Last minute hustle and bustle [08 Jun 2003|08:04am] Karin came through for us once again by getting Greg's office intern Mark to help as a production assistant for the shoot, as well as making van and equipment pickups for us on Friday. So that left Craig, Will and myself free to do what we had to do. Will continued finalizing extras, Craig was busy drafting callsheets, finalizing the shooting schedule and making calls. Craig called me and expressed his doubts that we'd be able to keep to a 12 hour schedule -- we'd have a 6AM crew call, and then two hours to set up lights and camera, so our first shot would probably be around 8:30 AM -- and with an average of 2+ hrs per scene plus lunch time we weren't looking to wrap any earlier than 8PM, 8:30 at the likeliest. Leland called after that to say that a) though he was going to go with the group's decision made the evening before, he sincerely felt that we were making the wrong call, and that we were overreacting to a sense of fear of the unknown. I told him that he certainly had a point but we shouldn't take the limited time we had for granted -- with only 72 hours to work with, sticking to our schedule becomes much more of a priority than it would normally be. He then informed me that Chris our gaffer would not work more than 12 hours a day, not for what he was getting paid. I called Chris and told him I'd pay him overtime if it came to that, and he agreed. It's better to put out these fires ahead of time rather than having them blow up at an inopportune moment. I spent the morning working on titles and credits, then in the afternoon I went to Best Buy to buy storage drives for editing -- I ended up going twice and still not getting what I needed -- what I needed was a FireWire drive for Macs, but the first time I bought a FireWire drive for PCs, the second time I bought a USB drive for Macs. What a waste of time -- and this wasn't the first time I've done stupid stuff like this during preproduction-- it's just the only time I'm going to admit to it. So I went downtown to J&R to buy what I needed and then headed straight to Karin's apartment for our last rehearsal. Kevin J, Ron, Gabriele, Arnold Kim and Arnold Sidney (who plays the janitor) all showed up -- it was our biggest rehearsal yet. This was also the first rehearsal with Karin, Will and Craig all in attendance, so everyone was watching to see how things were going to be. We were still tinkering with the roles and the line readings... I don't know how much of it was due to my lack of telling them that THIS was the way they were supposed to read the lines; maybe I expected my actors to have a more consistent reading of their roles... or maybe it was Kevin J -- he rarely gives the same line readings, he's always tinkering, probing, questioning, improvising, giving a new take each time. I admit I enjoy seeing his mind at work. Kevin J has brought as much meaning to this film as Will or myself -- a fact which I have no problem admitting to. On the other hand, as a director the challenge for me was to not be blown away by Kevin's or anyone's tremendous contributions, but to actively employ them in the service of the overall vision for the film. That was probably the most difficult thing I had to do throughout the whole movie, and the one thing I want most to work on in the future. This wasn't lost on Karin and Craig either -- both expressed concern that if we do all this tinkering and discussion of the script during the shooting it will significantly slow us down. Which is why you do it in the rehearsal! Craig was concerned that our actors weren't off the book yet -- that they were still referring to the script for their lines. I'm not sure why this didn't bother me as much -- I guess because after seeing the different rehearsals my understanding was that they just needed to warm up with one or two readings and then they'd be ready -- and our approach wasn't so much towards getting the lines down but in understanding the situation the characters were in and have them act and react according to their nature. But this was tricky because if they veered too much from the original lines then they'd be utterly lost in terms of what they were trying to accomplish with each scene. It was a balance that needed to be struck, between coming up with fresh new lines and moments and yet making sure that we didn't lose sight of the objectives of the scene. I think when the rehearsal was over we had a generally good feeling about how it was going, and we were pleased with our main actors -- but there were still so many x factors -- how were all those extras going to work out if we hadn't rehearsed them yet? But somehow we weren't bothered by this -- at least I wasn't. Like yesterday, I was feeling incredibly confident, because everyone was finally together and communicating with each other and much of the pressure was off me to make this all work. I got home at 9-ish but Julie wasn't there. It was a weird hour of waiting for her to come back from buying props and lots of food for the crew from Costco and Target -- at least that's where I presumed she was. In that hour no one called me -- it was eerie, being utterly alone, so near to shoot time. I started wondering if Julie had gone out to eat dinner, or if she had gotten into an accident. Started wondering if I'd keep to the shoot if she were in the hospital. When you've spent 6 weeks running through all kinds of scenarios and plan Bs and such there's really no end to this kind of thinking. Anyway she finally came home with a full trunk of food and several bags of props. I should take a moment right now to say that going through this madness has made me more appreciative of the peace I get from being with my wife. I had wanted to get to bed by 10 but it was midnight before lights out -- well 5 hours of sleep before wake up call is better than none... post comment

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