The last shot, after the nighttime bonfire scene on the beach, was in a sodium-vapor-lit corner over by Little Coney, with the members of the bands, hanging out after their gig.
The beer was live, and the mood a bit giddy. The cops had just put out our bonfire, which we'd mounted in the lower half of a Smokey Joe buried in the sand, and now most of the crew had gone home and it was Iain and I with a small gang of actors and a few rats on the rocks below.
No one was in the mood to be placed or blocked, so I walked away for a moment to fiddle with the camera, and just turned it on a few times. Werner Herzog said in one of his DVD commentaries that he always runs the camera for an additional minute to catch the actors/performers when they think they're done being scrutinized. I haven't got the budget for an extra minute, so I have to pretend not to scrutinize the first time.
Film is at Alpha waiting for telecine, but transportation issues prevent me from getting over there in a timely fashion. It might not be until the end of the week.
Anyway, once telecine is done, I will start posting screen caps to this blog. I will also post some more "behind the scenes" text to illustrate those caps.
Meanwhile, back on earth this morning, I brought back the light kit and the audio gear to the Northwest Film Forum. (I'll be using my own gear for additional ambient sound). The NWFF is an amazing resource, dare I say -- one of a kind? Everyone there is helpful and friendly (Dave Hannigan. Adam Sekular. ) and with not much work I filled out a grant application that is actually designed to enable people to get the grants to use the gear, rather than keep undesirables out, and my gear package was amazing. They even provided me with a backup Bolex when I needed it (see below) and had some extra 16mm cores to give me when I ran out the night before the shoot.
HOORAY FOR THE NORTHWEST FILM FORUM.
Now that the shoot is over, it actually isn't. As is typical (I think) there are a few small pickups to get.
One was supposed to be shot today, a reshoot of the bike riding scenes from the Bolex that I think blew its pressure plate so gave us unusable images.
Last night the weather report said it'd be thunder storms, and at 7am it was dark and ominous.
I called off the reshoot. And then the sun came out and it stayed pleasant through the day.
Dammit.
But we've had such amazingly good luck this shoot with the sunny weather we need that I am not complaining.
It only seems that way.
But even before we reschedule those pickups, I'm starting on the next big thing, which is music.
Specifically, I have to start working on some more songs to fill in the "radio" parts of the film where we don't have real bands.
Also, we have to record the actual vocal tracks for the Clanking Chains material, and we have to record the bonfire songs and possibly Farrah's track.
Stay tuned.
