AUTHOR’S NOTE: Because I’d barely slept before posting this morning’s column, I fucked up (or “misstated”) a couple of things that I’d like to quickly clarify.
To whit:
At the end of Day Five – a truly stupendous day, and the easiest of the total shoot, in terms of both cast size and total wear-and-tear – it nonetheless became clear that we would not be able to get everything we needed in one single final day.
So we took a tiny handful of small but immensely significant sequences that were self-contained – easily shot away from the rest – and quickly added a seventh half-day of shooting. This would allow 96% of our cast to wrap, and peel us down to the bare lights/camera/sound configuration.
This doesn’t mean that these scenes aren’t important – if they weren’t important, we wouldn’t need to shoot them – but it does mean that, having wrapped everything else, we are now in the “extra credit” phase, where we get serious bonus points for not cheating our movie, and going that extra mile to glory.
So, yeah. Wednesday is a real day. A previously-unscheduled day. Which will take every bit as much creative devotion and attention to detail as every single other day. Just wanted to clarify that.
THE SHOOT IS OVER! Now all we have to do is go back and finish finishing!
And if you think, “That doesn’t make sense!”, you’ve probably had more sleep than me.