A day at the renaissance faire of SoCal today with C & M. It was superb. Met their friends recently moved from NY. Monkey had a great day too. Loads to do, lots of fun. It was pretty funny as most of the 'players' were getting ale'd up during the day and were pretty loud by closing time. It was still a blast though. The only crappy thing that happened was that munchkin and I got onto the back of a huge wooden rocking horse only to have him have a melt down before we'd even starting rocking. The guy looking after the ride helped us both down, unzipped his money belt to give me my $6 back before thinking better of it and offering me a handshake with the words "better luck next time, my lord". What an arsehole.
Check it out here...

A day at the renaissance faire of SoCal today with C & M. It was superb. Met their friends recently moved from NY. Monkey had a great day too. Loads to do, lots of fun. It was pretty funny as most of the 'players' were getting ale'd up during the day and were pretty loud by closing time. It was still a blast though.
Check it out here...

Thursday night into Friday morning...3.30 and I hit the sack (airbed, actually). Up at 9.00 and straight back to editing the movie. Gave up at 2pm and headed home.
Had a chat with G later on and apparently R, my cameraman, was convinced that I had asked him to frame up the way it was and he was 'too scared' to ask me if it REALLY was what I wanted. It sure as hell wasn't what I wanted as I distinctly asked to have both of us framed to the left and the right of frame, forehead to chin, closeup on our faces. Funny how B, my DP was spot on with his stuff and R missed it completely.
At this point, I do want to note that the early takes which we couldn't use due to really poor lighting (the light setup took five hours to get it right) were superbly framed, just what I wanted (and R had framed those). Maybe R had a brainfart or I just didn't communicate what I wanted plainly enough. Whatever. It's my fault ultimately as I should have checked the first shot of the new setup and I didn't. I would have seen immediately what a carveup the framing was, corrected it and moved on.
Worked on the opening titles and theme until late.

Wednesday. Class was good. Did a three hander with Rich and Ric. I had an activity and ended up almost braining Ric! Went well, got a 'very good' from S! Ended the class with a short docu from "All the presidents men" showing the behind the scenes with Redford and Hoffman. Superb stuff outlining the importance of characterisation and rehearsal. Immersing yourself in the character and working in their environment (The Washington Post). The two leads even started sharing their lines so the actors they were performing with really didn't know who was going to say what. Kept them on their toes. Very real and alive. Grabbed some ADR with B at the end of class to finish off the V/O lines I forgot to grab on Saturday. Munchkin is a BIG handful but still incredibly cute with it. LACasting logins for Debut aren't working... Hum, hope everything's OK. Mind you, this is Hollywood! Ended the eve with transferring all the stuff from M's old hard drive (which is on this machine... remember!) over to her new one. Quick and easy, just call me free premium IT support. Gazza's been digitising all of the tapes today in time for the edit tomorrow. I sincerely hope my acting or directing didn't suck too badly although I am fearful...
Watched The Chronicles of Narnia, LWW. Very good. Great line up of kids.

Tuesday...
Cleaned up the studio.
Loads of errands today. Library. Returned the ladder and tape to home depot ($222 refund - yeehaa). Returned a shirt to Marshalls! Bought another shirt in Ross! Checked out my new headshot proofs and didn't like the border, text or one of the pic's exposure so ordered two more proofs. Tried to track down the new puter for M which just happened to be in stock in Pasadena. Yeehoo. Off down the freeway.
Basically loads of driving today. Great.

Monday and off to class. Eric Ed took it and he was great! Nice guy. Funny too. He's a comedian by the way! I did the scene with RR again and, after last week's fiasco, I just went for it, passion and fire! It worked out really well and Eric seemed really impressed. Don't get the impression that I'm needy but when you cock up that badly one week, a pat on the back the next does no harm at all! The guys all wanted to know how the shoot went and I was happy to report on a great day. Br was there and he had written me a note to say thanks and how much he appreciated the opportunity. Great guy! Very professional. Littl'un was running around in his boots and hat when I got home and I went out for a walk to the Post office (thrilling, eh!). Bought some choc covered bananas for monkey for dessert and they were a MAJOR success!
Oh, I have to book something very soon or we're heading East again I think. Either that or someone else has to get a job! D's test's came back from the vet and they're not good. Seems there may be a serious problem so she has to go visit again =( Thyroid and old dog problems I'm afraid. Finished off R & G are dead and ploughed on thru NAM. Wow, it's getting heavier. How those guys were completely desensitised against death and killing is quite astounding and very very alarming. D bath! Wet dog smells...yum.

Recovery day. I spoke to G and he got to bed at 7am! Funnily enough, that's when I got up to sort out monkey! No rest for the wicked, eh! Had a lazy day with a two hour nap! Did some research on a new computer for M and continued reading Nam. Wow. It's heavy. Spoke to G who told me that R had called me a 'bastard' too which made me even more proud. They both were amazed at how the footage turned out.

Shoot day. Muchkin alarm clock goes off late but that's cool as we have plenty of time to enjoy M's muffins and a bracing morning beverage before B & B arrive. Showers and brekkie later and it's out to the studio. Br arrives and we chat about what we're going to be doing that day (or, at least, my guess as to what we'll be doing). One thing's for sure, there's no real point in having a schedule today, just a finish time in mind and that's going to be a rough estimation! Bo gets here and we start experimenting with the camera setups. Cut a long story short, by about 4pm(!!) we're ready to go with cameras and lights in the right place. It was a close run thing whether or not to ditch the second camera in favour of the set being effectively lit from one side with only one subject. BUT, we held out and we hung some 8x12' white painters covers on the walls to hide the shadowy corners and we were back to two cameras! I was finally happy with the look so off we went, starting with dirty singles. Clean singles and close ups later, we had arrived at about 8pm without stopping for lunch or dinner. I wanted to run everything at least twice but I ended up settling for one run of close ups and fill in close ups, ditto clean singles.
We had rolling snacks, drinks and pee breaks. The guys were starting to make noises about pushing to a second day but I had to tell them that we couldn't. I convinced them that the last few shots (I lied, there were several more shots to do) were only going to take a couple of hours. We carried on and shot some wides including the 'plates' for the clipboard 'appearance) as well as for cutaway thinking, pondering, looking and reaction shots, hopefully to add some more elements into the edit.
Over shoulder shots, the opening shot of B's arrival and a couple of other specials, we came to the last 'desk' shot which had our third character (who's never seen, by the way) coming upto the desk. I knew that I wanted a POV shot but wasn't happy with a handheld. Inspiration struck when R saw monkey's Radio Flyer truck and suggested we try a dolly shot! Superb. Camera on tripod inside wagon and we were ready. B attended to the camera (as all good DP's should), G on sound with the boom, R on the floor ready to pull stuff out of the way (when it was out of frame) and me steering! It worked like a charm. My little film had a friggin' dolly shot in it! And a corker it was! Lo-budget filmmaking, I love it. Actually, suggestions abounded all day which was refreshing as we had an amazing camaraderie on set which was probably helped by the fact that there was only five of us in total and happy banter with good natured insults (lots of bitch and c'sucker were uttered) abounded. Desk shots done, it was time for the overhead shot. I would have loved to have got to it before 10pm but we didn't! Arranged the covers on the floor and B hit the deck. I went up the ladder with camera in hand. Looking down, it was wild! The shot worked amazingly well and it's going to blow people's minds when they see it. What an opener! All done. Cold food waiting in the kitchen and we watched some of the footage on the TV. Holy moley, it looks incredible. EXACTLY the look I wanted. Everyone thought I was completely mad as all that you could see in the monitor was zebra stripes everywhere but I stuck to my guns. But even G said 'bastard, this is good' which is an amazing compliment from G and made me very proud! Then Bo & Br hit the road. Br had had a lot to cope with and I was really pleased with his performance. He did really well. Actually, everyone worked like stink and worked a VERY long day although I think this shoot was still a good 8 hours less than some of the one dayer's I had heard about. Basically setup and shoot was 14 hours and thank god I did eventually use two cameras as I had wanted - we saved ourselves a whole day! Here's a tip, if you can get two cameras for your shoot, get them. Seriously, it's worth the hassle. Also, what turned out to be incredibly important to do was to check the footage on an external TV monitor. We didn't trust the camera's display. It turned out to be SO different and as we were pushing video limits, we went for a belt and braces approach. Thank god we did check, early on, with different setups as it completely saved our bacon. We could have so easily lost the whole day's shoot by filming what would have turned out to be useless. Anyway, G & R stayed until 2.30am clearing up and I hit the sack at 4am.

Bags of stuff to do before tomorrow's shoot! Head out to get parking passes. Then off to Target for stick on letters (for the coffee cups). Then off to Home Depot to drop $200 for a ladder (for return next week, natch). I KNOW that that high shot for the opening scene is going to make the movie! Grab some white gaffer tape and some white masking tape just in case. Everything takes so bloody long when you have no time to spare, dunnit! Back home with munchkin to wait for the boys. When they arrive, it's out to the studio to show them what I've been doing. M's out to get food for tomorrow, bless her. We setup the lights before the boys go out to see the Quay brothers (a pair of Brit animators). I have a bunch of things to print up (clipboard sheets, crew and cast releases, etc) so I make the most of the time. The boys are back around 11.20pm so we won;t be finishing off the setup tonight! More to do tomorrow. In bed by 1.00am with my mind racing...