Raul's Take: Day 07: C's Studio and Museum

by Raul Viceral, Assistant Director

Today was supposed to be a light day. We're now past the halfway point of the shoot but also past the most hectic days. Part of the reason things were so tightly scheduled was for the actors' and extras' more convenient time. Folks are more available during the weekend (especially the actors from out of town) than on weekdays, plus the Snowbirds don't fly on weekends. As C says, if she had a real budget and could pay people for their time, she could just tell everyone they had to be at a certain place at a certain time and they'd have to wait however long she needed them. But of course, there is no real budget and C and Dauminique did a great job working around everyone's busy schedules. Kudos again.

Anyway, today was supposed to be a half day for us, with only a studio shoot happening in the morning and then getting the hospital set ready at the old university building in the afternoon. But as I mentioned yesterday (or was that two days ago? --really losing sense of time), we ran out of time to shoot the second half of the Finnish Boss scene. So instead of trying to shoot it on our buffer day (Saturday), we adjusted the schedule to shoot the opening workbench shot this morning, reschedule the Tom at His Workbench scenes for the Fall shoot in November, and then go back to the Sukanen Museum to shoot the Finnish Boss Office scene this afternoon.

So the plan was we'd all meet at C's studio to load up any lighting equipment and power cords we'd need at the museum, then Andrew and I would stay behind and shoot the opening workbench sequence while C and Dauminique and Kevin and Kristine would head to the museum to start set dressing and lighting the Finnish boss's office. Sounds like a plan.

C clears away some of the craft service snacks for the workbench sequence.

Oh the other thing too is that we aren't going to have Trevor with us today. Today was his day off which he needed to finish a proposal for a project that's due by the end of the month. He's a film maker too and is working on some cool sounding projects. Good luck with that, Trevor, you're definitely an important and valued member of our team and having you and your dry sense of humor around sure is fun. We'll miss having you on set today!

The good news is Bernie will be filling in for Trevor. Bernie's in his last year in getting his film degree at the U of R. He's pretty busy with his own projects but he's able to come aboard for a few days and help us out, which is a huge relief for Andrew.

"What's the difference between a reflector and a C-stand again? Ha ha - just kidding dude."

This sequence is going to be part of the opening sequence of C's movie, a slow dolly shot across a workbench. It's supposed to exist within an imaginary, ethereal space in Tom's mind, so C simply painted some of the walls of her studio for the backgrounds.

Workbench - before. That ain't pasta, that's sawdust.

Kristine gets to work dressing the workbench with various props she made as well as old woodworking tools borrowed from Chris, the carpenter who made the ship's wheel. Chris conveniently works in the woodshop just down the hall and has a collection of very old tools.

Remember to leave room for the Finnish water bong.

After some tweaking and a little sprinkle of sawdust, the workbench was ready for its close up. Cooool.

Hmm. It's kind'a messy in Tom's imagination.

C had borrowed a wheelchair from the university's theater department to use as a makeshift dolly. Andrew and I secured the camera and tripod to it with sandbags and clamps. Check it out.

Sure why not.

It was a bit of a challenge to get a nice smooth, even dolly across the workbench. Even though we swept it, the concrete floor still had dried up lumps of paint drops on it, and I'm not too sure the wheels on the wheelchair were completely smooth either. We tried a few different approaches.

I hear this is how James Cameron shot half of Titanic.

Not all of them were successful. Eventually however, we got a couple takes that we think C will like. So we packed everything up, locked up her studio and headed back to the Sukanen Museum.

When we arrived the set dressing team was still working on the set. We no longer had Jackie and the use of her trailer, but luckily Kevin still had his dad's big truck he borrowed to haul stuff around.

At least there aren't any parking meters out here.

We used the municipal records building at the museum for the Finnish boss's office.

"What we need is a big photo of the Skipper from Gilligan's Island."

As you can imagine, it's tough finding maritime themed props, pictures and knick-knacks out here in the prairie. Kristine had to come up with pictures of ships off of the internet to cover some of the prairie themed memorabilia in the office. I made that big blueprint of a Finnish steam/sailing ship in Illustrator and Kevin printed it out for us. The model ship we borrowed from one of the other buildings in the museum.

Voila! Instant Finnish shipyard office!

The powder blue walls look atrocious I know, but C will desaturate or sepia tone these scenes of Tom's memories, so the blue won't look blue at all. She did a couple quick tests in Photoshop and it actually looks pretty good!

Oh, and we brought the pups with us again. I think they rather enjoy film making.

They're rehearsing for our upcoming A Dingo's Got My Baby! movie.

The scene went off pretty well. At least we weren't chasing the sunset, although we did shoot right up until sundown again. Gerry Coulter, who plays young Tom's shipyard boss in Finland, did a good job once C was able to calm him down. And Don was amazing as usual. He's so good. When it was all over, I think we were all glad we shot this today and not on Saturday.

You can almost smell the barnacles!

Andrew says "It's a wrap!"

One relatively light scene and we were done. C, Andrew and Trevor tried to get some B-roll of the amazing moonrise, running across the highway and through a couple of ditches to get the shot. I'm not exactly sure how it went, I stayed behind to help pack up the equipment.

Loading up one last time at the Sukanen. For real this time!

The next two days will be interesting. We'll be at only one set on both days which will be easier, but we've got to shoot a crap load of shots within those two days. The room we're using at the old university building has a class scheduled the next morning after we finish, so we've gotta get everything shot or it might have to wait until the Fall shoot.