Wow, I’ve been lagging on this thing. Got two voice messages from my mom saying she’d checked the blog for updates and was forced to call because there was nothing new... so, here goes. :)

 

We had another pretty smooth week. We shot in a dance studio for  the first 2 days. Got great extra turnout to fake a Saturday night scene on a Tuesday at 9am... Cristin (UPM & Extras Coordinator) rockks! The biggest obstacle we had was that an actor playing a small yet important role just didn’t show up to the set, without notifying anyone. [Note to self: hard-to-schedule people are risky. People who don’t know the film world are risky. Avoid them.]

 

So we were forced to sacrifice some action within the scenes being shot during the party, but then a hero saved the day: Carol, our adorable and very popular PA/intern. When I finally was able to get our flake-out on the phone and discovered she wasn’t planning on following through with her commitment to be in the film, I realized we officially needed a replacement... but if we didn’t get one right that minute, the story would have to be reworked, because that was the only night we could shoot the scenes outside the dance studio. Note to self: make sure your crew is diverse in looks and ages and make sure you have lots of cute people willing to take one for the team!

 

Actually, it has now become a serious goal of mine to get all of the crew in front of the camera at one point or another. The afore-mentioned Cristin also got some screen time, along with Michelle, the 1st Assistant Camera, and Seth, the sound guy, in a frisbee-playing scene. Brynn, the producer, went under water to play an androgynous blurry figure. Many other crew members were in the Tuesday party scene or in Friday’s crowd scene. We even got the DP as an extra in one of the shots while Michelle operated the camera. The only main ones missing are the Art Director and the Chef, but we have a big party scene coming up that I can probably squeeze everybody else into.

 

Day 9 we shot at Rooz Café, on Piedmont Ave (Oakland), and I have to publicly say that Steve the owner was out-of-this-world helpful and supportive of us. THANK YOU!

 

Day 10 we spent all day in Mosswood Park. This was a fun day for many reasons. The dedicated and talented members of Diamond & Sparkle (aged 8-14) came out at 7:30 am with their leaders, Corey and Teela, and stayed all day. What a bunch of sassy, incredibly professional and fun kids! Alanis, our young actress (the 11-year old playing Nikki), was incredible with Diamond & Sparkle, and enchanted our whole crew. We wrapped early once again, and people got a chance to have a proper Friday night. Or, erm, sleep 12 hours.

 

We’ve been moving so quickly through the scenes that now people are officially expecting to wrap early every day. Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong, but then I tell myself I should be happy to be an efficient director that gets what they need with a small amount of bulk footage. A big part of this accomplishment stems from the fact that I am not the kind of director that requires tons of takes out of every shot. Most of the scenes have been rehearsed on at least two separate occasions by the time the actresses get in front of the camera, and they are so excellent that they generally nail it in one or two takes. Part of this is because, during rehearsals, I communicated with them about the importance of matching actions with lines for continuity purposes. And we worked on deciding what those actions would be (e.g. take sip of beer after saying that line), and rehearsed it with the actions. So we haven’t had to redo scenes for continuity purposes either, for the most part. Given that we haven’t had any major technical problems, this has made the 1-take shots a daily reality... Very proud of that. (And the editors should be doubly happy).

 

Tomorrow is the beginning of week 3. I can’t believe it’s the final stretch! Last week was the week of emotional turmoil, probably due to our underslept, always-somewhat-stressed condition. But then we partied it up together in SF, and had some time to rest. I am now strongly focused on getting the last scenes shot. There are sure to be hurdles here and there (e.g. one of our actresses is having a very difficult time in her personal life), but I want to be a good director/leader/mama and help everyone pull through this last week to get our film fully shot.

 

Zzzz.