counting on is my sister Melanie. She spent the weekend helping out as Super PA, doing anything she had to when it was needed to help get the film done. By Tuesday she started learning more and more about the filmmaking process (she doesn't come from any film experience except the hundreds of home videos I've shot around the house) and she found out we were shooting without a script supervisor. So she just jumped right in and said "What do I have to do?" and now we have a script supervisor. A script supervisor is the key continuity person. He/She (usually she it seems for some reason in this business) is the person who watches everything that is going on, usually taking poloroids the whole time, trying to remember how everything happened because films are never shot in sequence. And what is being filmed one day, might not get completed until a day or week or month later. And by that time, people forget what hat they were wearing or in what hand were they holding a beer bottle. But that's what the script supervisor notices and remembers. They also tell the DP & Sound person what shot number and scene number they are on for the camera reports, sound reports and slate. The slate is the black and white thing you hold up in front of every shot (or at the end of every shot which you call a "tail slate"). The slate tells what the film is, who's directing it, what the date is, what the scene number is, shot number, and which camera roll is being used for editing work. The slate gets CLACKED! at the beginning of every sound shot so that later in editing you can sync your sound up to your film images (since they are separate in film and not together like in video) by matching the CLACK! sound up from your sound source (in our case, a DAT tape) with the precise moment the slate actually CLACKS! down upon itself visually on your film source (either the 35mm film or on your video dailies) - if I explained that bad and it's confusing e-mail me and I'll explain it better.
Anyway, Melanie's been a great Script Supervisor even though she pissed off my family by losing her job to work on the film. I'd be pissed also if she wasn't so damn useful on the set.
I gotta go now. God, so much to write about. I'll keep you updated though. Keep visiting