So here we were, the final day of shooting and it presented us with the biggest challenges. We had to shoot our outside scene and we still weren’t totally sure where we were doing that. And then it wasn’t just back to the apartment for the rest of the day, we’d also scheduled another quick scene in the bedroom at the end of the day. To add to it all, we hadn’t been able to schedule the last rehearsal we wanted for this episode. Basically we had our work cut out for us.
Day 4 began with everyone arriving at the house as usual. Grabbed coffee, muffins, actors into makeup and then we piled into cars and drove up the street. A few blocks away there were several different apartment buildings and we were just going to pick one of those. Since we didn’t have a planned location it meant we didn’t have power. No power means no lights but we had this big bright sun and some bounce cards, no problem. We let Glenn pick a location that worked best for him, and I have to say he picked well.
And does it sound sort of dumb to not pick a location ahead of time and just wing it? Yeah, I agree, that was kind of dumb. But realistically we weren’t going to be able to secure anything, we didn’t know what the weather would be like on the day nor were we able to schedule a location scout at the right time of day. It’s just how things worked out and, like the rest of the shoot, we rolled with it.
This was about 8:30 in the morning so we were trying to be quick and quiet and get this done before the neighborhood woke up or really noticed our presence. It was a pretty small street so there wasn’t a lot of traffic, but there was a damn helicopter. Yeah, a friggin’ helicopter! It was just circling the area over and over again. There was even one point after a take when I asked if it was good for sound and he just laughed. It is what it is.
Not much we could do so we went with it and just tried to squeeze in our takes when the helicopter circled away, of course we didn’t really have that luxury of waiting either. It was a little bit chaotic but the cast and crew were awesome and everyone worked really fast. Glenn really rode my ass and helped us get it done in just a couple hours. I think the scene turned out really well and our post audio guy did a great job of dealing with all the elements.
So once this was done it was back to the apartment. The first thing we shot was Jakob’s fantasy sequence with Britney. This was a blast! I didn’t script anything specific so we just played around. We have a lot of footage from this scene and I can’t wait to release more of it, it’s funny stuff. There’s a pillow fight, some fake making out – just Josh and Jodi being silly and really cracking us up. I love the bit that we put in the show, it still makes me laugh every time I see it. They were really great together.
We were actually staying on schedule quite well for the rest of the day but there was always that daunting task of the bedroom scene to shoot. This was a scene for episode 2 where we see Jakob and Mikey sharing a bedroom because Cat has taken Mikey’s. The bedroom we were going to shoot this in was our makeup/green room. We were going to have to move everything out, decorate it, then light it. And it was a small room. Not to mention that our fake wall blocked the hall outside the door so space was tight everywhere. And we didn’t really have anywhere to put this stuff, or the people who would hide in that room during takes. To top it off, we couldn’t do any of this staging ahead of time because we were shooting all afternoon and the noise would be too much.
So my wise AD, Rob Fernuk, spoke up at some point and suggested we think of something else. Did I mention that was wise? He pointed out that it was a lot of work for what basically amounted to 3 lines, 2 shots and a joke that wasn’t all that funny. And I have to agree, it just wasn’t a very funny scene. So we all took a moment to think of something else and this is where we decided that Mikey could just sleep in the living room. The whole cast and crew basically worked together to come up with that short scene you now see in episode 2. This is why it’s good to work with smart, talented people.
The final shots of the day were with our Old Vet. This meant changing our living room set into the neighbor’s living room so once we wrapped the apartment scenes that’s exactly what happened. While this was going on I went to the sound van with Josh and Quentin to record their dialogue for the Principal Commander scenes. It didn’t take long but by the time I got back the set was all ready! I swear we had the best crew. The Old Vet scenes were a lot of fun to shoot, I was cracking up looking at Bo’s reactions on the monitor.
And that was it! We even managed to wrap 20 minutes early! One final note that I thought was really cool is that everyone hung out for a beer after. Josh, Quentin and Shanae had all wrapped earlier but they wanted to stick around and watch Bo’s performance. I think that really speaks to what a great group of people we had working on this show. No one ran home once we were done on a Sunday, everyone wanted to just hang out a bit longer. I really do thank everyone on set, I think we had such an amazing crew that worked so well together and I hope that everyone can come back when we get to do more episodes. This was truly the best experience I’ve ever had on set.
So now we had our show! Except that’s not true, we didn’t have a show yet – we still had to edit. And post-production is an entirely different battle.
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