Ugh!

For the past few days, my phone has been saying I have voicemails waiting for me, but when I call in it says I have none. I know I'm missing calls, this is frustrating. Shooting is going well. If we stay on schedule, we'll wrap on Wednesday which means I can spend some time in Modesto before returning home. This is just a quick-stop-at-the-coffee-shop-update, but I tossed more photos to my flickr account. Check 'em out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/captainwesker/

Two weeks of this madness!

So there's about twenty of us in a three-story house right now. I'm upstairs sitting on one of the bedroom floors writing this as I babysit a camera worth well more than my life. One of the first rules of working with this sort of equipment is that the camera is treated like a two-week old infant, needing constant care and attention - meaning that no matter what's going on, I have to stick by the camera if my supervising AC (Aaron Smith) isn't around.

The past few days have been rough. On Thursday I drove the car to Chicago to Fletcher to pick up the camera equipment with three other guys. We arrived at Brian Walton's house around 1:30 in the morning and left seven hours later to pick everything up. On the way to get the rental truck that morning, we got a flat tire on the freeway (Peter was driving that morning, so my No Flat Tire record remains unsoiled...technically.) We pulled off to the side of the freeway, just short of the offramp. No more than fifteen minutes later, a tow truck showed up. Chicago has this awesome freeway system with trucks on patrol picking up anyone stranded for free. The guys towed us off the freeway where I changed out the flat for the spare in the trunk.

After we swapped the spare, we called Ryder telling them that we were *obviously* running late, they told us that they just rented out the last truck. Wonderful. Instead of running around with our heads cut off (and a flat tire) we drove on the spare another ten miles to Fletcher, which is on the outskirts of the downtown Chicago skyline. That city is gorgeous. Aaron and I stayed at Fletch to do camera prep, which typically takes all day, while Peter and Ricky went to find a truck, and then off to a couple other rental houses to pick up a dolly and some track and a remote camera head. While Aaron continued doing prep work, I drove the car to the local Firestone and got the spare fixed. Once Peter and Ricky showed up, we loaded up the truck with our equipment and then made plans to meet up at Dennys in Indiana (they had one more stop to make). We grabbed dinner at Dennys at 10pm or so, and then finished our 350 mile trek, lasting until about 2 in the morning.

Here I am, two days later. The first day of filming was yesterday. It was a little rough, but realistically speaking, we won't be at full speed until tomorrow or Tuesday. There's a big job ahead of us, and still some wrinkles need to be smoothed over. In the meantime, God is good - and the scenery makes up for the lack of potable tap water and no internet. More pictures are up on my Flickr account.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/captainwesker/

Really tired.

No updates today. I'm really tired and we just now got into Chicago. We're staying at Brian Walton's family's house tonight because camera prep is in the morning at Fletch. I tossed a bunch of photos on my Flickr account, so you can check it out in the meantime.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/captainwesker/

Toodles

Days one and Two

Hey guys. I won't have time to update on the film shoot as often as I'd like. There's a coffee shop in town that I'll be able to hit up once or twice a week. Here's my trip so far (disregard the grammar/spelling. It was really late at night and I had five hours of sleep in the previous two days.)

Tuesday-Wednesday (Days One and Two)

I should have known that this two-week film trip to Michigan would be anything but ordinary. Tuesday morning I went to work just like any other day, starting at noon, expecting to work until eight that night, as usual. Around 1pm, Brian Walton gave me a call saying that my plane ticket had just been purchased for a departure at 9pm that night. I’ve always been one for impromptu road trips, but usually I’ve got clean laundry waiting for me.

My boss let me take off work at 5pm on Tuesday so I could get home, pack a duffel bag full of dirty clothes, and jet over to Brian’s apartment to carpool with Ricky Norris, who, along with Melissa Cobb, would be flying with me to Michigan that night. Brian had a couple lighting kits for us to take with us on the plane, so we loaded it into Ricky’s car and headed to the airport.

As we weighed in our luggage, we found out that with the lighting kits, we would have to pay a fee for taking too much weight with us. With a shrug, I handed the baggage checker my lovely piece of blue plastic knowing that I’d be reimbursed when we got to Michigan. Ricky and I got to our gate about half an hour before Melissa. Once she got there, another twenty minutes went by and then we were on the plane on our way to Vegas.

One hour to Vegas, then half an hour to change planes and we were off to Michigan at around 11:30pm. The flight was really smooth in spite of the multiple lightning storms we passed over. Off in the distance, massive clouds were erupting lightning strikes. I’m not kidding when I say I saw at least one strike every two seconds in one storm we passed by. It really was gorgeous.

We landed in Detroit at 6am local time. The sun was just starting to peak over the horizon by the time we stepped outside after getting our luggage at the terminal. Stephen’s parents were there waiting for us. Keep in mind - we had no idea who was picking us up at the airport when we landed. After an hour’s drive (and a quick bite at McDonald’s) we crashed at the house they’re renting for us.

After a few hours of sleep, we grabbed a sandwich and met up with the rest of the guys who were already here. The forest we’re shooting the movie in is about a two minute drive from our house, which is in the middle of farmland. We spent the rest of the day clearing out sticks and rough patches in the campsite we were building. By sundown, Dan Parris and I finished building a fence that surrounds the entire camp. We were all pretty tired, so we headed back to the house where Stephen’s mom had dinner waiting for us.

After a few hours, it being very dark outside, we decided to find a gas station to grab some sodas and snacks. We must have walked about two miles before turning back and snagging some sodas from the garden center we passed on our way out. We got back to the house and set up the little TV that was left in the living room and finished off some pie that was left over from dinner earlier.

In the middle of watching Conan, Ricky stood up and started pointing to his throat. He was choking. Aaron Smith was sitting next to him and promptly jumped up and gave him the Heimlich maneuver, saving his life. It was pretty surreal. A few minutes later, Ricky walked into the kitchen where Peter Borrud and Abe Sherman were going over the script. After Ricky told them that he had just choked on a piece of pie, Peter asked, “Really? There’s still pie left over?”

It’s 2:30am, Thursday morning. Tomorrow we’re finishing prep work on the campsite, and then going to spend the night in Chicago to do camera preparation at Panavision on Friday.

Mmm Snacks