Friday Lee and I have Maverick's pizza and kumera chips for dinner and sat at Norm's waiting to hear about the genre. Putting the TV on for the Campbell Live coverage of the start of the competition was a good idea because they told us the elements over that!
Then we had a moment or two to wait and Regan called to let us know our genre. When we heard it was a monster movie the entire writing team pretty much went "Hell, yeah!" and then we got into the whole writing process. Somehow it was harder and took longer than the audition session did. I'm not sure why, although Lee and Svend were both sitting in, which meant the number of people there wasn't as low as it could have been. Mostly I think the scope of what we could do seemed so wide.
Lee and I left at about 11.30, having nutted out a basic plot, all the characters and the beats for the scenes. I was feeling pretty confident about directing, but I was worrying some about the casting (would Luke step up to the main character challenge?) and the location.
Saturday we woke up ridiculously early and left for Indigo City. Regan had crashed over at our place so she was there much earlier than she needed to be! There was lots of people arriving and getting excited and cursing the rain and sorting stuff out. I was really glad that people were on top of what they were supposed to be doing: props and costumes all got organised without me being consulted which was frankly awsesome. It meant I could focus on my understanding of the script, the motivations of the characters and what shots we needed.
Did some rehearsing with the actors and Lee and Steve had heaps of valuable input as well. Then we headed out to Fraser's Dad's place in Titahi Bay which had so many perfect perfect locations for shots and a little cottage available to be our base of operations and was just generally so damn perfect that the rain that fell on and off all day didn't even really matter.
Actually, I never got that wet. Early on I established myself as the Important Person Who Holds the Umbrella Over the Camera. It was a big umbrella, so it fit me under it too. That combined with my layered clothes, big fluffy coat, scarf, hat, big boots and warm socks meant that I was warm happy Director. I did feel very bad for the poor actors who had to suffer through the rain and mud and cold and look like they weren't.
More tomorrow. I am scatter brained and shattered.
PoF: slackie trackies
CO: still got a sore throat.
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Posted by jenni at May 29, 2006 06:02 PMHope sore throat clear. Actually, I think I hope you're in bed already :-).
Tonight I established that bath+corona is delightful but sleepmaking. I think the most awesome would be bath plus frozen margarita. Yee-ah.
Posted by: Rachel at May 29, 2006 09:48 PMThe standing in the cold rain and being muddy added to the whole experience.
Luke made a great leading guy and his overly cheery expression (especially when leading over corpses) seemed so right for Robin Slade. A very well cast movie. Nick as himself, Luke as a perky optimist who is still confident and stroppy enough to stand up to me :-)
I think the genre of the moving once again really reflected the experience of making it. Last year we made a Disney family movie and we all bonded together as a family in a really happy way. This year we made a monster movie and I think the tough physical conditions helped make it have the hard but really incredibly fun feel of a monster action flick. We still all bonded and took care of each other but it seemed like it was in a more "we have to do this right - we can't let everyone down" way. It really felt like the cast and crew were all comrades in the trenches helping to keep each other's spirits up.
Posted by: Debbie at May 30, 2006 12:09 PM