Now where were we? Oh yes, Friday...
Friday I got up and did a little more packing for my trip to San Diego that weekend and then walked out to my car for sunblock on my way down to the park. As I approached my car, I noticed something was wrong. There were no longer any side mirrors in place where the night before there had been at least one. As it turns out, a SAAB, who was kind enough to leave his passenger's side mirror in the road for me, had taken out my driver's side mirror. My mirror was a good ten feet up the street, the SAAB's another 20. I debated about going in and calling my insurance and filling a police report right away and then I figured the walk would probably make me feel better, so I went ahead and walked to the park. Upon returning home I found out I don't have collision insurance. My plan was to head out to SD a few hours from then and now I would have to do it with no side mirrors, the passenger's side mirror being lost to a parking garage pole many years ago.
I finished packing up the car and talked to my friend Sandra who told me her friend could install a new mirror for me if I would pick it up, so I stopped by an auto parts store on my way to SD. The Camry mirror would have cost me $100 before tax and fortunately wasn't in stock, which gave me time to rethink what to do. I ended up being a "snap on" mirror from the aisle and went on my way.
The trip to SD was long and full of traffic since it was Easter Weekend, even though I had left at 12:30pm.
*Sound of record scratching*
Wait! I haven't even told you why I was going to SD. My friend Sandra and I had been talking the other day and she said that she and her friend Sana wanted to make a webisode in order to get Taft Hartley's and also just for the experience and the fact they hadn't done much lately. So Sandra had asked me for a variety of help and in the end I was to be an actor with one line (bumped up from a dead body) and the Director of Photography, since we were shooting with my equipment.
Ok, back to the story...
*Music resumes*
I arrived at Sana's parent's house on Coronado island around 4pm. The house was beautiful and the island magnificent. The back yard opened to a pool and the SD bay, where you could see all of downtown and the shore. There were several plots hatched by everyone on how to marry into the family for the inheritance of the house. The craft services, prepared by Sana and her mother, who also cooked us Persian food for meals, was also wonderful.
Sana, who would be playing the role of producer and actress for this movie, currently titled 'The Girls', greeted me upon my arrival and helped me bring my stuff in and started me on food and paper work. I was there ahead of everyone else so I had time to get to know her. The others started trickling in around 6pm. The cast and crew would consist of me, Sana, Sandra, who was acting and had written the piece, Louisa, an actress from Long Beach who had come down for this and Joe, the lighting guy who would also be boom operator and many other things. Carla, the director was last to arrive. She would also be the slater.
It was a good group of people. Everyone was friendly and supportive. I don't think there was a single disagreement the whole time. Still, everyone worked hard and stayed focus, in between some giggling. :)
It took us a while to get going that night, but once we did, we shot fast. We quit around midnight, having shot most of the night shots.
After we wrapped I went with Sandra to her place to drop off my car for her friend to fix the mirror and then we went to visit Josh, my friend with the duel LA/SD citizenship. I ended up crashing at Josh's house since there was more space and had myself a nice little snooze before Sandra came and picked me up at 11am the next morning.
The shooting Saturday went very smoothly, except for one bump when my mic battery died and needed to be replaced and I thought we may have lost some footage. Luckily we hadn't. In fact the shooting went so smoothly that we ended up finishing with a few hours to kill before it got dark. So we had ourselves a lovely wine brunch and sat out on the patio and looked out on the bay.
The night part of the shoot was equally smooth, with the only hang up being that we had to burn a scarf and needed a stand in piece of cloth so we could have multiple takes. I'm especially proud of the last shot, which I came up with, which is a nice little pan of all three actresses doing there thing at the end.
After we wrapped, most of us went over to Sandra and Greg's (her BF) house for fettuccine. Delicious, but so unnecessary considering how much I had eaten all weekend already. We watched some of the footage, which had the normal chorus of excited cheers and self effacing groans as different people came up on the screen.
I spent the night at Greg and Sandra's and woke up Easter morning to Benny Hill and the antics of Greg's family, including his mother who was visiting and his two kids. It was really nice to be in that family setting once again and Greg has an especially close knit family, full of love and teasing or vice versa.
The afternoon was spent in the park with Josh, some friends and an extended version of Greg's family where I ate more meat than I had in a very long time, all delicious and all adding to my weekend of waist expansion.
I left around 4pm to drive back to LA and my friend Matt's house where yet another party was going on. Some friends from SF were visiting, so you know, any excuse. I ended up staying the night there and enjoyed some meditating in the hot tub this morning before finally coming home this afternoon.
Wow, so that is a lot already and I left out a bunch of details. I'm thinking I might need to do a daily version of this blog. Whew.
Tomorrow brings a 6:30am call for extra work, so I will bid you all farewell. Until we meet again...
Monday, April 25, 2011
Easter part 1: Zombie Jesus Rises
I have just returned to my home after a great working (and playing) extended Easter weekend. It was full of friends, food and films, 3 of my favorite things.
Backing up though, I will pick up where I left off, which I think was Wednesday. Wednesday I got up around 9ish and did my morning walk. I had been booked for the same game show two days in a row, which is extremely unusual. I didn't say anything though since I needed the work and I assumed I wasn't missing out on anything else. It was interesting to be on the same set again. I noticed little differences, like the stage manager had cut his hair the night before and everybody seemed to be in a good mood after the lunch break, something I hadn't had a chance to see the day before since I left before lunch.
It was a very different audience that day, made up of mostly young kids and even included some ticketed families that had chosen to come in to see the show instead of getting paid like the rest of us. One of the most interesting (stretching the word) people was sitting a few seats to my right. I never caught his name, but he looked a lot like a character that Jeffery Donovan (see below) plays when he is trying to be "dumb" on Burn Notice.
He had "meth-teeth" and as the woman sitting to my left repeated to me many times, was a talker. To be fair, it was pretty clear to me that he was talking so much because he was trying to impress the girl he was sitting next to, the same girl that he would later kiss on the hang goodbye. Still though, he was relentless to the point of being distracting during actual taping. These are the situations where you have to remember that it is a big film company and they have people for every job imaginable and making Metonovan be quiet was not my job.
As I said earlier, most of the audience was made up of younger kids. There was one as young as six, but most probably equaled out around ten. This made the warm up guy's work very different that day and while I thought he was skilled with both, he definitely was hired for his work with kids. Many of the jokes and questions were the same, but the audience participation was a lot different. The kids really wanted to tell their own jokes and ask questions and well...anything for candy. The six year old even did a little dancing for us. The woman to my left that had complained about the talker also wasn't completely thrilled with this, telling me at one point, "I think I'm losing my swag from all these corny jokes".
Another long day of that and a slightly smaller pay check and I was back home. That night I finished Buddha's Brain. It's always strange to finish a book that I have been reading consistently over a relatively long period of time. In a strange way, it kind of feels like a pet or a stuffed animal by the end.
Thursday was a very mellow day. Just got ready for the weekend, paid some bills and lamented the size of my bank account.
Friday would be more eventful, but since I haven't gotten any exercise yet today, I'm going to have to ask you to wait a few hours for part 2.
Until then... :)
Backing up though, I will pick up where I left off, which I think was Wednesday. Wednesday I got up around 9ish and did my morning walk. I had been booked for the same game show two days in a row, which is extremely unusual. I didn't say anything though since I needed the work and I assumed I wasn't missing out on anything else. It was interesting to be on the same set again. I noticed little differences, like the stage manager had cut his hair the night before and everybody seemed to be in a good mood after the lunch break, something I hadn't had a chance to see the day before since I left before lunch.
It was a very different audience that day, made up of mostly young kids and even included some ticketed families that had chosen to come in to see the show instead of getting paid like the rest of us. One of the most interesting (stretching the word) people was sitting a few seats to my right. I never caught his name, but he looked a lot like a character that Jeffery Donovan (see below) plays when he is trying to be "dumb" on Burn Notice.
He had "meth-teeth" and as the woman sitting to my left repeated to me many times, was a talker. To be fair, it was pretty clear to me that he was talking so much because he was trying to impress the girl he was sitting next to, the same girl that he would later kiss on the hang goodbye. Still though, he was relentless to the point of being distracting during actual taping. These are the situations where you have to remember that it is a big film company and they have people for every job imaginable and making Metonovan be quiet was not my job.
As I said earlier, most of the audience was made up of younger kids. There was one as young as six, but most probably equaled out around ten. This made the warm up guy's work very different that day and while I thought he was skilled with both, he definitely was hired for his work with kids. Many of the jokes and questions were the same, but the audience participation was a lot different. The kids really wanted to tell their own jokes and ask questions and well...anything for candy. The six year old even did a little dancing for us. The woman to my left that had complained about the talker also wasn't completely thrilled with this, telling me at one point, "I think I'm losing my swag from all these corny jokes".
Another long day of that and a slightly smaller pay check and I was back home. That night I finished Buddha's Brain. It's always strange to finish a book that I have been reading consistently over a relatively long period of time. In a strange way, it kind of feels like a pet or a stuffed animal by the end.
Thursday was a very mellow day. Just got ready for the weekend, paid some bills and lamented the size of my bank account.
Friday would be more eventful, but since I haven't gotten any exercise yet today, I'm going to have to ask you to wait a few hours for part 2.
Until then... :)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)