Todd,

I am freshly pancaked and decaffed and ready to relay some of the goings-on of the past weekend. It is quite late, which is demonstrative of the kind of weekend I have had. It just refuses to be over even though I am a tower of exhaustion.

On Friday, we readied for the shoot in standard fashion. I spent two hours making a keyboard drawing which shows up in one shot. My props man was supposed to make it a month ago, but he didn't come through. You know that feeling of having to do some thing at the last minute which someone else was supposed to do...

We met Saturday morning at 9:00 at the Stewarts' house. (The Stewarts are two kids/friends that Jesse has worked with for years in his drama productions at the Seattle Country Day School, and their parents.) Their grand piano had it's keys removed for repair recently and I wanted to utilize the image as part of the dream sequence. Why is it that "dream sequence" has such a cheesy ring to it? Anyhow, Genny Vinnedge, our lead actress was there right on time, which is a change for her. She is 13 years old and subject to her parents' schedules if you get my drift. We set up for our first shot and Kate helped Genny with costume stuff, etc. Murr and I set lights and camera, etc. (Murr is Aaron Murray, Key Grip. A long time friend and technical director on many of our video productions) Murr is working extra hard, I could tell already.

We messed a bit with the light meter I bought. It is a Seconic I bought Friday for $279.00. I couldn't find a used one or one to rent! It is a great meter though. I guess we'll know for sure when the film comes back. The first shot went off without much trouble. Genny works her ass off. She is natural and relentless. She is going to be great. We had three, 250-watt photo floods, one par can, one fresnel, and a halogen light thingy, one light pole, three stands (for the floods), and some extension chords. We ended up using all of them for almost every shot. I can't get reversal film in anything faster than 200 speed, which under artificial light translates to 160 speed. So, a lot of light was needed. I need to learn more about the effects of the different lighting arrangements so I can go for certain effects deliberately. Our clapper sucks. It's a prop clapper borrowed from Sam Yawitz, a student/friend of ours. We need a real slate one. We're only using it because when we leaf through footage later, we can see what scene we're on, since there's no live sound. All the sound will be added later.

Anyway, we did the shots of her at the keyless piano, discovering it, etc... Then we shifted over to the upright piano. Joan Goldblatt came in to play the music teacher. She was a natural. We did the scene fairly quickly. We only got held up when we went to switch to a 200 foot roll and realized we didn't have a 200 foot take-up reel. Kate went back home to get what we had, but it wasn't right. We just loaded the film in and figured we'd cut it after 100 feet. I got shots of keyboards as well. It was odd working and working on a shot, rehearsing time and time again, tweeking lights, practicing camera shots and then... take it... it's a take... OK... done!! It was unnerving not to be able to watch it back. If it's not right... you won't know until Tuesday. It was rather like making dinner and not being able to eat it, fridging it until Tuesday, and then heating it up for lunch. I found that I slipped right back into the directorial rool fairly well. I tried to concentrate on asking questions of my actors to get them to think it through for themselves instead of feeding them information like I sometimes have to do in my moviecamp. (Moviecamp is a summer program that Jesse has pioneered, wherein 10-15 kids and he write, rehearse, act, videotape, edit and premier a movie. See the Moment of "Oh!" section of this Web Site for more info.) Genny responds really well to this because she knows her character so well. It was amazing to have Kate, a director, for an assistant director. She took over running scenes when I was needed for something technical, she did costumes, hair, make-up, clapper, and recorded all data for every camera set-up so we know, when we watch dailies, why the shots look the way they do. Murr was great too.

We were running late and Kate had to be to work by three. We were supposed to meet Hugh Sutton at Steve and Daenin's house at 2:00. (Hugh, Steve and Daenin are long-time Seattle friends and colleagues.) We were going to be late. We dropped off Kate at work (Blech!) and continued on. Kate was replaced by Robin Stewart, a 11 year old student of mine who I thought was up to the task of filling in for Kate. Little did I know she would be so good at her job. He took some documentary video all day as well. We got to Steve and Daenin's at 3:10 PM and ate lunch. I was feeling psyched because we had some shots under our belt, but nervous because we were about to go shoot in a public place. We were about to head up into the public storage building next to Daeneven (The combinitive nomenclature used to denote the home of Daenin and Steve) to shoot the rest of the dream sequence. I ate tuna and considered shots....

More soon, but I am so tired I can't even type "GO2slp..."

later,
jph