The Lord is good. I can't begin to tell you how blessed we've been so far. The scenes in Diakonos were effective and do not need to be reshot. The press conference is easy to set up, and I still need to shoot part of it again, and may end up reshooting it all together due to some sound and lighting issues. But I'm not going to go in detail about all of that. I'm going to talk about our epic, marathon, everything-went-right weekend where we nailed four important scenes.

We met Saturday at 7:50am and took off to Albany to shoot at Nissen Ford. I have a little family history with that dealership: my grandfather was a sales manager there for thirty years. Anyway, we got there, the employees helped us and was excited, we set up and began shooting at 9:15 sharp; on time. We began with the most complicated shot in any of my movies; a tracking shot that moves backwards with the actors for about thirty feet before spinning 180 degrees and following the actors another five or so. The good thing is, it doesn't look complicated. Your attention is drawn to the action, where Sami nails it. From there we move into the 'walk around' portion of the scene, where I demonstrate to the sales manager my sales skills while Kitsy tries to distract me. We used a very new, very shiny Mustang, which makes the movie look $40,000 more expensive. This segment flows very well, and will only get better with furthure editing and music.
From there we took a break, ate some lunch, then headed to the Book Bin on 1st street, where we met Nate Archer. That took about 30 minutes, it's a very short scene, and Nate nailed it. From there we took off to KBVR studio A and shot the interview that preceds the car dealership scene. This was pretty intense for a few reasons, and it went very well. We all worked well together, something I hope continues.
Monday morning we shot at Dr. Hart's psychologist office on the 5th floor of Snell Hall. Barry Lawler, one of my favorite professors, played the role of the shrink and did a very good job. Sami owned the part of Kitsy (he gets better with every shooting day), and I did my thing as Jack, though looking back I think I could have done a little more. This scene looks very good, one of the most professional of the movie so far.

So, that being said, I have about 30 minutes of the movie shot, and 10 minutes of linear scenes put together which gives me a decent look at how the movie is going to end up. Wrecklessly fast paced. I was taken aback a bit by the onslaught, and it made me weigh the pros and cons. Pros: fast, funny, holds your attention very well. Cons: you feel like you need a warm shower and massage afterwards. Still, I'm excited by this. I would much rather have a breakneck, exhausting comedy than a slow and dull one. Still, there needs to be a few valleys in the film, and there are, just not in that 10 minute segment. Of course it's only 10 minutes, so I'm looking through a mirror dimly. I'm optimistic.

CREW SHOUTOUT: We got a second unit! Devin brings his film school pedigree and DVX100A and dedication to Entertaining Angels, putting together some awesome 2nd unit shots. He's been there every day on time, and brought tons to the set. Kaleen is still going strong, taking on more responsibilities and doing insane amounts of work (one day, she had to switch off a light, turn on another one, all while panning the camera to the right and down all in the same shot!). Kaleen is quickly learning lighting, and by Monday I wasn't even giving her any advice, she knew exactly what to do. Ron Rhinehart showed his dedication by skipping a snowboarding trip to shoot. Thank you so much Ron. Had Ron not showed up, no way would we have gotten the awesome dolly shots we got, no way the scenes would look and feel as good as they do.

We're in the meat of the schedule now, and picking up steam. I'm write another journal after our next marathon of filming: 4 times in 7 days.