And So It Begins
This online diary is for everyone who has ever wondered what it was like to be involved in the production process of a movie! During the filming of Stolen Moments, written and directed by Jeffrey Day, I will keep you all up-to-date on our progress and set-backs. You'll even get some editorial comments from me, one of the actors.
I should start by introducing myself, shouldn't I? Right. Well, my name is Rebecca Harvey, and I play Janie in Stolen Moments. I adore playing Janie; she’s a theater major and she's fun, passionate, daring, and full of life. She is also the girlfriend of Jacob Preston, a 21-year-old college student (played by the amazing Jeremy White) and the film's main character. Jacob is much more cautious than Janie and the rest of his fun-loving friends. He's more of a sit-on-the-sidelines kind of guy; he'll watch from the stands but it takes a lot to get him to participate. He faithfully visits his grandfather, Pappy Bailey, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home. I'll let you in on some more of the story later on, but right now I want to catch you up on the production so far....
We began filming last week. The first evening of filming we shot the classroom scene, which was basically Jacob, Professor Jennings, and a bunch of extras. There were some very complicated camera moves, but Vanessa our camerawoman did an amazing job! It took a bit of practice, however, and the shoot ran later than any of us had expected; the dialogue between Jacob and the professor had to be pushed back to a make-up-shooting day. Did I mention that we can only shoot on evenings and weekends? You see, the cast is mainly comprised of students that attend Asbury College here in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the director is a professor here. Needless to say, this creates some scheduling issues! But it’s a challenge I think we are all quite excited to take on. Speaking of challenges, Day 2 of shooting made me realize how un-glamorous the film-making process can be. There seemed to be one problem after another! The shot that Jeff wanted was a difficult one– he wanted the whole exterior scene in one steadicam shot. What that meant to me and Jeremy as the actors was that we HAD to nail our lines, our movements, everything; if we screwed up it was "back to one!" And by the way, it was 19 degrees outside...yeah so, we definitely wanted to get this shot right as quickly as we could. Apparently that just wasn’t to be. As we were running through the shot Jeff noticed that the lighting was wrong. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any way that Matt, our lighting director, could fix it. So we ran inside to warm up and get some hot chocolate while Jeff and our producer, Don, tried to figure out what to do next. A change of location was in order, so we packed it up and moved to another part of campus. Jeremy and I did 20 frigid takes and, four hours after our call time, we all piled around the stinking awesome HD flatscreen we have to watch the footage on. What we saw was less than encouraging. It seems that the wireless transmitter from the boom mic to the camera had run out of battery, so Jeremy and I sounded like we were robots in a bad sci-fi flick! On top of that, the lighting was somehow messed-up, and from time to time we appeared to be a pale green color! Jeff and Don saw the frustration and disappointment on everyone’s faces and did their best to cheer us up. Yes, we had spent an entire evening out in the freezing cold and had absolutely nothing to show for it, but they were still proud of everyone’s hard work and reminded us this was just part of the filming process. That did make me feel a little better, but I would be lying if I said it made everything ok. One more make-up-shooting day for the calender! On Saturday, our third day of shooting was cancelled altogether due to an ice storm (darn these outside sequences!), and although that meant I was able to sleep in and watch the extended version of Return of the King with my friends, I was still bummed. This week Jeff is in Florida watching some of Asbury’s incredible thespians compete for the Irene Ryan Award (including five of Stolen Moment’s own actors!), so shooting will begin again next week.
*sigh* A week without shooting is like a week without sunshine...and we have both! : (
posted by Becs @ 1:13 PM
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