PRODUCTION JOURNAL
DAY FOUR - Thursday June 16, 2005
Refuge from the storm
Sarah (Helen)
gazes at the Homeless Guy
Today was our first day working with the girls. They had just finished school for the year and were relaxed and ready for their close-ups. None of the three had had any experience in front of the camera, unless you count Helen and Phebe's small roles in Cherry, when they were four and seven, respectively. I was not worried, convinced that they would all be natural and that in a pinch I would be able to coax a performance out of them if and when necessary. I was not disappointed.
The Homeless Guy (Tim Nugent-Head)
We filmed in Morningside Park, which slowly filled up with people during the course of the day, until I thought the park would burst. For several hours, streams of kids and people barbequing filed into the park. The construction on Morningside Avenue also continued unabated. In short, the quietest park in Manhattan was like La Guardia airport on Thanksgiving day. That's one of the primary rules of location filmmaking: if it was a sleepy little location the day of your scout, there will be a parade on the day of filming. We got some "room tone" of the park at its peak which became the bed for the whole scene.
Amanda
(Phebe) engages in banter
The biggest hitch of the day was the massive thunderstorm that hit in the early afternoon. We were just getting set up to do a shot of the Homeless Guy (Tim Nugent-Head) dropping his Chinese food, when the first few giant drops began to fall. We really needed to get this shot before the rain started coming down, both for scheduling reasons and continuity -- the ground was dry for the earlier part of the scene. So, lined up the shot and the girls, who run up the stairs in the background started off on my "Action!" The first take was no good; the take-out container hit the ground and actually landed upright. I hollered "Cut!" and the girls ran back down the stairs. For the second take, the container landed too far out of frame. "Cut! Reset right away!" The rain was falling harder. Take three was perfect -- the food landed on its side and the rice spilled out in frame. We all ran for cover under the rental tent and waited as the rain pelted down and the wind threatened to blow the tent away.
The bat must be positioned precisely for the shot to work
Finally the sky brightened and the rain tapered off to a drizzle. We now had a chance to get Tim's last scene, which we absolutely needed because he was leaving town the next day. The post-rain dampness was actually perfect for this, a stand-alone scene at the end of the story. We wrapped missing one final shot on account of the rain delay.
The
Homeless Guy lets us know how he really feels
* DAY ONE * DAY TWO * DAY THREE * DAY FOUR * DAY FIVE *
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