"PETS" Day Three

(Dave learns a little about his boundaries)

Today was divided between shooting at Jason and Betty's house and a new condo complex in the Central District - our version of a future neighborhood.

We only had a short time with all of the clones together for a dinner scene and ended up having to put off most of Don's shots from the scene for another day. This ended up being the most difficult day of the shoot regarding what we needed to get versus what we were able to get and we had to leave a few scenes unfinished in hopes to pick them up either Thursday or Friday when our schedule wouldn't be so crammed.

It's usually best to shoot out a scene in it's entirety. It makes things a little easier to put together and from a morale standpoint it's nice to keep moving on instead of having to return to the same scene over and over again. It also helps keep the performance and directing consistent. Unfortunately, it isn't always a possibility - you're always strategizing and trying to make the most out of your resources and in cases like this you have to give up the way you'd like to do something in exchange for getting things done. In the end, if you don't have a movie, you don't have anything.

We grabbed what we could and moved on to the C.D. for the rest of the days shooting.


(Clone Dad and son keep an eye on Dave)

The location change helped lift the mood, but that was quickly tempered by loud airplanes (everywhere in Seattle!) and more frustrating, lawn service. We shot a few MOS versions of scenes, but luckily there wasn't much grass to tend to and the landscapers moved on before long. We were able to complete the scenes more or less as planned. And in fact, once things settled down noise wise we began kicking ass until we shot a traveling shot that left George (who filled in on sound for Deep on days two and three while Deep was at work) tumbling over a concrete railing and busting up Deep's zoom recorder. The recorder still worked, but Deep had it less than a month before the tumble and had never gotten the chance to use it on his own production.

The down side of not having production insurance is that stuff like this isn't covered. The positive side is that it's actually much cheaper to replace a single zoom player than get production insurance. We were lucky not to be using something way more expensive. In the end I called Deep to level with him about what had happened and told him that I'd replace the recorder for him. He still wasn't all that stoked, but I think he was glad to know he wouldn't be stuck with a busted piece of equipment.

With that taken care of we quickly drove to George's place to shoot Manoli putting funny outfits on Don. It was a last minute scene grab and despite the rush, Don and Manoli brought the goods and the scene played out great. Without any lights I used the fading daylight to light the scene from behind and George found us some wrapping paper with a blank white side which we used as a bounce. Whether it matches or not is yet to be seen, but I thought it looked pretty damn cool. It's my wannabe Gordon Willis moment.

Another good thing about shooting a project yourself is being able to take risks like this at a moment's notice. The bad part is that there isn't anyone to say "dude that isn't a very good idea." You'll have to tell me if you think it works in the finished film.

Throughout the day, Manoli conducted interviews with the cast and crew about their duties making the movie, which should make an appearance on the blog soon!

In all, despite some rocky moments, we still got what we needed and the day ended with picture wrap for Manoli, Tyler and George. Until pick ups anyway...


(Daisy, Dave and the little clone take a nap)