Shooting Nutmeg & Mistletoe Day #2 of 18

We started our 18-day shoot of our Christmas comedy called "Nutmeg and Mistletoe."

I decided I would just hit the record button, usually at the end of each day, with my thoughts what was happening that day? What I learned, and generally what being on set for 12 hours a day is like.

It is quite unfiltered and unedited (with the occasional beep) - hope you enjoy being backstage!

In this episode: Cold and bored today. Mads "oner" movie for $26k. One scene today: Angela's coffee shop with 5+ characters. 2nd Unit / C Cam and Electronic Press Kit. Constant juggling and shuffling. I'll be Groundskeeper! First sad scene. 

Questions or thoughts? => charlie@abyssal.co

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hey, today is Wednesday the twenty first. Just finished our second day of shooting. It was a very cold day, weirdly. I was freezing cold the entire day, so I could not be in the video village for that long. And also, we did basically two scenes for the whole day. So it was so repetitive. I kind of lost interest after, I don't know, five or eight takes of one of the scenes. And um I just I just couldn't deal with the repetition. The the actors seemed completely fine with it. They were smiling and laughing in between takes, and they were just pros. But I have to say, this is the first thing that I saw that I just don't get. Like I don't understand how anyone would want to make that their job. Um yeah, that's uh I don't know if there's other ways to make movies. I was thinking about like doing Warners, you know, like Mads, that movie, the zombie movie, all done in one take. That one they did, supposedly they did it in three takes, and it cost 26k. And that just seems way more fun. I mean, I know it's complicated, but at least you're I don't know, it just seems to look like you'd be more mentally engaged to, you know, choreograph the whole thing. But um yeah, I think I'm I need to understand. Maybe I need to try acting so I can see how much fun it is and understand what they're doing. Um, or maybe I should just never, ever, ever, ever try it because it sounds horrible. I do know that the first assistant director is a job that I would never want because it's so much talking. You're it's so social. It's there's a lot of mechanical stuff to deal with and logistical. It's just, I know that would not be my happy place. I do think without all the takes, I think I would enjoy the directing quite a bit. I think a lot of that sounds like fun, but gosh, I just can't imagine doing more than 10 takes for any scene. So, uh and Julia was telling me, um, you know, she's like very good at she just like sees a sees a movie or something and she can immediately understand all the coverage requirements and why things are gonna take so many shots. And that that that scene that they did like 30 takes or whatever it was today was five people in Angela's coffee shop. It was Nutmeg and Mistletoe, Angela, Tom, and Sophie. And they just had a lot of, you know, five people. They had a lot of like little mini conversations between them, lots of back and forth shots. Um, so they just needed a lot. They needed to like redo the scene many times from many different angles to kind of catch everything. And Julia mentioned in Stranger Things, you know, there's some scenes that that stood out to her as having, you know, this whole ensemble cast and just so many different points of view and just how brutal that must be. But she doesn't doesn't think of it as brutal, brutal, brutal as all. She thinks it sounds amazing. She just had a smile on her face talking about it. She loves, I mean, she's acted too. So she loves the retakes. Um interesting. So I I have something to discover there and understand. I definitely feel like, wow, I don't want to do this at all. But uh maybe that was just the cold talking. And the cold really got to me. So every limb was cold and uh reduced blood flow. So, anyways, that was that. Um, I ended up by not listening to a lot of the takes today. I did break away to go to the gym because I just cannot ignore the gym for the next 17 days. Can't do it. Even, I mean, the weekends are one thing, but um, I know I'll also be recovering and doing other things on the weekends. So I need to have some kind of life while we're doing this. So tomorrow looks like it'll be a bit more fun for me. It'll be five different scenes. Um, I'm also well, actually, one thing we did plan today was the whole the specifics for the third, the C CAM, which is mine, um, which I was originally calling second unit. I'm not really sure if you call it that. I guess it still is, but it's only a few scenes, but I am gonna be doing some improv improvisation with it. So um, and we talked about the um, what is it, EPK for electronic press kit. So we planned out who's gonna who I'm gonna interview when, which cameras. I'm gonna use my Sony Um A7, I think is what it's called. Um and then we're gonna borrow Peter's, which is a very similar camera. So I'll have two cameras for that. And we're just gonna interview, I'll interview each of the actors. And I guess they're very stock questions, but I can follow the thread. If something interesting comes up, I could totally ask them about that stuff. That'll be really fun. We're gonna shoot it in Angela's coffee shop. And I think somewhere else, I forgot where they said. So we planned that out. That was like five people in that meeting for an hour. I couldn't believe it's there's so many moving parts because it's all about can we book this person? Do we want to bring them in for a full day just for EPK? Which set are we gonna be on for that day? Are they gonna be there already? Which scenes are they in? Are they gonna have time? Blah, blah, blah. Or will they have their ears on? It's just a lot of those details. And I just couldn't believe, and plus all the union rules and stuff. So um, it just seemed like we need a lot of people to make those decisions. The other thing we did today was, well, I got fitted for my, not really fitted, but I tried on my groundskeeper uh garb, which is kind of cool. It's actually kind of comfy and warm. I wish I had that hat today. I probably should have gone in and taken it and just saw if I could ask if I could borrow it. Um what else? Oh, and we've I talking to Dana, the costumer. Um, we talked about, you know, whether she could post images about stuff. And so that led to a bigger discussion. Again, us trying to resolve the social media strategy. What can we talk about? I want to do the open development thing, but it always seems difficult to actually nail down, just like in games, hard to nail down, hard to convince people to do it. But you wrote up a nice um email about it, and it's now we just we have to figure out which account it's gonna go on, or we have a nutmeg and mistletoe account, which we'd forgotten about, zero posts, zero followers. We're gonna talk about that tomorrow and figure it out. And uh what else? Alma is looking super cute in her rainbow scarf and top hat and feathers. The costuming team did such a good job on her. Misty continues to kill it. Um, yeah, like the actors are just so good. We saw our first kind of quiet, almost sad scene at the end of the day today with um Misty and and um Alma talking about her mom and and how Jasper built the ornaments and how they remind uh her of her mom. Really cute. Starting to get some of the other emotions in here, which is really nice. Anything else to report? I guess not. Um driving back, got another next call time is in 12 hours, so I'm gonna get home, have a little Nosh, watch some pretty woman because I've never seen it, and get in my pajamas and get warm, and maybe maybe get in the hot tub to get really warm because I'm still cold. No sun today, that's why. Anyways, I will check in tomorrow.