Production Diary: End of Week 2
23 June 2007 in Blog | Comments enabled

It’s Saturday and we’ve got the day off to regroup. We shot in Ellijay this past week from Monday through Thursday. On Friday we moved to Covington. Tomorrow, we’re going to be shooting at a bookstore in Winder - where Josh and Becca live. An early call time will be easy on Josh.

This past week was another learning experience. I managed to not totally melt down and most of the time, we had a really good time. We made our days for the most part and the crew ended up gelling really well.

We spent Monday in the kitchen of the lodge and it went really well. On Tuesday, we were in a bedroom all day and it was extremely hot in there. And it was a particularly difficult scene to shoot. Two characters talking to each other through a bathroom door. We needed one character to be holding a knife while shoving another character into the bathroom. It was difficult to block because it was a real knife. We shot it without the knife but the scene just fell flat. Fortunately, we had a little extra time and shot it again WITH the knife — and the actors being REALLY careful.

They were good sports about it but I could tell it was uncomfortable for them.

On Wednesday, we were in the bedroom again. This time it wasn’t quite as warm in there. It was lit to look like night time. Chris Campbell, our DP, blocked off the windows and the balcony and did a great job lighting it. We ended up shooting a 3 and a half page scene in four shots. We wanted to go for a scene like “A Few Good Men” was shot. The actors moved around the room from one shot to another. It was very cool. We hope it turns out to be a good scene.

On Thursday, we had several obstacles to face. 1) Chris was out of town for the day so we had a substitute DP. 2) We had to be out of the lodge by that afternoon so my parents could clean everything. 3) We had a company move that night to Covington for the next day. That meant packing all the equipment into the grip truck. It was tough but we made our day and everyone made it back to Atlanta at a somewhat decent time. (Like midnight.)

Friday was heaven. We shot in Covington, our favorite place to shoot in the world. We had some awesome Dolly shots and used several extras in some complicated camera moves. My uncle Frank came out to see the filming and he was grinning like a kid. And I’ve never seen him grin like that. And we shot a scene that made my mom cry. That’s the third time we’ve done that.

Check out photos of the shoot -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawsbrothers/

I spent today working on the schedule trying to figure out how to make up some days where we fell behind. I’m sure it will all work out.