Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Shooting An Affair: Day Four (the craziness continues)

Day four and the hits just keep on coming. We were shooting the “diner scene” in a local restaurant tonight. It was taking us some time, but we were getting terrific performances from the actors – really nuanced. Nice stuff.

Then we heard a loud BANG out back. Several of us went to see if there had been a car accident. We found instead that part of a dead tree had fallen, taking down cable lines and yanking a transformer off the building.

It hit a car owned by one of our student crew members, shattering her windshield.

Really – what the heck is going on?

You get a one of two “war stories” like this on every shoot. So far it’s four “events“ in four days. My normally skeptical self is starting to wonder why or how this is happening.

Figuring the power might be turned off at any moment when emergency services arrived, we rushed to get our next shot or two, managing in the chaos to get what we needed. (And it turned out our haste was unnecessary, as the only downed lines were cable, not power).

In spite of the craziness – or perhaps because of it – we continue to put together a good film. Tonight, after shooting interior stuff in the diner, we moved outside, intending to get one simple shot to serve as a bridge to a nicer long shot. But as we saw the actors move through the quick shot, the light hit just right, the flashing red light in the background and gas station lights in the foreground hit perfectly, and we had a little scene in that simple set-up that looked dead solid perfect. Add to that picture the great performances, and I feel as though we continue to make good progress.

Tomorrow is an off day for the film shoot (we need it!), but not an off day for me. I have a budget meeting with the dean’s office at 10am (why am I still up at 3:30am?), an afternoon meeting regarding architectural plans for our new facility, and a dinner at the university president’s house to welcome a foreign dignitary who is visiting.

As the Talking Heads sang: “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’”

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