Day Four

Yesterday was a nice break between some hard days. Wednesday was a marathon with all the pages we had to cover. Today was challenging with several pages to shoot, but it was all exterior and pretty easy to cover. At least in theory, it was easy. Today was all about dealing with changes. We had changing weather that kept us on our toes until we wrapped.
We started off with a beautiful day with little smoke in the air. It all quickly degraded into a day with two major storm clouds moving over us. The first one moved through and just dumped rain and zapped lightning in all directions. The second one pushed the first one out and brought just a little rain and a couple cracks of lightening. The light shifted from full sunshine to overcast to an amazing filtered light that snuck through the ominous rain clouds.

The changing weather and changing light kept Doug on his toes as he worked to keep it all consistent. He had all kinds of things going to make the light feel right. In the end, it was Mother Nature’s light that was just right. We just had to wait for it.

Dusty started his day with promise. The little picture car that could just couldn’t. He died repeatedly, he stalled, he smoked and he hesitated. Amazingly enough, we got our shots off with Dusty, but not with out a lot of tinkering. The last shot of the day, we had to push him into shot! He wouldn’t go under his own steam.
We wrapped on time, today. I think I would have shot more if the weather would have cooperated, but we got it all in the can and it looked amazing. Our next challenge with this scene is to color correct it all so the varying light all looks the same and consistent.
After we called wrap, we all went into the Copper Queen Saloon for a tasty cold one. I learned my lesson from Wednesday night and only had a couple. I didn’t want to wake up on the last day of shooting with a headache!
If you are ever in Helmville, you got to check out the Copper Queen. It isn’t much of a place, but the people are great. Say hello to Tami, the owner.