While shooting 162, either Chris or Priscilla requested to hear a joke before each take, so I was trying to think of some. I told Priscilla a knock knock joke I made up that involves having to go through the "knock-knock" process twice. It's a little high-concept for a knock knock joke, and it never really kills when I tell it, but for Priscilla, it was like torture. By the time I got to the punchline, she was screaming for me to end it. So Priscilla hates (1) knock-knock jokes, (2) high-concept humor with little payoff, or possibly (3) me.
There was also a beeping sound coming from somewhere inside the Harry house. We ripped all the smoke detectors from the wall and removed the batteries. After the scene was done, I started to put the batteries back, but the beeping started even worse, so I took the batteries back out and just put them back on the table. Let's just be extra careful about fires while we're here.
Then it was time for lunch. We improvised this as well, out of leftovers from previous dinners and stuff. After lunch, we shot another small scene that was originally scheduled for the day before, thus catching us up to our flexy amorphous schedule. When that was over, we only had one thing left to do for the day, which was one of two important "board game dialogue" scenes. Brett decided we should break for a few hours and shoot it at night so we could transition to the nighttime shooting schedule we have for the next few days. All this improvisation is possible because the entire movie takes place in one location that the entire cast and crew is living in. It's a really primo situation. I recommend it to other filmmakers. I wonder if this is how they did Sleuth. And how did Michael Caine deal with the knock knock jokes?
This left us with a few hours of down time. At one point, Phoebe was playing on the back porch with a board that has numbers on it. The numbers come off and you have to stick them back in the corresponding slots. This contributes to the eventual learning and subsequent enjoyment of numbers. Phoebe took the numbers and started sticking them into the cracks between the wooden slats of the back porch. We'll have to be on the lookout for those numbers when we shoot the scene where Dolly crawls under the porch. Also, Phoebe broke a glass and some tiny glass shards might have also fallen down there. But we think we got most of them.We also went to Target for groceries. During the car ride, I hooked up my mp3 player, which played "On Bended Knee" by Boyz II Men. This prompted Priscilla to MC some 90's hits for us off YouTube when we got back. Then Chris showed us a video by Indian Bhangra pop singer Daler Mehndi. Critics used to bitch that this guy's music was only popular because of the sexy ladies dancing in the videos. So in 1998, Mehndi responded by shooting a video for "Tunak Tunak Tun" that was just many versions of him interacting via bluescreen. It also featured cutting edge CGI. It's one of the best music videos I've ever seen in my life. Priscilla likened it to Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" video, which had come out only a couple years earlier.
Then we shot scene 132; the aforementioned "board game dialogue" scene. While shooting, new dialogue was being written and added to make the scene flow better. It's amazing, in shooting a film, how many good moments come so close to never existing. But I think the coolest thing is that earlier in the day, for a couple minutes, Brett was watching Taxi Driver on the iPad and showing us a specific shot he really liked. By pure coincidence, that shot was perfect for the scene we were about to shoot, so it was added and shot in no time. From what I saw, it looks beautiful.
Tonight, we switch to night shoots. In fact, as I post this, we've already shot one of five scenes and had our night breakfast. If anyone not involved in the production is reading this blog, please let us know if you start to detect any strangeness in our behavior as we adapt to our new vampire schedule.-Diego
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