"Human Carcinogen" journal one

7/14/07

I guess the start to any good movie journal is the description of what went wrong…

Today I scheduled to shoot the first sequence of the script, which consisted of about 8 to 10 shots of Mike’s character Tom ending a long day of work at a construction site. Sound easy enough? The first thing we forgot was a powder to cover Mike’s arm with (it is very significant to the second half of the movie). Hannah went out of her way to buy some baking flour which she quickly drove over. Then Matt realized Mike looked too clean to have just finished a day at a construction site, so the most logical thing was for Mike (along with Adam and Chris, who were standing in as extras) to roll around in some dirt!

Anyways, AJ and I set up a track of plastic tables to dolly a wheelchair on and it ended up being rickety. We decided it was too much of a bother to try to work with, so we used Matt’s monopod as a steadicam and got some decent shots that way.

Then came the bugs and the dust storms. Shortly after Chase arrived, we started getting attacked by gross, green-shelled beetles. Then a large cloud of dirt, blowing from the big mounds dug up by the construction workers, completely engulfed the entire site. Chase put two and two together and screamed, “What is this, The Mummy!!??”

I wish there was some kind of a big conclusion to this story, but the rest of the day went by very well. The footage looks awesome and I’m really excited to keep shooting.

Thanks everyone for helping out!

Nick