Today was our first full shoot day on Whip Cracker. It was scheduled to be a short, easy day — three scenes at one location, a quick scene at another, and a quick scene at a third.
Overall, it was a great day. A skeleton crew was up at 5am to load the trucks and haul the gear off to the location. The first shot, a dolly shot, took way too long to set up and execute. The subsequent shots took just as long. They were all amazing, but it was just… too long. In the end, we trimmed some angles from the final scene and made it out only one hour behind.
The final location was scheduled to be at a highway overpass. It seems pretty damn obvious NOW that it was a stupid, stupid location. Of course, at the time, it seemed cool. Here’s a tip — you can’t record sound under an overpass. We relocated to a much more controlled environment, and with the time we had left over from cutting a scene out, we had plenty of time to improvise.
Improvisation is a great thing, especially when you have a team of funny people standing around. The script called for a rather mundane, but plot-advancing discussion between one of the supporting characters, and a “strange bum.” With some improv, some handwritten script pages jot down in the back of the equipment truck, some quick trips to the store and some great actors, we turned the “strange bum” into a named character with some hilarious lines, and a boring sequence into hilarity.
We headed out to the first location just after 7am. We wrapped just after midnight.
No shooting tomorrow — just rehersals all day.
Good times.
Highlight from Day 1:
Catrina, the Assistant Director, forgets what comes next… bear in mind that this is after we’ve been shooting practically non-stop for 9 hours.
Catrina: “Lock it down. Picture’s up.”
Marc: “Picture”
Catrina: “Sound”
Andy (the Boom Operator): “Sound okay”
Catrina: “Roll camera”
Marc: “Rolling rolling”
Catrina: “…oh god, I forgot what comes next, I’m serious, I forgot”
Tags: Miscellaneous, Whip Cracker