Drifting: A Director's Log: For Real This Time

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February 16, 2008

For Real This Time

Today was the first day of the second week. It was hectic as hell. And cold as hell. I'm not really sure what we got today. I know we got something. Including the Britney Spears scene, which was awesome.That's all I'm gonna say about that.

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But I need to catch up on the days that have elapsed. So here are things I learned during the first week of principal photography:

If you set out prop trash piles on the sides of curbs, make sure you have someone watching it at all times. Otherwise it will vanish within minutes.

If you're staying less than two miles from the set, you can survive with your gas light on for up to four days without getting stranded!

I'm gonna need some reshoots.

We hit a stride on our fifth day of production, and while everything we got before that point was great, everything we've shot since has been on an entirely different level. The turning point was onn Tuesday, when Ellen and Jonathan (the art department) and I spent two hours building what we thought was an awesome fortress of a tent out of sheets and furniture. The next day we shot a handful of scenes in it, and then took it down so we could shoot some shots of the kids 'building' it. They ended up constructing, over the course of a forty minute take, an entirely different and vastly superior tent that was so awesome that we had to reshoot all the scenes we'd done earlier in the day the next morning. It put us a little bit behind, but at the same time it was really refreshing to just go with the flow and not be married to something that had the potential to be a million times better. There's no point in making something that's not great. We're too low budget to add more days to the schedule, but we're also low-budget enough to have the freedom to just keep improvising.

And now: pictures.