Day off.

We took a day off from shooting today. I needed it. Big time. After getting home from shooting around 7 pm last night, I relax a bit before laying down in bed around 9ish. Next thing I know, it's 7 am. I got up, watched some Daily Show episodes from last week that I dvr'd and then played around with some of the stuff we shot yesterday, looking at how it played out. Around 11 am I was feeling pretty achy, (it was pouring down rain all day today) and laid down. Next thing I know, it's 3:30 pm. I guess my body needed more sleep than I realized.

I left my cell phone charger at the B&B so I had to run in and pick it up. Tom was there, and we chatted for a bit. He's a pretty cool guy and he's got some big plans for that place this winter that I wish him the best on. He helped me get some more stuff around for the Swede's bedroom scene, which we shoot tomorrow night. After that, I met up with Sadaat at the Raven and we met up with an old friend at the Brass Rail before Steve Barker joined us. During the interval between us arriving and Steve arriving, I wrote a new little scene for him. Nothing big but it'll provide a little more depth to what's going on.

I was listening to some music by The Great Fiction while I was chopping up Steve's running scene and by pure coincidence I realized how perfect one of their new songs is for it, both in terms of what I kind of thought I had in mind and the lyrical content. The song is here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0Uqr0ZwAXg&feature=related . I've gotta email Danny and Phil from the band tonight and see what they think.

So Saturday night...oh brother. Instead or writing it all out, I'm posting some video clips of what went down after they're done with converting to divx.

I was so happy with Saturday night's shoot. I cannot put enough emphasis on how pleased I am with the casting. I knew Steve would be great but not this great. I knew Lusk would bring a good performance but I had no clue that he'd be as fantastic as he is, like, he could probably be a professional actor. It makes my job a whole lot easier, when I've got incredible actors reading a script where I've tried to stay relatively close to Hemingway's dialogue.

Jim Frank (Max) on the left, John Lusk (George) and me on the right.

Sunday...oh boy. I forgot to set my alarm clock on and woke up at 11:14 a.m. We were supposed to meet at 11:30 a.m. Turns out everyone overslept a little bit. I got there around noon, and we started setting up. We had Emily coming in at 1:30 to shoot her scene, Rich Cox and Ed coming in around 3 and I didn't want to keep Lusk beyond 5 after the long night of shooting the previous night. We got some good takes in, although there's something about a few of them that I'm not too happy with. I dunno if it's the soft focus through them or the lighting or the audio or what. I think maybe I just need some variety in the angles and it'll ease my mind. Emily and Jim just knocked their scene out of the park but Emily had her hand over her face during the first part of it so I'll need to do a retake of that part, luckily we can keep the best part...her attempt at small talk and Max's response.

"Bright boy can do everything." - Max

Emily, as Church Mother, responds to Max's attempt to shut her idle chit-chat up.

So yeah, Emily did great. Rich Cox came in and I told him he should go ahead and come up with a Rich Cox-ism for his line and he did. It was fun to get Rich in the film, because he's a great guy and he's always been there for anyone when they've needed a hand. Hell, he's lending us his condenser microphones for audio for the film, which is just more proof that Rich Cox is a really cool guy.

"I'm pretty corked for time, I better split." - Joe Smith (played by Rich Cox)

I had asked my uncle Jeff to play Angry Man, but he had a motorcycle ride to go on and couldn't make it. I decided to have my dad try it, because I've seen him get pretty damn angry at times and thought he might be able to pull it off. In hindsight, it's hard for me to tell if he got the scene or if I need to reshoot it, it's very hard for me to be objective about it. Dad's made a shit ton of sacrifices and has worked his ass off to help me get through everything, and even though I get really impatient with him and we can sometimes get on each other's nerves, I know I couldn't have made it through without his support. I know it's probably hard for him to connect with me when it comes to stuff like film and art, etc. but he makes an attempt to and that's all I can really ask for. I guess I just wanted to give him a chance to be involved in this project, with it meaning so much to me, and I guess in turn, both him and mom. Wether it becomes a deleted scene or in the final cut will probably be determined with a little help from others involved who can provide a more critiquing eye.

"Aren't you running a damn diner here?" - Angry Man (Steve Riehl)

Tomorrow's going to be a big day. Got the big Nick Adams & Ole Andersson scene to do. Then we've just got to shoot the scenes with Max and Al and a few odds and ends. I'm hoping that by Thursday or Friday, we've got a lot of the Max, Al, and George scenes in the can.

It's weird, there's been a point in the last 24 hours, when I was looking back at some of the scenes and thinking "ugh, that didn't work, and I don't know why, maybe I'm not cut out for this," and then "all this effort, and hows it even turning out? maybe it's not worth it." Which I guess is probably just a little bit of natural deflation after starting out with such a bang and being so elated with the lighting and scenes we had first shot and then the let down when a scene doesn't pan out the way you hoped for and you have to go back to it. I guess, if I'm going to do this, I've got to learn how to deal with that and how to respond. I think a day off was a good remedy, to give me and the rest of the cast and crew a little time to reflect on what's gone right and what's wrong thus far and how to overcome the bad and accentuate the good from here on out.

Dan hanging out in between takes as he manned the hanging light.