After a combined total of 23 hours on set, production is finally complete.
Time spent waiting on actors: 7 Hours
Time spent filming: 16 hours
The story of yesterday.. supporting lady had a death in the family and we had to replace her. Everyone shows up except for our leading man and he's not answering his phone. My DP is burned out on this project, the 4th day of what should have been a 2 day shoot. He's had to take time off work, away from family, etc and without James we have no end in sight. The DP says he is not coming back another day, and I don't blame him. In fact I empathize.
I say fine, I will play James. Screw this lets get it done.
I start pulling off the pool cover because the other actor is supposed to be wet in our first scene. I accidentally fall into the pool while I'm rushing and walking backwards... Thank god I didn't have my cell in my pocket, and my splash narrowly missed the DPs laptop too. Now I'm soaked and supposed to do a scene, so I run inside and quickly dry off.
Finally we start the scene, I didn't know I had it in me but I nailed it so hard the other guy kept thinking I was actually mad at him lol. The whole crew was surprised and kept telling me how believable it was. I'm not just patting myself on the back here, it becomes relevant in the next paragraph
Now we finally get ahold of James.. He was wasted the night before and says he is on his way, but it's a long drive.. maybe 90 minutes. Three hours later he shows up. Ugh. And then the other actor kept talking about how awesome I was when I played as James instead. Oh what a mess, I was really worried they were going to undermine his confidence and I kept trying to say they were just being nice, only to be met by further insistence of my greatness.. We had some of the worst acting out of him in the next hour but maybe he was just hung over. He did better later in the day.
Well shit, if I'm not a terrible actor maybe I'll actually cast myself in a role next time. If only for the reason that I can count on MYSELF to show up and that was a huge issue for Friend Zoned's production.
One last little bit.. the replacement supporting girl. She was doing okay. I'm trying to get her to play the part like she's on drugs, but she doesn't do drugs and it wasn't really selling. Then she suggests trying it like she was drunk. Holy cow it's like she turned into a professional actress with a snap of her fingers. I was so proud of her and excited that I had to run over and give her a hug lol.
What a relief to finally be done with the production phase of the project. No more sitting around waiting for actors
We hardly did any filming.
