The First Days of the Shoot

The first day of shooting was 3-14-10, at the clinic office. Kurt and I and all the camera equipment got lost, so we were late. No problem since they weren't ready to shoot, anyway. Pat had arrived with the craft table and everyone was fueling up for the day.

We were allowed to shoot in the rooms where the "Research Fellows" at the clinic study. It has a room that's lined with study carrels which we used for Dewitt's cubicle at Oligarch Computer Games.

They started with the clinic scenes which show Maria at work dealing with unruly patients, especially Ron, who shoves past the others. I played "Old Patient", a cranky old guy who's "not used to all this...ladies bein' docs". They moved on with one of the last scenes where Maria sees Ron again, this time alone in the exam room. He hits on her until she receives a phone call from Dewitt. He then quiets down as Maria displays her new-found ability to handle tough situations after Dewitt's call.

Dewitt shows new-found confidence dealing with his boss, Max, and the recalcitrant software product, LoveSoft.

On into the week. Monday's shoot at the restaurant went well. We got through all but one of our scenes.  Dora kicked us out at 7PM before we could shoot the last scene where Tony and Maria leave the restaurant as Kurt is smiling at them from the bar.

As we got into Monday and Wednesday, shooting at our place, it began to feel like a week-long party, with something (the shoot) to keep it going. Everyone became fast friends. By Thursday and Friday, I was beginning to be a little worn down.

We had a problem downloading the camera tapes to Kurt's computer which caused me some consternation. Finally, we got that resolved and by Sunday AM we had 18 (all but one) of the tapes digitized. After the last shoot day, Monday 3-22, we had 27 tapes.

We had a lot of problems on Wednesday with the outdoor scenes because they were so long and noise from blowers, wood chippers, airplanes and passing cars slowed us down. Also, the dinner/dancing scene took a long time to shoot because of the need to shoot lines. I learned to be very careful of the length of outdoor scenes with lots of dialog.

Thursday was exciting. We shot the street scenes and the plumber shop. The street scenes involve the donut shop. I had a confrontation with the owner of the donut shop, but he seemed to be OK wth the shooting as long as it wasn't inside, which I assured him it wasn't. I ened up giving him $50.

On to Sunday and Monday which will be long days.