Friday, October 9, 2009

Status Report On Nathan's TV Show.

We start shooting on October 26th and our Tech Scouts are a week from Monday (and Tuesday...and maybe Wednesday. We have a lot of locations). Every time I start a show, I think of my deadline for having all the locations as the first day of shooting. Within a couple of days of starting, something will remind me that the real deadline is the Tech Scout...which means the deadline always takes a noticeable leap toward me at the very beginning of things.

That's OK. It's the film business's way of reminding me to gird my loins for weeks of frustrating moments, shocks to the system and bitter disappointments. Hey, it's all good. (Side note: I don't know about you, but I've never heard the words, Hey, it's all good without them meaning the exact opposite. If you're trying to reassure me that you've got your shit together, saying Hey, it's all good is not going to help.)

We've been making good progress choosing locations. We've been picking them off in twos and threes every time we go out to look at choices. Steady progress.

Anyway, things are progressing pretty much the way they always do. The schedule keeps changing as we figure things out. We pick a location for such-and-such scenes and we find out we can only use it on certain dates...adjust the schedule. An actor we've wanted for a certain role has signed on...great news! But she's only available during certain weeks, so...adjust the schedule. this is all completely normal and goes with the territory. Flexibility is a highly valued quality hereabouts.

But a little quirk has reared its ugly head lately. We keep ending up with some fairly major location on the first day of filming. And it just so happens to be a location we haven't found yet. So, we ramp up the panic a notch and make a full court press to find something. And we do! We stand there looking at our newly chosen location and think about all of the ways it will be a brilliant place to shoot our scenes and we pat ourselves on the backs for dodging another bullet.

And that self-congratulatory feeling may last all of ten minutes. Because that's when we find out that we can have the location; we just can't have it on the first day(s) of shooting. Oh well.

So, we move it to somewhere else in the schedule and we figure out what else can be pulled up for the first day of shooting. And every fucking time, it's a location we haven't nailed yet. Every. Fucking. Time.

I try to take it in stride. I try not to get too excited over it. At least not for too long. We'll get it worked out; we always do. I've got to go now. It's time to find the first day's location...again.

Hey. It's all good.

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