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 TWO ON A DOOMSDAY MOVIE

So the weather decided to cooperate this week and we had nothing but glorious sunshine. Unfortunately, we spent most of the week deep in a forest where there were just spots of sunlight here and there, and the crew, when not working, would gather in those spots for some lovely warmth. So despite seeing people in shorts and tank tops on the drive home, I spent all day in my long-johns (under the jeans, of course) and a polar-fleece jacket.

But I have to say that place, where we spent the first half of the week, was enchanting. Not a half a mile from a fairly busy road, I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. When you look over to Maple Ridge from a high point across the river, you will see snow capped rugged mountains in the distance, flat acres of blueberry and hay fields in the foreground, and a few cedar covered hills in between. It was at one of those hills where we were buried deep in the woods. I discovered, much to my surprise, that the hills are all moss-covered rock and boulders - more like what I am used to seeing on Vancouver Island. The trees sprung up between drifts of fern, their huge roots wrapped around the rock they were perched on and roping down to the soil below. Although the whole of the forest seems to climb up-hill from a distant perspective, we actually walked downhill into the grotto we shot in and were then at a cliff on one side, and a gentle incline on the other down through the fern and trees to a field about 100 yards away. The whole place was private property and I imagine that the kids growing up there must have a ball playing outside. If I had grown up there, I would have spent all my free time chasing the pools of sunshine with a good book.

The second half of the week, we shot at a cabin buried in the same woods, just on the other side of the hill. When I went inside, I noted the border painted on the wood floor and asked the art department if they went to the trouble of putting it there. It was a border of native symbols and scrolling in black and red paint. He told me that it was already there, that it was done for the Twilight movie. The cabin was used as the werewolf's hide-away. If you saw the second movie, it was the one where all the bare-chested guys went for a snack of muffins served by a girlfriend of one of them. We are using it as a hide-away for an old man who is living 'off the grid'. It is part of a compound of several acres with about 4 houses on it. This one is uninhabited but would make a great little writing retreat. I don't know if it has electricity, we have lights inside but they are most likely powered by our generator. But I'd stay there with some Coleman lanterns. There is a proper oven, although no fridge, so I imagine that it's wired for electricity and it's turned off due to no occupant. There's a wood-burning stove that would keep one toasty warm on a cold night. But I am guessing there's lots of spiders and probably mice, so maybe not so great after all.

It seems that our DOP, Kim Miles, tends to work on shows where, at some point, an eating challenge is made and he must compete. I am sketchy on the details as to how this one came about, but it was decided that a few of the guys were going to eat balut. Balut is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. They asked the craft services gal if she would be up to boiling the eggs for the challenge and she agreed, as long as the embryos were dead already. I guess they were because at the end of the day, an egg carton appeared at the village (the cart with the monitors) and inside were half a dozen large duck eggs. The challenge was on. When Kim got his egg, he hemmed and hawed and then made the mistake of looking at Bill's egg once it was bitten into. That was it. He couldn't even crack the shell. I made the mistake of looking over at Bill's egg and started to gag. I wasn't even eating it and I almost threw up! Then the 2nd AD, Lori, came along and said she would eat one. I was horrified. Turns out, she has traveled a lot to strange lands and eaten really disgusting stuff. She said the most interesting was deep fried scorpion. I can't fathom why anyone would want to even try that. Anyhow, she ate the whole thing! I couldn't even watch or I was afraid I would lose it right there.

IT'S OFF TO WORK I GO!

Well, the Caribbean seems just that little bit closer today.

I got a text from another script supervisor this morning asking if I was interested in working on second unit for the next four days. Of course I said YES! It's another in the series of 'Buddy' puppy movies so I will probably be working with the pups every day. Should be a lot of fun.

Then an hour or so later I got a call from the Production Manager (PM) of a show starting May 3 asking if she could lock me in. I knew about this gig from talking with Kim, who is also to be the DP, on line. He told me who was directing and then suggested I give the PM a call after the weekend. He also said he just wrote an email to the director, suggesting he hire me as scripty. I went straight over to the directors FaceBook page and posted a message on his wall saying 'Pick me! Pick me!' The three of us worked together on a movie in the summer of 2008 and had a great time. I was back to chatting with Kim when I saw that the director had responded, so went to see what he said and he had written "Gee you're quick. I just wrote a letter to Kim to tell him you were my first choice." Thus I was pretty confident I would get it, but nothing is for certain in this business so getting the call today moves me one step closer. I don't count on anything until the deal memo is signed and I hope to get that done next week.

A bit later I was talking to Ron, the director I spent Christmas with, and he said he will be coming up in May to prep for his two shows and we will start shooting the end of May. So that's fantastic. It will dovetail nicely with this show ending. ALSO... yes, more good news... he has another bigger show in July that the producers had been talking about shooting back east but now has been decided will be shot in Victoria. SO... it looks like I will be staying fairly busy until the end of July or so AND get to spend some time on the Island in the summer again. YAY!!

I can't tell you how great this feels.

And I can almost feel that Caribbean breeze and the soft warm sand under my feet!