Shooting Ends, Editing Begins
SUNDAY, JUNE 1. Been awake since 3AM, re-logging footage out of frustration and stress. While the computer was capturing I popped in Robert Bresson's AU HASARD BALTHAZAR which I found strangely soothing to watch -- movies like that, which are about everything that's wrong with the world and the utter crap that people suffer through unfairly, have a way of giving you a healthy perspective on your own situation.

7AM -- arrival on set. Absolute downpour, most intense rain I've experienced all year. Fortunately we're just shooting indoors. I'm a bit rattled due to the editing fiasco from the evening before, but on the other hand the shoot went off unbelievably smoothly, so we may have time to work through the editing problems and still finish the shoot on time.

Mention the editing snafus to Leland and Karin -- Leland offers to get his laptop from home as an additional editing deck with Final Cut Pro. He instructs Chris and our two set PAs Mark and Meghan (who were all OUTSTANDING) on how to set up and then Julie drives him home to pick up his laptop. They come back half an hour later -- in the meantime my friend Eric (who designed the Parallex company logo and the ID badges) comes in fresh back from Boston on one hour's sleep to help out and immediately gets recruited for logging and capturing. It takes Leland and I about half an hour to get our editors properly set up on standard FCP log and capture practices -- we don't get on set until close to 9, an hour behind schedule, with extras for the second scene already showing up... But priorities are priorities.

So with that we bang out scene 3 -- I notice there's not quite as much energy as there was yesterday, partly due to the crummy weather. Scene 3 works out fine though... scene 7 is a bit unruly -- there was supposed to be a part where Jack the CEO throws a cell phone at the wall but long story short it doesn't work out. I also inadvertently yelled at three extras for being in the wrong spot -- one of which happened to be my boss! Afterwards someone told me that they asked her if I would have a job on Monday, and she replied, "probably not". These things happen! It was a chaotic morning, moreso perhaps than the morning before. This scene was more difficult to pull off as well -- more interpersonal dynamics going on between multiple characters, and a big shift in the power dynamic trying to get across. Scene 8 wasn't much of a reprieve -- more power dynamics being played out, this time between Marge and Davis, and each take gave us something different, but whether any of them were consistent with what went on before was unclear. But above all, we were getting hungry. Finally we broke for lunch when we were done with the extras for that scene. Discussed the scene with Gabriele and Kevin while we ate, and then we did one more take after lunch that seemed to work. We were really navigating difficult waters here -- trying to keep track of the flow of the story from the beginning to this scene wasn't easy, especially with improvisation playing such a heavy part in the takes.

We got through scenes 9 and 10 and we wrapped before 6, still earlier than yesterday. While the crew wrapped, Karin, Craig, Will, Leland and I had an impromptu post-production meeting to break down the 39 hours we had left and how to allocate it for the editing process. We were out of the building by 7 (despite someone accidentally tripping a fire alarm and summoning the fire department) -- I drove Leland and Will to my apartment with two laptops, two decks and four firewire drives in tow. Leland immediately converted my living room into an editing suite with my TV serving as a monitor. We spent a couple hours just trying to sort out what footage was on which drive -- Leland kept looking for project files but wasn't coming up with much. I was fading. What we finally did was took inventory of each drive and wrote it all down on paper, and then resumed logging whatever hadn't been captured yet on the drives -- at least four or five reels -- the editing crew had captured about 15 reels which wasn't bad at all. We were in good shape -- we'd figure we'd have an average of 2 hours to edit each scene.

After Leland left Will and I captured a few reels -- then Will got a call -- it was Will Calhoun, the drummer from the rock band Living Colour. Karin had put us in touch with him as a possible music contributor to our movie. He was coming to drop off some of his CDs. Really, really cool guy -- it was fun to talk to him and I didn't embarrass myself too much by saying stupid patronizing stuff like, "I loved that album that had 'Type' on it, I liked i more than 'Vivid'". Hey I was operating on zero sleep anyway -- and when Will Calhoun left I was ready to call it a night. At midnight I setup the living room futon for Will Comerford to sleep in, set the alarm for 4AM and went to bed with Julie, with Will still logging away in the living room, the TV/monitor flickering into the dark...