Thoughts on the first day of preproduction

What a busy day! Not that I'm complaining. Here's a rundown...

Met Tom at the B&B around 3:30, got the key from him, he showed me how the lights work, all of that, showed me the upstairs area where he suggested we should use for the Swede's apartment bedroom.

4:00 p.m. - Met John Lusk at the Raven Coffeehouse (had myself a mint maté) where we went over what I had in mind for his character and costume. Basically, the way I see George, he's kind of the glue that holds the thing together. He's a cool cucumber, doesn't let the hired killers phase him all that much. He's your typical Port Huronite who has spent a good 50 years here, he's probably seen some shit in his days that builds up after time and now he just takes it as it comes. He provides a stark contrast to Nick Adams and Sam the cook, in that, Nick is afraid of death (which really, is what the whole thing is about) and Sam wants to avoid it, but George, he just shrugs his shoulders and goes about his business.

4:30 p.m. - I met up with Cliff to follow up if he was going to play the Swede, Ole Andersson. He's in. I gave him the scenes that his character is in. He wants to use his Swedish accent, and I told him I'm OK with that, but drew the line at the Chef's costume.

7:00 p.m. - Met Cousin John and his brother Dan at the B&B, where we started cleaning, arranging stuff, and getting ready. At about 7:30, Steve Barker, Todd, and Emily Dowd (who will be playing one of the walk on roles) showed up and chipped in. Shortly thereafter Sadaat showed up and we started to really get things going then. In fact, by 8:30 we had the set ready to get (except for a few set dressings we need...need to find a pie rack!) and so Sadaat ran to my place to pickup my light kit and when he got back we started preparing the lighting, marking the set with chalk so that Sunday when we start shooting with the actors, I'm all set to go.

The lighting presented a little bit of a problem in that, I don't want it to be overexposed, super bright but I also don't want it to be too dark. There's a fine balance and while thematically, darkness would be the choice, I don't want to over due it. There's one scene where we'll get to really have fun and go full blown Noir lighting (Ole Andersson's scene), but for the most part I want to avoid letting the lighting overshadow the rest of the story. Sure it'd be fun to do some hard lighting with dark shadows in the diner but it'd be so out of place that it'd distract from what's going on.

We have the lighting setup for the first 4 scenes already now. I might change some things and we might move some stuff around when we start going but if we can get those in the can on Sunday we'll be doing real good.

After we finished the lighting, we ran through the script, with Cousin John and Todd filling in for Max and Al, Dan filling in for George and Sadaat filling in for the rest of the characters. It was good to get a feel for where I'll be placing the camera, where I'll want to cut back and forth, etc. In fact, in doing so I decided upon two new camera setups that didn't occur to me until then and both are going to be beautiful.

After the run through, we decided to setup Ole Andersson's bedroom upstairs. Tom had a small bed that we pushed up against the brick walls and the tall windows, which we're going to take advantage of and use some fun lighting. It's not quite where I want it to be for us to shoot it, but it's pretty close, and we've got a week before we'll need to do that scene anyway.

So tomorrow we're going to get together and brainstorm some of these exterior shots. I really want to do one long take of Nick Adams running from the B&B to the train tunnel that goes under Military St. It'd be a good 5 or 6 minute scene, so I'm not sure if Steve has the stamina for it, but it'll be interesting to try. I want to shoot it during the gloaming, and have him running along the edge of the river, with the Canadian industrial factories in the background. We'll see how it goes.

It's pretty damn exciting to get this thing going, and it's going to be even more fun when we get the actors in and start rolling. I still need to find an elevator with stairs nearby, and would absolutely love to use the ones in the old Sperry's building, but I don't know how feasible that is. We'll see.