Scene 2 is in the can.

Pie!

It took us an hour of shooting and Steve had to eat a boat-load of pie, but we got Scene 2 in the can. I'm ripping the video to my harddrive as I type this, and will be throwing together a quick little edit of it, to see how it turned out. I'm pretty excited about it, and after the first night of actually filming, I'm more pumped than before about this project.

Nick Adams

Originally, the plan was to shoot the exterior running shot with Steve and call it a night but John Lusk (George) was able to show up around 9 pm, so we could shoot scene 2, which was good because the weather did not cooperate with the original plan. After stopping in at the Obama office for a brief meeting and touching base with Mike about an idea, I grabbed some bangkok star and headed over to the B&B. Cousin John and Dan showed up about 7 pm or so and we started cleaning up the set, getting it ready for when Steve and Todd showed up. They had to stop at Kmart to see if they could find Steve some pants and a shirt, but had no luck. Steve said everything he tried on "made me feel like I was wearing my dad's clothes." So Cousin John took Steve to Target, while Todd, Dan, and I planned out our lighting. I honestly have to say, I don't think this project would turn out half as good as it's going to turn out if weren't for those guys.

The photographer from the Times Herald showed up, and snapped some photos while we problem solved. The first problem came by near catastrophe. We only have 2 lighting tripods, and none of the microphone stands that we had at the time had a base to put them in, so we had to fasten, by way of duct tape, the microphone stand onto a board, and have the end, with the light attached to it, hanging over the top of the bathroom. As I was trying to get the audio levels worked out, the barn doors of the light fell off and landed a foot away from me. It was then that Todd ran over try and grab them, not getting there in time to do so, but just in the nick of time to grab the light and stand as the duct tape gave way and it nearly toppled to the floor. I immediatly thought "let's put another board over top of it," and didn't even have to say the thought before Todd was running upstairs to grab another board. That's one of the reasons I'm so glad he's helping out, he's thinking on the same wavelength as I am and I know I can trust him to have great ideas that are going to match, if not exceed, my own.

John Lusk (whom from here on out in the blog, I shall refer to as simply Lusk) arrived around 9 pm and we got the camera ready to roll and Todd, Cousin John and I all saw the same thing on the monitor that made us stop: the front of the diner, which should be nice and bright at that time of day, was dark.

Still from the camera. For some reason my program to capture it isnt keeping it in widescreen, but the film is, no worries! This is the shot before we fixed the lighting

We had to pull one of the 3 lights off of the actors and put it in the back of the room, so with only two lights, we had to improvise. Todd grabbed one of the unused table clothes and I remembered I had a long wooden dowel rode in my trunk, so we made a makeshift white board to bounce some of the light off of behind the actors. Once we got that we were ready to roll.

After we fixed the lighting.

Scene 2, Angle A took a total of 10 takes. The funny part about all of that, was during each take, he was putting 2 sugars in each cup of coffee, and then we'd dump the coffee back into the coffee pot, so that by the end of the scene, there were 20 sugars in his coffee. I think, am hoping, that most of the scenes won't take that long actually, because what kept throwing Steve off was that they were improvising. At one point, after we had just discussed how, in the Hemingway canon, Nick Adam's is a nature guy, a hunter, George asks Nick "Getting ready for some hunting?" to which responds "I'm not that big of a hunter," before immediately breaking character and laughing. But after a few takes, they both really started to get a feel for the characters and the scene and in take 5, they hit it out of the park. We did 5 more takes to try and get a second one as good, and it took 5 more to do so.

Scene 2, Angle B took 8 takes. By the end, Steve was gorged on pie.

Steve's reaction when we informed him that he'd have to eat more pie in Angle C.

Angle C took about 6 takes and we got one that is just plain fantastic, grand slam homerun out of the park.

Steve eating more pie in Angle C. Note the Iris logo on his hat that he designed. Steve's the man!.

After we wrapped for the night, I showed the Swede's bedroom set to John and we started discussing the idea for the end shot. I don't want to say too much at this point, but I'm pretty excited about what we have planned. I've got a little spolier though, in the form of image:

We're going to work on making that image a little more powerful tomorrow evening. Hopefully Saturday we can get Scene 9 in the can, and Sunday we'll be able to get all of the scenes with the walk on roles. I'm still debating if I should play one myself or not.

I can't really describe just how great it feels to have come so far, personally, and to get a scene done and to just be working on a film with other people. Something that, started with an idea in my head, and is growing each day as everyone who is participating in the project adds a little bit more to it. It's like that giant ball of rubber bands that Pee Wee Herman had. Every one of his friends would bring a rubber band for him, something small and inconsequential, but when he added them, and kept adding to the ball, it became this massive, impressive thing that every kid wanted to have. That's the best I can come to putting it into words tonight. I'll try again tomorrow mayhaps.

Anyway, I'll close with a photo set that Dan snapped while we were shooting.