T minus Three Weeks (ish) and Counting

We had rehearsal for the motel room scene on Saturday and it went really well.  This scene more than any other I felt was important to rehearse before we all got on set with lights and people and money.  I decided to go to the actual motel location and I think that was a good decision.  For one thing we found out that the room is Extremely dark.  For another, I learned that some rooms are larger than others and have different furniture configurations so I'll need to be more specific when we reserve the final shooting one.

Having never actually directed a rehearsal before it took a bit to figure out what we should actually be doing, but fortunately everyone is still pretending I'm in charge so they all just keep doing what I tell them.  The scene itself it pretty intense so it was great to not only figure out the shots and blocking but also get the awkwardness out of the way.  I'm trying to cut together something from the rehearsal footage but considering how dark it was and how poorly I shot it I don't know how helpful it will be.  I think we'll probably end up shooting the whole scene about ten different ways so that my paranoia about sufficient coverage will be sated.  So few other scenes in the film will allow that kind of freedom so I'm going to take advantage of it.

I'm going out Wednesday with the DP and FX Supervisor to visit the locations and determine power/gear needs.  That should also allow me to finalize the schedule as well once the DP tells me the times I'm assuming aren't absurd.

Also on Saturday we had a production meeting and my Production Designer is actually making concrete progress on...designing the production.  We're collecting props and wardrobe bits - hopefully all that will be done in the next two weeks.  We're also making progress on collecting crew people, but that is going slowly.  I guess I'll need to start yelling at people soon on that front.

Sorry this post is so boring, I wish I had pictures or something, but I don't know how much of that we'll have until we actually start shooting.