I woke up Sunday totally sick, head nose and throat all bad, and thought, this will be the day it all falls apart. Jen is off as a second-unit-of-one, grabbing footage of "Winona" running the LA Marathon, I am supposed to get today started, people are arriving in a half hour, but I'm pretty sure the effort of forming an intelligent thought will cause me to throw up. We're actually shooting at my apartment today, but I don't even know if I can handle replacing the toilet paper roll, much less making a creative decision. All I want to do is hide in a corner and phlegm myself.
....Nine hours later, we'd made our day. We got great shots and had time for beer and hanging out afterwards. Everyone was great, really nice and professional and accomodating. Carrie even made me lemon ginger tea. Jen arrived just in time to steer the ship, and despite the hostility of our carport location (cars moving back and forth, power supply problems, ad nauseum) the whole crew worked marvelously in sync -- AD, camera, art dept, makeup, sound, everyone was on the ball and helping each other. I know that's the way it's "supposed" to be but it's always keen that it can happen in such a low-budget situation. It was also sunny like a summer day and everyone was a bit giddy. Which was funny because we were mainly shooting a scene involving a suicide attempt, so there was a nice light atmosphere against what could have been a dark moody day. This scene will come out particularly nice I think, Mary is great in it, and will be a strong kickoff point to our movie.
...Our next big task is going into the next location for five days straight and trying to shoot out a good 40% of the movie, almost everything we need to finish it. All our big action movie and special effects shots in this section. Buddha grant me luck and a little free labor, even though I know Buddha doesn't really do that.