The past week was tough. Right up until the last minute, I was working on some practical FX to take the place of what I was given last week that was...bad...to say the least.
I'm not positive my version will work, but it will work better than the other.
There is a metric fuckton of props in this segment, so I had to confirm I had them all and wouldn't forget to take them on the days needed. Had to finish carving a few pumpkins--I had given some out to friends to carve too, since we had around 40 total.
Then I ran around and picked them all up the day before the shoot. I went to bed early Friday night, knowing that I had to be down on set at 8:30 am.
This
Is
When
Things
Went
Wrong
First thing you do on shoot day is check your phone to see whether there's any last minute problems. But oddly enough, I tap the power button on my phone and it flashes that symbol that tells me there's no battery left. Even though it's been plugged in all night.
I unplug it from the computer and plug it into another computer, thinking maybe the USB port on that computer went bad. Nope. No charge. So it's either the charge cable has gone bad, or the phone has.
I'm suddenly phone-less on a shoot day.
I'm up early so I toss everything in the car and head to Walgreens with my laptop. Buy a new charge cable. Plug it into my laptop. It starts charging.
I hit Dunkin Donuts to get some donuts for everybody. Check my phone and hey, it turns on enough that I can see that I have a text message from one actor that says "Call me ASAP", and was sent at 8am. I don't have enough charge to call anybody, so I text him back to call Zig.
I drive to the parking lot that we meet in, and by that time have enough that I can check the voicemail the actor left. It says, basically, "Hey, my face is swollen up and I'm in pain, and if you have any other options for actors, maybe call one."
I do not have any backups for the role. Who the hell could take a role with zero notice and learn 16 pages of dialogue? We're shooting over 11 pages on the first day, so there's no down time to give anybody.
I'm hoping Zig has told him to come and we'll just deal with it. If the actor can do it, we'll just make his swollen face part of the character. Whatever.
He shows up. Doesn't look TOO bad, but he's definitely in pain. I ask him if he can do it. He's a champ, says he will. But he warns me he'll be a little muddy on the lines, as he's taking some painkillers.
The other actors show up, and we get to shooting. Again, small crew. Me, my brother Mike, Zig, and Stewie shows up for a little while.
Crazily enough, we not only get the 11 pages done, but we get another 1 page scene done before we leave at about 11pm. (we shot from 10am-11pm)
I've been getting a scratchy throat for a couple of days, but I'm glad it didn't turn into a full blown cold for my first day. Unfortunately, I woke up the next day and it HAD turned into that.
And we had a big day of FX, shooting at night, and one of the cast has mentioned he works early the next morning so that--even though the shooting schedule has for weeks said that we'll be shooting until 4am--he'd love to end early.
But hey, here's a shot of the pumpkin trail(part of it) that my brother shot on day(night) 1...
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