PICTURE, 1000 WORDS, AND ALL THAT

So if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I will keep this post brief.

 

So there you have it; why I want to move away from here to a more southern climate. It's JUNE, for pete's sake.

SOMEONE, TAKE ME AWAY!!!!

Sunset on Anegada

Tomorrow is the longest day of the year. Tomorrow is the first day of summer.

You could have fooled me.

The weather in and around Vancouver since my return from the BVI has been nothing short of MISERABLE. Cloudy, cold, raining... I think there have been three days where I have actually seen the sunshine. Gladly, one of them was last Thursday on my daughter's birthday. I took her out shopping for some makeup at a fabulous wholesale place (I can shop there because I have a movie union card) and then for a lovely lunch at Havana on 'The Drive'. The day before was the first time she had managed to keep her food down in 13 weeks and so we had high hopes that she would not only enjoy lunch but be able to hang onto it. Alas it was not to be. No sooner had we left the restaurant than she felt the meal was very heavy in her tummy. I took her home so she could have a nap before going out for a birthday dinner with her hubby later that evening and she called a bit later to say she had lost most of her lunch. Poor girl! She's lost 10lbs or more and it has really sapped all of her energy. (You know, writing this I don't think I have written on my blog that I am to be a grandmother come the end of the year [I just updated this post where I sort-of hinted at something when I originally wrote it]. I was told on the day my kids and I went to White Rock for a Mother's Day fish & chips lunch [although I had to pay for my own lunch so not sure if it was for MD - it was supposed to be, because I was away on actual MD]. I had suspected that they were going to tell me that very thing and had said as much to my friend the day before. I have no idea how I know these things but I often do. Anyhow I was very excited at the news and am really looking forward to this new chapter of my life.)

This card was in an envelope and with all the other mail my daughter had collected for me while I was gone. That is how they told me!

Anyway, back to this CRAPPY weather. I feel like I am going to go insane and I am not kidding. I just want to scream at the top of my voice that I HATE HATE HATE it here and I want out. People tell me "oh you would miss the seasons if you moved south." Oh really? What seasons would those be, exactly? The fall, winter and spring which is basically one long season of GREY and RAIN and COLD?

Vancouver in the rain. That sure is no Caribbean beach!

I love the Caribbean and would live there in a heartbeat but I can't work there so that is out. AND the cost of living is stupid high so even if I could get work, which I can't, I couldn't afford to come home to see my kids (and now a grandchild as of the end of this year) as much as I'd want to - if at all. I'd move to California - I love Palm Springs despite there being no beaches - but I can't work there either. I have never been so frustrated in my life as I have these past two years. I am SO DONE with the Pacific North West.

If anyone knows a way out - I am all ears.

Palm Springs

P.S. Sorry for the rant but I am seriously at the end of my rope and very stressed out at the moment. I know I should be just grateful that I had a month in the Caribbean while everyone else was here, toughing it out - I really do. But some people can handle this weather better than I do. I feel like I have put up with it for years and I am DONE with it. I just want to run away from it all. Also, it is hard not to have someone to share life's ups and downs with and I am weary of going it alone. In the rain. And then an invitation to THIS that I can't go to, and the fact that Walker and Nancy are back at Hidden Treasure as of today was sort of the last straw. I want to be there.

THAT SORT OF DAY

Without a car and raining like it's March outside, I find a book on the ottoman in the living room, ask if anyone is currently reading it, no one is, so I abscond with it. It's that sort of day.

On the last two shows I have worked on, cast have been reading Stieg Larsson's books. This is the first in the trilogy; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It takes a bit for me to get into it, but once I do, I can't put it down. With a few breaks to rest my eyes, and check my emails and FaceBook, I finish it in a day. Now I want the second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Someone in the house is going to Costco today so I ask her to see if they have it there. She returns a few hours later holding the book high.

I am now 100 pages into it and it moves faster than the first book and is excellent.

Last night, shortly after finishing the first book, I checked to see if the movie was still in the theaters. It's not so I downloaded it. It had terrible subtitles. Even when the dialogue was in English, they still put up subtitles and got it wrong. But it was good enough to make out what was being said. So much of what was in the book was left out of the movie. If the author was still alive, I don't think he'd have been too happy. I wouldn't have been. So for this reason, I recommend you watch the movie before reading the book. But once you've watched it, don't think you don't need to read it because you do. It's a gripping story; far more than in the movie.

Actually, come to think of it, the movie will give away the ending so perhaps you should read the book and skip the movie.

THAT'S A WRAP!

We shoot through the night on our last two days of filming. Our second to last day starts out sunny and the view from where we are shooting is breathtaking. By the next day, the weather has turned and it's cold and raining. So we started out in mud and we will end up in mud. The finale of the movie will be shot on our last night, in continuity - more or less - so that should be fun. Charles Widmore is still with us and will be until the end.

When I leave the house at 4pm, it's been a sunny day but there's big raindrops falling now and again as I walk to the car. I guess it could rain. The weather forecast was for a lot of rain. I am driving down the road to the bridge when I realize that it's so windy all of a sudden, that there's branch bits all over the road and flying through the air. Something hard hits the roof of my van and gives me a good start. Not sure what it was... probably a branch. Up ahead I see a wall of rain and as I drive into it, it's a deluge. It doesn't let up the whole 15 minute drive to work and when I park and get into my coat and a disposable rain poncho, I walk over to the catering truck to see it closed up tight and nothing much on the tables. Apparently the wind blew away the plates and cups etc. So now we have to knock on the shuttered window, they open it a small crack, and place our order. It's Eggs Benny day. Eggs Blackstone for me, hard yolk please and crispy bacon. We have to climb into the back of the supply truck to get our drinks - OJ for me - and cutlery etc. where everything has been placed to keep it from blowing away again. Apparently a big branch fell from a tree and narrowly missed the truck right before I got there.

As I am setting up my work area in the tent, I hear a huge crack and look up just in time to see a big tree fall down on the hill right beside where we will film. The lighting guys are in there, putting up some big lights. Thankfully, no one was near the tree when it fell.

Eventually the wind dies down and the rain steadies to a drizzle and we methodically make our way through the scenes we need to shoot. There's a lot of huge puddles where we need to place the cast and picture vehicle so the guys set to digging through the high bits to let the water run away and then some pea gravel is brought in to cover the mud and fill the holes. It works great to keep the picture area clean. But there's a big hole dug for one scene and it sure is muddy down there. The actors have to climb in and out of it and, during a fight scene, Alan (Charles Widmore) has to fall into it. Of course, a stuntman will do the actual fall but then Alan will have to lie in the cold, wet mud for a few takes. The life of an actor is not all glamour!

At about 3am I can tell everyone is tired as the silliness starts. Kim, the DP, has started a game where you think of a movie title and insert the word Moai (pronounced mow-i) into it (there are Easter Island type Moai heads in our story and we are shooting those tonight). Some of the ones he comes up with are Me, Moaiself and Irene; Bridge on the River Moai; There's Something About Moai. The camera op comes up with Moai Five-0 and the director's contribution is Three Men and a Moai. I get into it and come up with The Color of Moai; Steel Moaignolias, and Helen of Moai. The one that gets me laughing so hard I have tears rolling down my cheeks is when Kim comes back into the tent from lighting, sits down and says, "The Little Moaimaid". The next day while preparing the continuity 'Script Bible' for the editor, I create a page to slip into the front cover with the best selections splashed across the page with some Moai heads in the background.

We wrap at 5:33, or 29:33 as we call it, and as soon as my paperwork is done I go to the camera truck to have a drink with the camera department. We end up talking and laughing for two hours and I don't get home until after 8am. Thankfully, there is no internet - I guess we lost it in the wind - and so I have nothing to keep me from falling into bed. I sleep like the dead for three and a half hours and then get up so that I will be able to sleep tonight. The rest of the day is spent prepping the Script Bible and running a few errands. I have to buy some groceries again, something I don't need to do while working. And I need to buy an engagement gift for my friend's daughter as she got engaged on Sunday. My youngest is going to be a bridesmaid!!

can't reveal the title - thus blurred

WEEK ONE ON A DOOMSDAY MOVIE

Just finished with the first four days of shooting our doomsday movie. I can't tell you the name of it and post photos and I want to post photos so the name will have to remain a secret.

We spent the first day out in Abbotsford at Fraser Valley University, mostly indoors which was nice as it is unseasonably cold out. The second day we were at the Hilltop Cafe just between Langley and Aldergrove. I haven't been in this cafe before but have seen it in several movies, most prominently in The Butterfly Effect. Walking in is like walking onto a specially built set. It's right out of Hollywood. We had several scenes to film outside before we did the interior diner scenes. It was cold and drizzly all morning, then the wind picked up and started to blow the tents about. They were quickly weighted down with sandbags, but not before the one at crafty blew right over.

We were setting up for our third scene outside when all of a sudden it began to pour rain like I've rarely seen it come down here. It was sideways and heavy, almost tropical in it's force. A decision was made to move inside and start the interior work. I gathered up my things and tried to wait for it to abate some but it just wasn't happening so I made a dash for the door and got completely soaked. Thank goodness for my big down coat! We just got a blocking done and suddenly the rain stopped and the sun came out. So back outside we went. We had just nicely got everything set up for the outdoor scene when it clouded over and began to hail. It was some of the heaviest hail I can remember seeing. There was talk of going back inside but hail doesn't usually last too long. Someone told a story of shooting out in Aldergrove last year when it hailed for 45 minutes and we all hoped that wasn't going to happen today. We gathered under the tents to wait it out and it lasted about 10 minutes. Everything was covered in hail and the vehicles we were shooting had to be wiped down. Later, when we were done with the outside scenes, we were packing up when the wind started blowing again and the tent I was in, sandbags and all, lifted and then blew away - right over my head. Everyone ran over to see if I was okay, and I was. Just really windblown. Kim, the DP, mentioned that I might want to pat down my hair as it was standing on end. The next day I was wearing a hat and he drolly asked me if it was due to the 'hair trauma' I suffered the day before!

The last two days, we worked at a place called Jamestown. It's a huge acreage that was purchased by a family of stuntmen and turned into a movie backlot. There's an old western town that was originally used in a Scary Movie that was a knock off of The Village. It was later moved and added onto to make a western street for a TV show. There's also a huge field and this is where we filmed for an entire day. It was a very soggy field and by the time we were done with it, full of muddy ruts. It was an exciting day full of the SPFX (special effects) department blowing stuff up. There was also a great stunt where a car drove off the road and down a ravine.



Yesterday we shot in the forested area of the property, up a big hill in the trees. We had a late call because the last scenes of the day were at night. We were deep into those scenes when we lost all power and were plunged into inky blackness. Not a light anywhere, not even the moon. It would have been terrifying except that there were 75 of us there. Soon little mag lights and head LCD lamps were piercing the dense wall of nothingness with tiny circles of illumination; one in our tent, thanks to a locations PA. I fumbled in my bag for my work light and soon was back at making my notes. It took about 10 minutes for the electrics to find the problem and get us back up and running. An hour later it happened again, and resolved much quicker. It seems it was so damp on the ground that the safety kicked in and shut 'er down.

All part of a day on set.


1)'B' camera awaits the crash. 2)Jeep goes over ravine. 3)Working in the mud. 4)Volcanic ash (shredded newspaper) is liberally sprayed about

all photos displayed with producer's permission