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 Just look at those charming faces and sporty outfits. On one side we have Paul and Suzanne Dixon, on the other Mitch and Ally Foster. But hang on a second...Mitch thinks they should swap partners (for the game, you dirty-minded people) and have Ally & Paul face off against Mitch & Suzanne in a "friendly" game of tennis. What ensues is black comedy gold, with the nice team (Ally & Paul) sharing stories of work and politely working together, while the alpha-dogs (Mitch & Suzanne) sell out their own spouses' weaknesses in order to destroy them in the game. That's how the scene is written, and that was how these wonderful actors performed it all day long. And I do mean all day.
Day 30...yes, our production is starting to show its age...was a long and crazily productive one. We had always planned to shoot it outdoors, until Stacey wisely suggested that we aim for an indoor court. The good people at the Winchester Indoor Lawn Tennis Club were more than generous in accomodating our schedule not once but (after our first cancellation) twice, and gave us our own court for an entire day. We arrived at 8 AM and didn't leave until about 5:30 PM, and we milked every moment we were there for the best shots, the most coverage, and some top-notch skills on display from the cast and crew. Not so much tennis skills, but nobody's perfect. So to begin with, Rajah arrived on time (!) because he was following me and my silly GPS, which changed its mind at the last second, but we still made it. Maura was waiting for us, and Mark, Max, and then Mike were soon to follow. Frank arrived next, and then the cast began showing up. In the meantime, I had some catch up work to do because I wasn't allowed to do my shot list the night before (I blame Professor Wrongberry, Tabitha Whitesnake, and Edward Zeppelin for that). But I'm a guy who thinks on his feet. Some of the time. What I wanted to do most was break the whole tennis sequence (a good 5 pages in total) into smaller "chunks." So I decided to call them chunks, and everybody seemed to really like that. It was very psychologically rewarding every time we got to erase a chunk off the big board, and I only wish I had employed chunkology much earlier in the production. Big thanks to Maura for initially maintaining the board and helping me set up the equipment early on while everybody else played tennis. We started the first chunk in the room outside the court, and we very smartly opened the adjoining door to make an aesthetically pleasing waiting area. Tony--great job bouncing a ball! Amy--superb work putting on those shoes! Stacey--your lacing work was outstanding! OK, it was a nicely framed shot that didn't call for too much action. Then we shot the part with Mitch pacing angrily as he watched the previous players VERY slowly departing the court. It was supposed to be two senior citizens, but we didn't have any of them. So Max made his big Joneses debut. It...was...hilarious! His only direction was to gather up the balls slowly, and he did so well--I felt like if I were Mitch I would want to run onto the court and punch him, which is exactly what we were going for. Max, you did us proud! And Jim and Tony had a great bit while waiting to use the court. A quick sidenote about the acting overall for the day. It was just perfect. Huge, huge kudos to Amy, Tony, Stacey & Jim for knowing exactly how to play these scenes, doing so effortlessly and with very minimal direction all day, and for the very tiring task of actually playing tennis for hours and hours on end. As Stacey and others know I tend to micromanage the acting on scenes where there are a lot of jokes, because I want everyone of them to have the best delivery possible. But, as I said, these guys were at the top of their game that day, and the highest compliment I can pay is that I really felt charmed the whole day by getting to watch the exploits of Suzanne, Mitch, Paul and Ally. I think they had a lot of fun too, which always helps. For our first court shot, (Chunk 2 or 3, I believe) we set up the crane. It looked super-awesome and I'm so glad that Mike, Rajah, Max & Frank were able to manipulate the crane in such a great way. It'll make for a perfect establishing shot. Then we moved onto the succession of scenes which, I won't go into too much detail, because this is almost one of those unnecessary blogs. The day was definitely eventful, but most of what I would write about is going to be so obvious in the scenes in the film. But here are some other things I remember for the day... I pushed Rajah around on the tennis ball cart to get a pseudo-tracking shot. We looked silly. Stacey & Jim got the giggles but I was in a sour mood at the time, so I did not giggle back. We saw a dead bird skeleton trapped in wiring in the ceiling outside. It was pretty grisly. Yet everytime someone came outside, we had to point it out. My favorite reaction was Frank's who went..."Awwwwwww...(beat)...Ewwwwwwww." It was genius. He went instantaneously from, like, an audience member of "Full House" to a witness to a crime scene. Just thinking about it now makes me laugh. R.I.P. bird skeleton. I made Amy bump into Tony a thousand times, at first for authenticity of a collision, and after awhile it was just funny to watch him get all bruised up. We broke out the crane again at the end, but...I don't know if it worked. The naysayers may have been right. I had a disagreement with some members of the crew over our shooting order, because I wanted to do it chronologically, which meant constantly switching from one side of the court to the other. I know that's not the biggest time-saver, but we weren't using lights, and I argued that the five minutes it took us to keep moving the camera to the other side of the net was no big deal compared with the advantages of getting performances that felt more real and sequential. I hope the actors felt the same, but even if they didn't I stand behind my choice. Whoever thought of putting the monitor on one of the tennis ball carts is also a genius. There was a lot of the usual Joneses goings-on: Amy playing Vortex, Jim & Stacey taking photos of themselves, Frank apologizing for everything... We were concerned when we first arrived about audio, because the heater/air conditioner was very loud. Then it got exponentially louder. But we asked John Koslowski (our awesome host at WILTC) about it and he turned it off immediately. Then the only sound concern we had was every half hour a loud buzzer went off. It was very funny before we started the very first take on the court because I shouted "Action!" and the buzzer sounded immediately. Boy, did we laugh. I may have only snickered. It was a day where we put lots of silly things on our head. Don't ask. I miss the Tota. OK, not actually. But I miss saying "Tota." There was a late lunch break. Apparently this cast and crew expect to eat now during our ten-hour shoots. Man, they've got nerve. The prop racket got Stacey's hands all dirty. The crane weights got Amy's hands all dirty. But Tony's hands remained clean as a whistle (like Irish Springs). OK, that's all I can remember today. It was a totally productive and fun day. Awesome crew, awesome cast. Nobody yelled at anyone. Great shots, great sound, great acting, great continuity, great photos. And one great director who is right this moment looking at the time and realizing that we'll be shooting again in another 24 hours. Uh oh. Gotta go, nerds.
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