This past weekend we had our 3-day horror shoot in the woods of WNC. The cast showed up extremely prepared and the crew was as efficient as any crew could possibly be. We busted our butts for 3 days and completed what we had to have with just minutes to spare before sunrise. I won't lie. I didn't get all the shots I wanted. In the end I had to cut corners to ensure all scenes were represented. I plan to see what I can do to patch up spots here and there where I feel that we were unable to spend the time necessary to capture what I originally had in mind. But all I can say is if I didn't have the wonderful, talented cast that I had, there is no way in hell we would have gotten this thing this close to completion. And the crew deserves equal credit. They hustled around setting up locations, placing lights high into trees, cutting bramble and such, problem solving, and simply were there whenever I needed them. Cast and crew were amazing. This was my first production with a production manager and I must say that I can never go back now. Terry, serving as my assistant director also, was a diamond during this three days, I shutter to think what might have transpired without him on the set. He allowed me to focus of the cast only, ensuring that I got the dialog delivered as I needed.
On the set my fingers were numb from the cold and the tips hurt like hell. I fell I think a total of 3 times, once when running backwards with the camera, another time when I tripped into a culvert and a third time when I was just so tired I'm not sure what happened but suddenly I was rolling around on the ground like a drunken fool. Camera was never harmed.
I only got 2 hours of sleep the night before the production began and then only a couple of hours per day until it was all over Monday morning. Each day when I got home I had to prepare props and such for that day's shoot and then I was at the cabin until after 5pm Monday cleaning.
The following day I visited a coffee shop in town with my wife and kid and when my wife took the little one to play on the stairs at his request, I moved from a table to the plush area. Probably not a great choice because I ended up falling asleep reading a magazine article. I awoke ten minutes or so later to a teenager in an opposite chair watching me from the corners of his eyes. I don't know if I was drooling or what but apparently he was intrigued.
Then today at my little boys favorite toy store I sat on the floor like I always do while he played with the large train set. Again, somehow, I fell asleep, this time sitting on the floor. He awoke me when he ordered me out of his way as he was navigating a long succession of train cars around the track so I figured I must have been out for only a minute or so. And no one was staring at me this time.
After he and I got home today my wife met us at the door for hugs then asked him what we did today. I wanted to listen to his version so I sat on the floor and listened just inside the door. Soon I decided it was more comfortable to lay down and the next thing I know I awoke about an hour later lying with the shoes and door stopper.
I've watched some of the footage and am mostly pleased with what I saw. I still have a lot of footage of review. My camera had been acting up from time to time during the shoot and someone said it was probably due to the extreme cold. At times when it acted up, apparently the footage kind of weirded out so fortunately I took a number of takes during each scene.
Now comes the very long task of editing. It is one of my favorite parts of filmmaking. Just me and my computer, piecing together another cool project. I am not sure when I will actually begin that stage of the process, but it will be when I'm fully refreshed in mind, body and soul. That is what it deserves.
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