the Shoot

We started the day out pretty intensely.

I got a new actress to play Atalanta at 9:30 PM on Friday night.

I was awakened at 6 AM Saturday morning by a text from said girl saying that she was throwing up blood.

At 6:05 I called my little cousin who agreed to the part and to be at my house in under an hour.

At 6:20 I was asleep again, only to awakened back up at 6:35 by a text from Nic Betker, the man who plays Meleager and was in Forever Strong saying that he was at my house.

Between then and 8:10 everyone else shows up and we start cutting everyone's BYU INAPPROPRIATE  costumes. There was much cleavage on the men's part, and there was not one sleeve to be found.

We arrived on location at 8:30 and started to put freezing cold creek mud all over our bodies, screaming profanities as a college class went by teaching about all the different uses of the park. We became a new lesson for that class. ha ha

At one point one of my actors (a marine) broke my spear and did not tell me. He asked if he could run off and get something from his car. It took him over an hour to get back to location, wherein he went to the local Smith's and back with Cameron and Nic. He attempted to fix my $80 spear with a cutting board and black duct tape. It actually worked quite well.

We dressed up the spear in spare cloth from everyone's deceased shirt sleeves and it actually looks quite well :)

We started the actual filming around 9:30 and between then and 5:30 the following events happened.

Dogs did not stop coming into our filming location. It was ridiculous. I had to put Rebecca on Dog Guard Duty. In her doing so  we were able to maintain the integrity of many a shot

Blood was everywhere, but not as much as I would have liked. Although Nic and I were asked later on if we were okay by a couple of stoners.

Everyone had food and water. No one passed out from the heat or dehydration. Nobody went into shock after the shoot like I did after the first alley shoot I did that I showed you guys, although I guarantee that there  was much slumber! everyone was exhausted by the end of the day.

Injuries were taken including slivers, bruises, cuts, stabs, and sunburns. The best of all of them was when the marine tried to dodge Meleager's punch. Well.... he dodged his eye straight into his fist. The Marine went straight down to the ground. I'm going to put that into a blooper reel.

He was a good sport though. He did three takes after that and then we sent him home. I ended up playing his acting double later on, but you'll never know it :) heh heh heh the wonders of movie editing and angles!

Cameron unleashed his inner actor and ferocious beast. He really surprised me with how well he did. All the coaching and especially his practice paid off.

We had a great shoot and everyone was fairly well behaved. It was loads of fun for sure and I can't wait to show you guys the final product, but that probably won't happen until Saturday I'm guessing. I did learn a few things this time through though.

I need to be more attentive to camera angles according to the action. I can't assume that the camera man knows the best angles. I need to vocalize my vision to him better.

Along with that I need to ALWAYS tell the actors to adjust their action. Because I didn't I lost about half of our footage.

With film, there is almost always a way to edit around the rough edges, you just have to know what you're doing :)

With all that said I love you guys, especially the Meleager team for going along with such a crazy idea of a fight shoot in the mountains without shoes for most of the time. I had a lot of fun and the video is turning out really well so far!