Day One

We wrapped our first day of shooting early. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it means the director's not getting enough coverage. Today it was a good thing. We had a great crew, including some college-age volunteers who showed up for four-hour shifts and ended up staying for the entire day. The worst thing was that we couldn't book any walkies for the weekend, so the ADs were miffed and had to use their outside voices inside (not that ADs have inside voices, really).

We had a smoke effect guy for today and he was awesome, helped with the load-in, blew some incredible dense smoke, dealt with the b.s. of having to shout through a door over a loud fan because of the no walkies situation, and the footage looked really scary. I'm happy. The only thing that went over was craft service. :-) My DP was happy, the Gaffer looked a little peeved because we had a problem with one of the lights. It actually shorted out all over the floor. Scared the heck out of me, but, of course, the guys just kicked the sparks out of the way and started hacking away at the light with little metal screwdrivers....

This Thursday we're shooting the stuff in the moving car, then Friday, Saturday, Sunday we are back in the location we used tonight. I'm trying to rest up for Sunday which is the day we have the firetruck, ambulance and cop car and shoot until 3am. I'm going to bed now. I've been up since 4AM, not counting all the startles I had making sure we didn't forget anything major. I'm crashing now, so I'll write more later this week.