Two Days and Counting

We are looking at just two full days left before we start shooting Dry Rain. I think I've been working on this thing for at least a year and a half. Needless to say, I'm ready to get going! The crew starts arriving tomorrow, our cast comes in tomorrow, we have a final pre-production day on Monday and we hit the ground running on Tuesday.

Our only concern right now is the oppressive smoke that is choking the sky in Montana. I got out here on Thursday the volume of smoke was depressing. You could hardly see a mile down the road. We've got a contingency plan in place if it gets bad on our production days, but we hope we won't have to do anything drastic. The smoke has been pretty scarce the last couple of days. The winds and temperatures have been on our side. I just hope it stays that way. We'll be glued to the weather reports the next week.

Matt checking out the weather and smoke

Here's this NOAA site that I'll be checking regularily. Of real importance is the wind direction. If it starts blowing west, we could be in a world of hurt. There are a bunch of fires burning west of Helmville. The westerly wind would blow smoke right at us.

Yesterday, Brian and I went out and found some alternative locations. We got lucky to run into the rancher that owned the land adjacent to where we want to shoot. He's a friendly guy that was willing to let us use his land for parking and a basecamp. We were lucky he drove up as we stood around wondering where we'd start to look for the rancer. Good timing.