Jumpin' Back Into It

Back from Sundance, and with our new Lana signed on, I quickly began to work very closely with her and Bobby to try and cram 4 months of work into 1 week.

But before that could happen we had a shoot scheduled for Saturday on campus. This was our first day back on set since our NY shoot, so it was exiting. We were all looking forward to it because the scenes we were going to shoot were on campus. We were going to be on the quad with a full dolly rig and crane/jib... we were all really exited at all of the attention we were sure to get.

The day was planed to be relatively easy; it was mostly comprised of montage shots of Bobby walking around campus. We had two scenes that we knew would be technically complex, but Zach, Josh and myself had practiced the camera moves the day prior and we were confident we could pull the complex shots off.

The first scene went off with out any hitches, it was the second scene that caused us some problems.... sorry...again... Opportunities :)

Essentially this was our first big scene with extras. Zach and I had planned out a really sick dolly crane-slow-motion shot that was sure to look baller. Unfortunately, we found out that the shot was just way to complex to pull of with the crew, time and equipment we had. We quickly adapted, and kept revising the way the scene was going to play out... ultimately we finished the scene, unfortunately with great expense to our scheduled day.

*** I want to give madd props to our wonderful extras (Kristen, Bianca, Vikki, Vin, James, Claire and two other random guys) They all really pulled through the cold weather and waited around for Zach and myself to finish shooting the scene***

After we had finished with that "Opportunistic" scene I had to meet with Brianne and figure out how we could piece the rest of our day together given the bumps we hit. We figured out we could shoot everything except the other big newspaper scene and a few shots at our second location. Zach and I both acknowledged that we messed up and planned an un-realistic shot. We learned a lot from that.

We moved on pretty smoothly with the rest of our day, shooting the rest of the montage shots and stuff.

We ended with our usual "producers/heads" meeting (Vin, Vikki, Zach, Brianne and myself) and went over everything that happened, and talked about things we needed to improve on... Things such as extras management and a set-in-stone shot list.

The next week was pretty intense for me... Bobby, Jess and myself met pretty much every night for 3-4 hours to rehearse, we really had to bring Jess up to speed for her first shoot which was in a week.

Over the course of the week Bobby and Jess both made monumental strides, it was really good for the three of us to meet so often and for so long, it really pushed the actors to get into character and feel comfortable. Bobby of course had been in character for months now, however both Bobby and I were amazing at how fast Jess got into character. We definitely had work to do that first day rehearsing, but she progressed extremely well.

On monday we went over how we were going to transform Jess to look more "Lana like" with Claire our wardrobe and makeup expert. Claire and I picked out a really good hair style and color. On thursday after Jess got back from the salon we saw the finished product.... She looked amazing, it still amazes me what a good hair cut and dye will do to transform the way someone looks. We finished our rehearsals, and by thursday night, Jess had caught up and nailed it, it was a really awesome feeling, seeing them hit their marks, especially Jess, considering she was still on her first week!

During the week, in the mean time I was meeting with Zach a lot to go over shots for this extremely jam packed weekend we have in front of us. We came up with some really good stuff, we also found out the best way for us to record our shots.

Originally we had been making a shot list and also story boarding complex shots on paper. Now we are creating a shot list and drawing a blueprint of the set and marking camera positions for shots. This is much more efficient for us, and clears up any questions about where the camera will be during a particular shot. It has been really amazing working with Zach on this project. On set we work as one and we have a really good flow to the way we work together. Yes, we have run into some opertunities, but I couldent ask for a better DP, and since Zach and I have been shooting projects together for the past 3 years why stop now?

With all that said I need to get up in about 11hrs for the shoot tomorrow. I want to get to bed, but i have a ton of stuff on my mind (both TMC related and other stuff). Everyone is ready and prepped for tomorrow, and I am confident that we will make some sweet movie magic.

Night,