TUWOPS: Day Five

So I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m in a bit of a daze. I think that’s the natural state following an all-night shoot. I’m not much of a night-owl at this point in my life, and the hardest thing about a night-shoot is that you look around, you can see how tired people are. Hell, you can feel it – but you still have to get the goods. You can’t settle for a take that’s just ‘good’ because if you’re going to stay up all night and put yourself and everyone else through a little bit of hell, it has to be worth it in the end. If you make everyone pull an all-nighter and then you come out of it with sub-standard footage. Well then, you’re an all new kind of asshole.

Our entire crew were fantastic troopers who worked their butts off (as they always do). We had an almost entirely awesome set of back-ground performers. There seemed to be some confusion about how late we were going and some people were less pleased than others. Completely understandable. And so for all those that came out last night, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Besides the free food and a little bit of money, there’s no reason to be a background performer in an indie film in the middle of the night besides the love and art of film.

So last night we shot all of Sadie’s poetry scenes at McNally-Robinson, a book chain that’s just starting to creep into Ontario from out west. A huge beautiful store that were very lovely to us and gave us the location for practically nothing. Can’t wait to post some stills from last night’s shoot. You can see a glimmer of it in the photo above with myself and Christine. So the worst part of last night was that it was our last shooting day with Christine Horne. I was sad to see her go. What she brought to this film was nothing short of tremendous. I really can’t wait to start cutting her scenes together.

So that marks the end of our first week. We’ve got a break for two days before starting up again. Five days down. Ten to go. This week alone we shot a total of 23 of our 57 scenes, as well as roughly 28 pages (give or take). This week we shoot for 6 days straight – three of them are pretty big long days, three are pretty light. Hopefully everyone can recharge their batteries.

Also I think I keep neglecting to mention the wonderful Kris Holden-Reid, our Paul Shepard, who carries the weight of this film on his back. He’s a gentleman and a joy to work with, a true supporter and ally in this process. I look forward to the week ahead with him. There’s some interesting discoveries yet to make…