Our first full shooting weekend was not uneventful.
Shooting Day 4, Call Time 10am.
First up was scene 8. Dot meets a guy on the road, calls himself Wise Art. The scene has to take place on a road.
Problem was that we slotted this scene in only earlier in the week and so the location scout was done by Google Earth. All we needed was a pretty deserted country road that was somewhat close to where we were shooting the rest of that day’s scenes. [Company moves devour a schedule. Especially long ones.]
What Google Earth didn’t tell me was that the chosen road was blocked a hefty chain link fence. Plan A out the window, we drove about 10km away to this little side street. Two lanes, not too busy, about a car every couple of minutes. Hardly perfect, but adequate. [McKenna Casey Dr if you're inclinded to look it up]
We unpacked, set-up, blocked, rehearsed and prepped to start shooting. Second take was interrupted by a train. Fourth take was interrupted by police. Yeah. Seriously.
It wasn’t four squad cars and a SWAT team – which would have made the story more interesting – but one is all it took.
Pulls up on his little motorbike: “Why are you blocking the highway?“
I was confused but we were somewhat close to the 416 so: “I didn’t know this was highway access.”
“No. This is a highway.”
Okay, it certainly wasn’t the most private road, and not really the best place to be shooting, but a highway? Really? I replied something along the lines of a skeptical “It is?”
“Why wouldn’t it be a highway?”
Err… What do you say to that?
There was about as much traffic as I see on my little neighbourhood street and we weren’t really blocking anything (we were easy to go around and there was never a situation where anybody was held up) but what can you say to: “Why wouldn’t it be a highway?”
I nodded, smiled, and apologized. We packed up, drove to a new location – a quiet little “No Exit” dirt road about 10 more minutes away, unpacked, and started again. At least the blocking was done so we could hit the ground running.
Now, I can see safety reasons for shooing us away, but the kindly officer never said “It’s dangerous to be on the busy street like this…” Just “Why wouldn’t it be a highway?”
And yanno, even then, we were close enough to the intersection that was the start of this straight, flat road (meaning all oncoming traffic had to slow and turn onto road) that there was no chance of being run down. We are vigilant about our safety.
Yet – I offer that member of the OPP [whom I suspect was having a bad day] my sincere thanks. In the end, the third location for this scene turned out to be much better in every way I can think of.
Other than that, the morning was hot and terribly sunny. Alison got a horribly un-fun burn and we were about 50 minutes behind schedule thanks to the delays.
That afternoon we shot @ what’s listed in the script as “Wester’s Bunker”. It’s a big, empty, concrete room where Dot looks incredibly small and lonely for her face-to-face with Wester. And in a few weeks, the floor will be covered in a couple inches of ice.
We lost another 30 minutes to this and that and wrapped 1hr 20 mins over schedule. Didn’t get home myself until 11pm when I still had a couple of hours work to get things ready for Sunday’s 9am call. [AKA 7am wake up.]
And hey, I met with the Arms Dealers. A couple of generous guys who loaned me some prop pistols for use in a couple of scenes. If you’re reading guys, thanks again.
Shooting Day 5, Call Time 9am.
Up until now, we’d only shot with Dot, so SD5 was our first day shooting with Fright, Savage, and Circuit. The whole gang. That alone made it exciting but we also shot our first major fight scene that day.
Dot and her friends met the well-dressed Winkies and did battle with the stylin’ Winkie Leader. [Yes, the Winkies were kind of Matrix-Agent inspired.] The Winkie Leader was played by André Givogue who’s been getting a bit of press lately for a trip to Hollywood, and, suffice to say, the fight turned out pretty darned great.
I don’t mind telling you, fights usually take a while to shoot. If you can arrange some continuous action, it’s not too bad, but when playing it shot by shot, it’s a lot of setups. [Not to mention all the prep that goes into it beforehand, which is a post for another time]. Of course the pay-off is always worth it because action scenes are so much fun.
After the fight scene was wrapped, we shot the only real scenes that don’t have Dot in them. Just her friends after they’ve been separated from her. The scenes feature a character called the “Old-Timey Bastard” a cranky old guy with a banjo who had been planted into the road up to his ankles by Wester. He’s mostly background, but it was a lot of fun and our actor, Aaron, was a great sport about having his feet buried in the dirt for most of the day.
With the end of the day (only about 40 minutes over) we pictured-wrapped both André and Aaron and through the course of the weekend we did about 16 pages spread over 9 scenes. Everything continues to look great and everybody continues to do great work.
BTW, we shot on a road again. This time, a nice, private road where we weren’t bothered by more than a dozen cars all day long.
Now – the question is: If we shot with all of Dot and her friends, where are the photos? Where’s the “Big Reveal“?
The short answer is: coming. The SD5 scenes come later in the movie, after one or two characters’ appearance have changed somewhat. This isn’t a huge deal but we want the first released photos of our foursome to show all four in the look we’re focusing on. Look out for that next week.
Right now, I’ll leave you with this exchange between Chris (Fright) and Liam (Savage):
Chris: (quoting) “This is not the way I’ve come to see people express gratitude.”
Liam: (knowing Chris was quoting something) “What’s that from?”
Chris: “This movie!” (He had been quoting his own line.)
… Liam does claim to have read the script.
PS – Sorry for the no-post last week. There was a lot to get ready. We’ll catch you up next week with the full story of shooting Day 6 and 7 as well as -hopefully- another Untamed Lands flashback. In the meantime keep up-to-date on Twitter during each shooting day and check the Facebook page where, at the end of every shooting day, a production still is posted from that day.
While you’re here, leave us a comment. Tell us what constitutes a highway to you, or how many mosquitos *you* killed this weekend.
