From the Set

   Today's shoot didn't start off so well, as I thought it started at 6:30 when apparently it actually started at 5:45, causing me to be somewhat late. Which is just as well, because when we got to the location okay, we got to, not the location where we were going to shoot, but a location that the director just saw on the side of the road and thought that the lighting looked kind of neat with the sun's angles so why not do some trekking-through-the-desert shots in front of that, which we ultimately didn't do, because then we discovered we had forgotten some stuff. By the time it would take to go back and get the stuff then go to the location again there wouldn't be enough light in the sky to do the scene we had planned on filming, so we just scrapped that idea and did a different, more sunsetty scene. I've always liked scenes that take place at dawn or dusk, as, well, you don't see them very often. Not even in 24, which is precisely where you'd expect that kind of thing. I guess there's the whole "continuity" thing to worry about, but what about continuity with real life? So, I guess this scene takes place at sunset. It doesn't really specify when it takes place in the script, but the next scene takes place at night, so...

   Scott and Lucas are walking through the desert, almost at the end of their journey, when Luke collapses from dehydration. Neither of them has any water left. That night, Luke tells Scott to go on without him, that' he'll be okay. It's a pretty powerful scene, at least on page, and, since it was downright painful to watch the actors even act it out in real life, that's probably going to hold up well. Since the shadows are really long during the first part of the sunset, I kept east of the action during the first shots of the scene, which are dialogless and thus did not require my assistance.


   There, I found a piece of litter: one of those plastic boxes that would contain cake or some other pastry (in this case it was a fudge container) there at the store. A couple of ants had managed to make it into the box and found some dried up crust of chocolate frosting, and were trying to get them out of the box even though the lid was on. They just kept crashing into it. I mused that such is somehow a microcosm of the entire universe. I lifted the lid, and, with the wind blowing, they almost got swept away. The first ant made it out with its bit of frosting, but the other had clearly bit off more than it could chew (so to speak) and struggled even lifting its frosting crust, much less maneuvering it up and out over a smooth curved plastic surface. Breaking the piece down didn't even occur to it. Was this still somehow a microcosm for the entire universe? I'm still not quite sure.