I was not sure when I woke up on Day 33 that the shoot would actually happen.  It rained much of the day before, and the forecast was for more of the same.  But as the day began, the sky cleared up and it looked like we'd be G2G.

The day started off in Saugus, with Max, Frank, Maura, Stacey and me gathering and preparing: we took a quick two-minute drive to our location--the town center of Saugus--to block out exactly how/where we would shoot the missing poster scene.  The local police and town officials knew we'd be shooting and we were told we'd only need a police detail if we disrupted traffic, which I knew we wouldn't unless I wore one of my low-cut T-shirts (which I had to foresake for the production).  Sorry, Saugus traffic, maybe next time.  My crew helped me block out the scene very well, and we returned to our house.

Next, R & J showed up (Gossip Girl is playing on our TiVo right now...my apologies...XOXO).  Johanna gave us some of her coffee liqueur swag, which was sticky and terrific; and we all decided was a great stimulant/depressant for the rest of the day.  Leila arrived, we all got in a few cars and drove to the center of town.

The scene went very smoothly, though there were some technical issues to overcome.  Much of the scene plays out as Suzanne, Renee and then Jennifer walk from one tree to another to post a missing sign, and so Rajah thought it best to try the shot handheld.  We were probably a very funny sight for the town of Saugus, because it was the three girls walking forward on the sidewalk in front of town hall, and in front of them was five of us walking backwards as one big moving blob--Rajah with the camera, Max or me spotting him, Frank holding the mic, and Maura wrangling the cord.  This worked out a lot better than you'd think, although we kept asking the actresses to not stop too soon, but just keep walking into us.  BTW, no actresses were hurt during the making of this scene.

So the good news was that Leila, Stacey, and Johanna did a great job in this scene, and needed very little direction to get where they needed to be.  My only fear and frustration with it was that the sound was not terribly great--between the traffic sounds and the very loud wind, even our fuzzy mic hat couldn't wipe out all the bad elements.  We did attract some very curious passers-by who watched us and hopefully didn't take the missing posters as legitimate.  Oh, well.  They ain't gonna find her, I bet.  We also (yes, on Stacey's suggestion) did one take from way across the street in super wide shot just to give us an editing safety net in case we need to dub/overlay lines of dialogue because of the wind, versus the horrors of dubbing lines later on.  Also we did a LOT of takes, and thankfully Johanna, Leila and Stacey were very patient with the number of times we did everything, just in case some takes were blown (literally). 

Then we all went to the bathroom at the nearby gas station, which was not as exciting as it sounds, but very much a relief after all that coffee booze.  We finished up and Johanna, Leila and Max took off.  The rest of us came back to our house, called our good ol' pal Jim Shalkoski, Jr. and let him know that we were headed his way.

Georgetown was awesome as usual.  Jim Jim Jim had made up a collection of mailers to give to his neighbors for our upcoming yard sale shoot, which I signed after it made it past Stacey's grammatical tweaks.  Meanwhile, Maura transcribed a recipe she liked, Frank did crazy voices, and Rajah and I did our dueling Daniel Plainview impressions about every object we saw in the room.  ("If you have a pen, and I have a pen...I take your pen.  I take this pen alllllllllllllllll the way across the room.  And I write with this pen.  I write it all up!" etc. etc.)

We had three shots to do.  The first was Mitch & Suzanne returning from Victor's house, walking down the street side-by-side, silently, Mitch pulling along his suitcase.  When they reach the Dixon house, Suzanne quickly breaks away and Mitch keeps going.  Rajah set up the perfect shot, the actors did a brilliant first take...I absolutely loved it.  It made me laugh: it was so subtle but so great.  One of the only times we did something once and I realized we'd never nail it better than that.  So of course we moved the camera around nine more times to try different angles and positions because we're crazy like that.  The Shalkoskis (bless their hearts) kept moving to watch the scene and--since this was our first Mark-less shoot ever--somebody needed to accidentally be in the shot no matter where we moved the camera and they filled that void.  They were great about moving each time, and Maura was extremely conscious of Mark's pleadings for us to slate each scene, which she did faithfully.

Then we drove to the swamp in the Dagobah system because Rajah was inspired to shoot Mitch & Suzanne walking past it.  It really was a very cool area to see, and we'll see in editing if it looks right for a suburban area.  But we enjoyed shooting it.

We also needed a shot of Mitch leaving his house for Victor's place, and had the very fortuitous vantage point of the Shalkoski attic which overlooks the "Foster house."  Rajah and I went up into the attic and shot it three times, and it looks great (I snuck a peek at the footage yesterday).  Then Rajah and I set up the camera down the street for the last shot of the day: Mitch walking down a suburban street towards Victor's house.  Jim and Frank were gathering up the mailers, and Rajah and I began to panic because curious neighbors were beginning to approach to ostensibly ask what the hell we were doing on the sidewalk in front of their house.  Jim & Frank approached from one side, while the neighbor came closer and closer.  Maura and Stacey watched from my car in sheer terror of how this would all turn out--either that or they were looking through the pictures of the day.

So Jim and I talked for about a minute with the neighbor who was ridiculously nice and accomodating, and we were ready to do the scene.  In the meantime, another neighbor was mowing in the background and four young girls were running around with a dog on a leash.  We asked if they wanted to be in the movie, and they excitedly agreed.  Again, we had a one-take wonder.  Mitch totes his suitcase past a neighbor mowing, the four girls walk their dog straight across the street in front of him, with a loose dog travelling with them: it was perfect suburbia caught in a twenty-second shot.  We didn't need a second take.  I was overjoyed.  Stacey also came up with a great shot that she fine-tuned with Rajah so much that I'm afraid they lost a lot of daylight by the time they could shoot it as well as it was envisioned, but it still looked really good.  Meanwhile, I killed time with Jim while Frank schmoozed with the entire block.  It was a lot of fun, and a great day all in all.

And, following Rajah's wishes, I will now call this Day 33 1/3.