Back to New York...

So a bunch of us arrived late Thursday night to NY at a sketchy motel. We had to jam about 9 people into two small rooms. We had to do this because Vinny was not with us, so we couldn’t spend the night at his house.

We got about 4 hrs of sleep and had to get up at the crack of 5am and pack up in 15min to head over to Vin’s for the sunrise.

Once we arrived at the house we started to set the tent up for the sunrise scene. Everything was all set up until we realized a key wardrobe item had not been brought up. Our wardrobe person was not on set because she was coming up later in the day. This article of clothing was not only needed to keep continuity between scenes, it was a key motif in the movie. I knew we had to have the particular hoodie for Bobby to wear in the sunrise scene for aesthetic reasons, so we all panicked.

So we thought quick on our feet and sent Brianne out to Wal-Mart. Luckily she was able to find a maroon hoodie that closely resembled the one we had been using.

We shot the scene and it looked great.

Soon after we finished the scene Greg Nutcher arrived on set to finish some of his scenes for the movie. There was a little bit of a scheduling conflict between him and Brianne, and we found out he was only available to shoot that day. So we had to change our plans around slightly to accommodate him, but in the end it worked out fine.

We shot that day and once we were done shooting everyone took a break, except of course, myself Jess and Bobby. We had to rehearse for a few hours to get ready for the next mornings shoot.

That night we also found out that we would not be allowed to shoot at the diner we had already been given permission to shoot at on Saturday. Apparently Vin had called to follow up with the manger and she told him we couldn’t (even though we had already set it in stone that we could), she said we could only shoot there on weekdays. This was a bummer for us because now we knew we would have to come back up to NY and take more time out of our schedules to shoot the diner scene… But it had to be done…

The next morning was a big one. We all got up at 5am sharp (all with about 5 hrs of sleep)

It was really a sight to behold. The previous night we all got together and I spoke to everyone about the morning shoot at the cemetery. I stressed that it was critical that we all worked as a team, we all needed to work in unison, we all needed to work together to beat the rising sun.

In the morning it was really awesome to see it all come together. We had the full crew out at the cemetery at 5:30am. We had three different groups; some were shoveling and scraping ice off of the mausoleum walkway to prevent the actors and the dolly from slipping. Others were setting up the crane, and even more people were in a different location setting up the dolly tracks so Zach and I could move from shot to shot with minimal set up time. This was an extremely important scene and we had it spread across two mornings in the schedule, but we still knew we needed to hustle to fit it all in.

While all this was going on Zach and I were down in the valley setting up the wide shot. As the sun started to rise, I took a second to take it all in. This was the first time I had seen the entire crew work in unison, work together on set so well. Sure everyone has been working hard, but it was so awesome to see it all take place at one location.

As the sun started to rise we captured some phenomenal shots. We also found out that the sun was more forgiving then we had anticipated and rose much slower. This was very good news for us because it allowed us to shoot for longer into the morning.

Shooting at sunrise is a particularly hard task because the color temperature in the sky changes so rapidly. Luckily this day was decently cloudy (this helped us with the color temperature issue and time issue)

We shot all we could and then took a big break. The whole crew went out to a local Chinese buffet, and it was amazing… we were all so tired and drained form the morning shoot that the food tasted amazing. It was really good moral booster.

Once we got back form lunch we had some down time until it got dark, which was when we where planning on shooting all of the tent night scenes.

During that time most of us took a nap, caught up on some Z’s and did some rehearsing.

That night was some of the hardest lighting Kelly and Zach have come across yet… and they pulled it off beautifully. The footage looked really great. We went long into the night and when it ended we clocked out at about a 21hr day. Although we did get all of our shots in for the day, I can hardly say 21hrs was a success.

Later in the week we went over some concerns during e-board and we realized that we could cut down on our setup times if I rehearsed with the actors while Zach and Kelly were setting up. This would eliminate the time they need to re-adjust lights to the actors specific physical traits.
Anyway… With feet soaking wet, those of us who stayed outside all night for the shoots went to sleep.

We woke up the next morning only to have to rush back out to the cemetery to shoot the remainder of the mausoleum scene. When we got there we shot a few pick ups and then proceeded to get the remainder of an important monologue we had not been able to shoot the day prior. As we started to shoot it was going well. Then out of nowhere in a split second it started to downpour on all of us. We all quickly hustled and grabbed all of the equipment and brought it under shelter.

We then all went back to Vin’s and were about to call it a day until, you guessed it… the sun came out! So we ate lunch and ran back over to the set and proceeded to shoot the rest of the scene. Only this time the sun was out (which is actually bad, because you get harsher highlights on your subjects) and it was extremely windy. We shot what was left in the scene and got the hell out of there.

Needless to say it was a very cold, tiring and exhausting weekend. However, we did get a lot of amazing footage!