The Week In Review
By Monday of last week we were looking rather optimistic. We had brought a solid make up guy on board. We established a back up sound guy for when Lefty is out of town. As the week went on concerns of the upcoming weekend started to set in. Questions arose like, “When the hell is “L” going to call me?”, “Are we going to get enough extras for Saturday?”, “Are we going to get arrested on Sunday?”, and “Will I get that Lincoln?” The answers were as follows.
- “L” was never going to call. When I finally got a hold of him he gave me one answer then emailed me another. So “L” is out.
- It felt like we weren’t going to get enough people at first. Then by the end of the week it felt like we’d get too many. On shoot day we didn’t get enough. But free beer will eventually draw them in and when it was all said and done we succeeded.
- We didn’t get arrested on Sunday
- The Lincoln didn’t come together. I was very disappointed. I don’t know if it was a flat lie, a general lack of understanding, or something completely different, but it sucked.
The problem with loosing “L” was the lack of notice. I can deal with someone, that hasn’t been in any scenes yet, dropping out a week or so in advance, but a day or two is a little close. Still it all worked out. I was able to get a replacement and it was someone that I wanted in the movie before.
So now Saturday is going to be fine, but come shoot day very few people showed at the appointed time. So we made phone calls and waited. Eventually enough people did show up, but I think this all led to a very disorganized beginning to the shoot. While I think everything went well over all and the end felt very organized, the beginning felt a bit of a disaster. It was the worst I’ve felt of any shoot so far, and I felt it was all my own fault.
Saturday out of the way and no one getting too mad at me during the process we started more focus on the next day. Filming without a real budget can be all about getting lucky, and so far we’ve been very lucky. We usually ask and people provide with no questions. New Orleans is a great community in that regard and we are very thankful for all that we’ve been able to accomplish so far. Back to the point. The day just was wrong. It started with us not being able to get the Lincoln. Not really last minute but close. We had a back up in place so no big deal. Come Sunday, the back up, backs out. Half an hour before we were to shoot. I don’t blame him though. He was also our NOPD contact and was going to try and keep us from getting shot by NOPD, because we were going to be outside with fake guns. So now we lost our back up vehicle and security.
Sunday became our first failed shoot day. Complete total failure. While I was tired and had a friend in town that I wanted to hang out with, I’d would have rather have had that shoot. So after I called it off I went to the movies to watch The Dark Night again. I thought I needed a reality break and didn’t feel like thinking anymore. It just ended up making me angry. Overall a lot of lessons learned and somethings need to be looked over again. Overall everything has gone great. We just had one bad day. It happens. Dark Night rocks by the way.
