Shot 1 - IN THE CAN

Yesterday was our first shoot. Considering it was the first time I've ever even seen a movie shoot, it went smoothly. We had planned to shoot from 10am until 2pm. We were done about an hour early and that includes a liberal amount of goofing off during the shoot.

It was a blast! The scene we shot was on the lake and the water was stagnated and DISGUSTING. Huge thank-you's to Nick Franceschina and Mark Cole who agreed to get into the murky malaria soup. I was originally going to be a diver myself, but Mark Cole volunteered the morning of the shoot. That was awesome because we would have had to get someone else to operate the camera otherwise.

Also big thank you's for helping us out Saturday go to (in no particular order):

• Matt Sullivan


• Toney Simms


• Dan Riegler


• Carl Danowski, Sr.


• Joanne Danowski


• Melissa Cook

We learned a few things on Saturday.

1. Storyboards are unbelievably important. We had storyboards, but next time they'll be more detailed. The ones we had were OK, but when you're out there on location you can't leave anything to question.


2. Planning, planning, planning. We did tons of this and it paid off well. I'm so happy that there wasn't a major gap that ruined it all. We found out the night before that Winton Woods (where we were filming) had a sewage leak and was not safe. We already had an alternate location scoped out and everyone was notified right after we found out. Yeah, Sharon Woods was kinda smelly, but I don't think any of us are going to get a disease.


3. It's hard to get good sound. I'm an audio moron. The mic I bought is awesome, but I need to learn how to use it. I have a friend that used to do sound and lighting at Disney, so Mike you had better get ready for me to start bothering you a lot.


4. Getting a scene done is incredibly rewarding. We seem to have a lot more momentum now and I'm excited about the next shoot instead of nervous. The project seems more "real".

There's still a ton of work to do! We just cast the role of the leading lady, Lasanka (masticatus majorus). I'm going to print copies of the script and burn a few DVDs to hand out to those with speaking parts. And Saturday is the big midnight rowboat scene where Carl has to flip a boat into the lake.