Wednesday 8/9 First day at the Damson Cottage B&B

The Damson Cottage B&B is a traditional little cottage sitting in the English Wiltshire countryside. We are using this location for kitchen scenes and a couple of other interior scenes. That whole movie-making illusion thing comes into play where the interior shots don’t have to be in the same house (or town, or country) as the exterior shots. It is very cool.

One thing that is not so cool is that when the shots are done indoors the excitement level around the location is definitely lower. This makes sense since people cannot be as involved due to the logistics everyone not being able to fit into the room. When we are outside everyone is usually able to observe the take without getting in the way.

We have done enough pages to begin to see larger themes, plot lines, and “scene groups” come together. Seeing (and imagining) this project come together is a treat. For the first time since I contemplated coming to England to help Mark, I realized that I am going to be very sad to leave. Even though the days are long and I am supposed to be on vacation, to be here through the end with everyone else would be great.

Some very funny scenes today with lots of chuckles both on and off the set.

We are still missing an actor to play the part of Fritz.

So I would like to comment on the whole “pages per day” thing. Yesterday we had a boatload of 1/8 page and 2/8 page scenes (note: it is not 1/4 page, it is 2/8 page) and today we did 4 multi-page scenes. We did more today than yesterday in less time. It is pretty clear that it is easier to do 1 1-page scene rather than 8 1/8-page scenes. So it really is the case that the “pages per day” metric is an approximation. Still it is a metric that is easy to measure and report on, so here's today's.

They do talk about rush hour here in Chippenham. My response is “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he he ha ha ho ho ha ha ha hee hee!”