Where Is The Camera? (part 1)

The buzz was "Pizza and Nelson Brewing Company organic beer in cans at Kathy and Vince's Wednesday night". The whole class came. A film-maker party. Like Hollywood. At 1 am we said good-bye to everyone except Rob who never left. Whether the full house was because it was OUR party or because we had free pizza and beer...I'll never know.

The public screening is Friday. Paul, Clay and Rob did the posters. I don't feel all that represented by our poster with the naked woman (covered in lycra only after protest) draped in film, toting a camera made to look like a machine-gun and announcing the event with a heavy metal/horror film font, but what the heck.

Figuring it would be easy to hang a few posters around town on the way home from school, I grabbed a handful. Not easy. Everywhere a poster could be hung, a poster was already hung....all current. While standing in front of a coffeehouse bulletin board a foot thick, I was approached by a musician who told me the best thing to do was to come back at 1:30 am...that way I could take some of the posters down from the night before and hang mine....a suggestion I chose to ignore.

The last time I mentioned the film we were preparing to shoot the car scene.

Take 1.
We were about to be the first car scene shot in Ione, Washington. The car was secured on the flat bed which was about to be pulled by Leon, the fella that put in our septic system, and his huge diesel truck. Vin wore a harness that was secured to the bed of the truck so well that if he would have fallen off he would have been dragged for miles. The tripod and camera weren't going anywhere. Our actors had driven down from Canada. ACTION. Ever notice how much a huge diesel engine vibrates at 20 miles an hour??? You'd notice if you were trying to film two people having a conversation in the car it was pulling while standing on it's flatbed. Well. That didn't work. We did, however, manage to get the boom shots and luckily Vince forgot he'd ever mentioned the shots from the airplane.

Take 2.
One week later.
Vince built a camera platform. Called a 'hostess tray' in the industry, it mounts to either side of the car and shoots through the window. If you want to spend 1500 dollars you can buy one or if you're Vince, you can build one out of scraps for about 20. The actors were mic'd. Everyone had a walkie talkie so we're synced for 'ACTION'. I hung holiday-looking garlands throughout the town so the audience would know it's Christmas even though it wasn't and even though the garlands didn't show up in any of the shots. Vin mounted an inverter to the car engine so we could run lights (held by huge suction cups suctioned to the hood) off of the car battery. Joel, our lead male, drove and did his lines as if there were no bright lights shining in his face and he could see just fine. Cut. Good take.

Where Is The Camera? (part 2)

Are you tired of camera scene pictures yet?

House.
Life is so much easier with a place to hang our coats when we walk in. I think I mentioned that we needed a coat rack, that Max, Vince and I headed down the railroad tracks to find some spikes and that Max didn't find any but Vince and I came back with 17 between the two of us. Today at Ryan's machine shop, Vin sand-blasted and shortened the spikes at a 10 degree angle while Ryan welded them to the metal plate he'd just cut and drilled. My job was to hold off the guy with the broken cultivator emergency for 15 minutes until they were done.

With the front door open, the house is 966 square feet plus 58 acres.

Exciting News.
Energy Star credits for the washer/dryer and the refrigerator just showed up on our electric bill.

Just A Quick Pop In

Almost everyday I promise myself that I'm going to post and entry in my blog so you can see that I'm not very good at keeping promises when they're to myself.

School and Canada.
Six hours of "After Effects" (a complicated (for me) software program) yesterday and now when I make a movie where I'll need to have a car fly through a glass window on the 50th floor of a skyscraper, I'll know how to do it. It's the very same class in which I created a skeleton that danced the Macarena.

I got an 'A!' on my last editing test. You may think I'm punctuating the 'A' in order to emphasize it but I'm not. This is not an 'A' or an 'A-' but an A exclamation point. Just another cute little Canadian quirk.

Every week I look forward to going up to Nelson and look just as forward to coming back down to Metaline Falls. All year Vin and I been whispering in the car while sitting in the customs queue without even realizing it. I guess we both felt like somehow the customs people could hear us in the car if we spoke at a normal volume. Going through customs I'm always a teeny bit nervous. I'm sure I look guilty. I know I always feel guilty.

One easy swipe of my BC Health card and the receptionist sat looking at all of my Canadian medical records. Then, when no one was checking in, she swept the floor until an examination room was free and she could set it up for me. As students we get BC Health for about 100 dollars a month. I wish I was sick so I could use it. Thursday I had a physical. I was 3 minutes late. Two minutes later, the doctor came out to get me and apologized for making me wait.

House and home.
Interior doors. We decided on what we wanted so the hard part is done. You'll think it's weird, but we had some sheets of corrugated metal left from the siding that we're going to transform into doors. How will that look? Beats me but I'll know in about a week.

We now have a cute little Asko washer and dryer, showers, bookcases, dining chairs and wooden steps. The washer and dryer are energy star, the bookshelves and steps are local wood from Steve Kiss..neighbor, logger and talent from Vin's first film. The chairs are from Sundance Catalog (sorry).

Our Saturday movie night ('Benny and Joon'...filmed in Spokane in 1993) had a record 7 movie loving lasagna eaters in attendance. Both the lasagna and the movie were delicious. Must sees: 'Benny and Joon', 'Bart Got A Room' and 'Gilbert Grape', my recent new favorites.

The elk are back. Back from where? They didn't fly south because I know I would have noticed since they travel in groups of 15 to 50. Guess it's their little secret and I'd know if they wanted me to know.

Notice, in the last photo, how the wood from the outside looks like it continues to the inside (where we need some coat hooks*). Very Chic.

Warning. If you think that after 25 years of sleeping in a king sized bed, you can go back to a queen...you'd be wrong.

*Max, Vin and I found 17 railroad spikes, soon to be coat hooks, on a walk from our house yesterday.