I wanted to shake up my life and go sailing (or learn on the job, so-to-speak) so headed to Florida to crew on a catamaran. This is about how it went or, rather, didn't - and my life since. Hopefully it will lead to a catamaran on the clear aqua blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, watching the sunset, a coconut rum and coke in hand. You must START AT THE BEGINNING of the blog, April 2009, to get the whole story...

Friday, March 9, 2012

OOPS and the LONG NIGHT

Our last day of shooting was actually night - call time was 4pm and we wrapped at 4:30am. It went pretty fast although it was cold out, and it even snowed about an inch in less than an hour at about 2:30am. That messed up the big fight scene we shot. We did one side with snow falling and then when we turned around to shoot the other side, there was no snow. So post will have to put snow falling in via computer effects.

We had one scene where a brand new Chrysler 300 had to do a 180 in the road. On the first try the car did half of a 180 and ended up down a lane. So we reset and went again. The stunt driver came into it faster and the result was half of a 180 again, into the lane, only at higher speed stopping rather abruptly with a dull 'thunk'. Turns out, he took down a 'do not enter' sign and the cement it was set in came up and hit the undercarriage of the car taking out the oil pan and the transmission. Cost? $25,000 worth of damage. A write off. And we still needed to finish the scene. Transport scrambled to find another 300 and the only place open that had one that time of night was Vancouver airport. So out they went to get it and we shot the scene again a few hours later. This time we didn't try the 180.

Oops!

I managed to get a photo taken with both Dolph on his last day, and then with Steve on our last night shooting. Unfortunately, Steve is covered in fake blood and I look like death after a long night of working in the cold so it's not really something I want to frame and add to my 'table of fame'.

My son in law has a brother living in a small village in England and he is a huge, and I do mean HUGE fan of Steve's. Rob mentioned through Ashleigh that his brother Rich would be thrilled if I could get something autographed for him. I managed to get that and plan a bigger surprise. With a bit of coordinating with Rich's twin brother, Geoff, I arranged for Steve to call Rich. Our last night was the perfect time to do it, considering the 8 hour difference between there and here. So at midnight, during a break in filming, I placed the call using my cell phone (I have a great rate to the UK). Rich was stunned but managed to recover quickly and they talked for ten minutes. Rich called me the next day to thank me and said it had given him a real boost. It was so nice of Steve to do and I appreciated it a lot. Thank you, Steve.



I drove to Langley, just across the river, after we wrapped and waited until 7:00 when my mechanic opened. I needed him to figure out what was wrong with my headlights and fix it. The guys at work had looked at it and said it was a relay plug. My friend picked me up from there and I expected to spend an hour or two at the most hanging out at her place. Turns out it took them until 4:00pm to figure it out and fix it. It was the switch and they could not find a replacement so had to repair it. I then drove home and got there just in time to get changed and then head over to my daughters so I could babysit Malia while mommy went for a swim. By the time I crawled into bed after 10, I had been up over 37 hours. I was exhausted.
All photographs are mine and not to be copied without express permission from me (click on them to see the large version).
Some names have been changed to protect my butt.



Search My Blog

Amazon Store

Here's my Amazon Store called Sandra's Selections, full of my favourite things and constantly updating it as I discover more fav's. It's more for fun than anything as I've never made a cent off of it.