Nelsi, our cook from the village, made us a very nice lunch, then straightened up while I prepped the poolside scene with the Dave and Zoe characters. I just got the first shot set up and was eyeing some incoming cloud cover when Emma told me I had to drive Nelsi home as there would be no bus to the village until evening.
Great. There goes at least 40 minutes of my every shoot day as no one else can/will drive here. I get in the car with Nelsi. I try a few phrases of terrible Spanish, then give up and put on my Teach Yourself Spanish CD. After about 10 minutes I realize that Nelsi is very very quietly repeating the English parts to herself. Charmed, I would speak the Spanish and she would nod, then she did the English, and I would nod and we laughed.
Back at the casa, the clouds are rolling in. I’ve set up Emma with a boom pole and mic, and a pair of headphones plugged into my little digital Sony videocam to act as remote sound as I am about 15 feet away from the actors on the wide shot.
Phil and Emily are very cute in their swimsuits and will no doubt add significant production value. Spend about 15 minutes working out some unscripted silent funny business with sunblock, shoot the wide master a couple of times, and it starts to rain. We retreat to the Casa.
Raining all day and all night… Rain Cover Contigency Schedule: had dinner and Emma decorated the 2nd floor bedroom of the casa (the one with a double bed) to be the Cancun hotel room for our story. The rain was very audible as we began to shoot, but I figured there was no time to start rescheduling scenes for minor tech difficulties, otherwise we’d start losing days. (The U.S. actors have not arrived yet, nor has Oliver from Monterrey Mexico, so in terms of scenes we can shoot indoors with these characters, there are not too many options.) Also the audibility of the rain is compounded by the architecture; loud rain+concrete walls+tiled floors make for some heavy reverb.
Emily and Rob were very good about preparing for the hotel room scene quickly. Performance and story come first, so I dislike them not having much time to get ready, but they understand our limitations here, so they did not complain. Especially good of them seeing as it is a scene with physical intimacy that dissolves into an argument. It can be embarrassing to have to start making out on a bed like a familiar couple with someone you don’t know well, no matter how experienced you are as actors — especially with little lead time.
The actors are terrific from the first take with no discernable awkwardness over the required intimacy. They are so good in fact that I have a few moments where I am personally embarrassed to find myself leaning in with the camera inches from their faces during such private moments.
Keeping the camerawork loose and responsive to the actors’ spontaneous blocking causes problems several times as I keep catching Emma, Sam, and Tania in the frame as I swing 360 degrees around the room and leaving no safe place for my tiny crew to hide, but eventually we get all the coverage. We’re all pretty delighted with how the scene went, but of course I won’t really know until I try cutting it together.
I join the actors on the back patio for a drink to celebrate the day, then crawled upstairs to the “production office” to talk to Sam and Emma about scheduling. I was so exhausted from concentrating all day that I passed out on the tile floor in short order, something I’m famous for over my years of living with a sleep deficit in production. There are a lot of photos of me asleep in the middle of the floor at various parties, with people stepping gingerly around me. Hey, at least I always showed up at the parties.
I was woken up maybe 15 minutes later in the sweetest way imaginable by Tania. I was completely confused at first and thought I was still dreaming, because she had my head cradled gently in her arms and was speaking to me almost in a whisper: “Chris…Chris…would you like to get up and go to bed now?” This barely edged me out of my deep sleep, and apparently I muttered all kinds of subconscious nonsense for quite some time while Sam and Emma laughed. Tania is not familiar with my tendency to sleep wherever, whenever the opportunity presents itself, and was unnecessarily worried that I’d wake up with a stiff neck. Eventually I got up in my usual bad temper and scuttled away like a crab to bed.
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