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May 16, 2002
A Picture
I guess filming is going well. Matt sent me this picture of me as Mike Wellington:
Do you see the jacket and Vitamin Water bottle? We didn't until we'd shot the whole interview. It led to one of those great artistic questions - reshoot, or decide that it was "ambience"? We went for ambience.
Right now my contribution to the movie is waiting and trying not to forget what Mike Wellington's voice sounded like.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:00 PM
May 4, 2002
First Day of Filming
It turned out that my first day of shooting was also the first day of shooting for the film. So there was plenty of running around and "oh, how does this work, again?" and "where's that intern with my latte?" (Actually, I was the one who kept saying "where's that intern with my latte?" even though no one but me thought it was funny. That's my comedy secret - never give up on a bit, no matter what).
Mike Wellington is wearing a beret and a grey mock-turtleneck. He's very silly looking. (I had a picture, and a bunch of shots of the dance sequence, but a hard drive crash ate them all.)
Since this is a partially improvised movie, it would make sense to shoot the scenes in chronological order (especially so that improvised changes or surprises about the 'facts' could be justified or taken into account) . Unfortunately, the availability of locations means that they're filming in nearly reverse-chronological order. So this day's shooting was the climactic dance sequence of the movie and was shot at the delightful Dance Center of Columbia College.
The very first scene we shot was audience reactions to the dance. The 'audience' reacting was me and a principal actor and eight extras (they did pretty tight shots). Although neither of us realized it at the time, one of the extras they roped in was a photographer named Erika who went straight from the shoot to meet up with Sandy to do a model test shoot. Chicago is such a small town.
And then after a delightful lunch of big sandwiches, they shot Mike Wellington's interview, where I got to be extra silly. I lost the voice I had decided Mike was going to use, though.
And then they shot the dance sequence, which I stayed to watch for a while and took the aforementioned hard-drive-crashed-and-lost pictures.
Now I just have to not lose the clothes that Mike was wearing and wait a month for my next day on set.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:00 PM