As I begin to recover a bit, and the senses fall back into place on this Easter Sunday, I can better see what is was we did last week. We pulled off a very ambitious first week of shooting in Cesky Krumlov. Let us go back a bit in history here (cue shimmery transition) to last weekend, the end of the beginning of the beginning...
Friday - the Kick Off Party
The party was held out a bit from the center, reason being we were bringing our own beer. A local brewery was sponsoring our party, so we had to find a place that would let us set up our own keg, and even bring our own vodka (I think we have some vodka maker sponsoring the movie as well). The advantage to that was we didn't get all the party crashers normally seen at the Kick Off/ Wrap parties. It turned out to be a party for our crew, with very few outsiders. All in all it was a good time, followed by another bar, after which me and good ol' Jer headed home, while the rest carried on to yet another place. Several of the die hard were out until 10 the next morning...
Saturday
Saturday was a day off, almost. The costume department was in a panic. The woman who was given the title "costume designer" (the one actually responsible for putting things together in the department, getting the look that makes the director and cast happy, and wife of the director's best friend) had never actually worked on a film before. That is a definite problem in this sort of thing, and with two days to go before shooting, it became apparent that it was definitely a definite problem. There were no costumes ready, approved, and fit to the cast. Huge shopping expeditions were launched to dress our two American travelers (in the film, although they are American in reality as well). Huge expeditions into Prague. They were not successful in finding the American look in Prague. Here is what needed to happen: while in the US, Designer X needed to meet the cast, get their sizes, and go get stuff. Here is why she didn't: they were expecting to get free stuff for product sponsorship...so she waited. And waited. And then it struck her, the free stuff wouldn't make it in time, and there was no back up. What should have been about 2 hrs of costume fitting turned into 6 hours of disastrous shopping and spending. I was thrilled, and, since someone from the ADs had to be there, tried to keep myself busy while they floundered into
Sunday.
The original plan was to leave around 11:30am and head down to the beautiful little town of Ceske Krumlov. I was looking forward to sleeping in since Saturday at work hadn't completely rid me of my Kick Off Hangover (although I was in better shape than many of the folks at the office on Sat!) That was until I got a call about 9pm saying that costume needed the cast to come in again in the morning, before they traveled to C.K., for more shopping and fitting. My sleep in turned into an 8am trip to the office, where I spent several hours waiting and checking in before finally heading down to C.K. around 3 in the afternoon. Once there, it was more fitting and the like until the director was happy enough to put the cast in front of camera early the next morning, very early. Designer X quietly disappeared sometime during the day, never to return.
Monday
First day of shooting, and a doozy at that. We jumped all over the little town of Cesky Krumlov, keeping the crew moving, and things rolling along. It was logistically probably the toughest day of the week, and the fact it was the first day of shooting didn't help things either. We did pretty well, including a couple of crane shots to keep the folks back in Smelly Wood happy.
Tuesday
Well, I'm gonna have to leave it at that. It's already Thursday of next week, and I should get something new up on the damn slog!
...fuego
