The Eternal Dance

Today we shot the big scene with Lenny, Gina and Max in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. Vincent Leddy, who plays Lenny the Pimp, did a great job of tossing Lela and I around a clearing while we tried to keep from laughing. We might be masochists.

Shooting started at seven o’ clock this morning. I never would have thought that filming could be so hard. We have no special effects, no large cast, no big scenes that we have to rope off from the general public, and still we find little wrenches to be thrown into the gears. Where is my costume? Are we rolling? Have I been holding this book for the entire scene? What’s my line? Are we still rolling?

Those are only my questions, of course. Carlos has to deal with San Francisco having a different climate every half hour and in every neighborhood, and trying to keep things working when, for instance, the camera’s power supply breaks, the van door falls off, a bystander really wants to walk through the scene over and over, or the van’s transmission breaks.

Things we learned today:

• 8-9am is prime jogging time in Golden Gate park.
• Having a crew member makes a huge difference. (Thank you Ellen!)
• Temporary tattoos do not stand up to the rigors of a good fight. Also, they won’t stay on and they won’t come off.
• A surprisingly large number of people decide to film in the AIDS Memorial Grove on Sundays.
• A surprisingly large number of San Franciscans will ignore people deciding to film in the AIDS Memorial Grove on Sundays.
• One should always have a tai chi practitioner in the background during a fight scene.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.