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Maurice, Dean and I were driving to a location we’d spotted a few weeks ago, a place where I could go up on a cliff and film Maurice hanging on to the roof of the van as it sped past, supposedly in Beijing in the script. It was an old community that had to have been built during or shortly after the Japanese colonial period. When we got there, however, all we found was an empty slope with a few bulldozers sitting around. A real Alanis-type of irony there, I think.
We went up the road further and found another place from which to film, and I got three good takes of Maurice on the roof. That accomplished, I climbed back down and set myself up in the passenger-side window to film Maurice up close as Dean drove along the road. Old people living in nearby houses just stared as we drove along.
Later that day we met up with Joshua, April, Paul and Darrell, who had been filming a pickup shot with April that morning. Then we headed over to the luxurious Xinyi District to finish the van scene. I finally got to use my polarizer to film through the windshield, and we used the clamp to get shots of the actors in the moving van. We got everything before the light failed, and this time I didn’t trip over anything, so all in all things went pretty well.
Since it was the last of Josh’s scenes, we went over to Chili’s for a celebration “Josh Wrap Party” and stuffed our faces with huge meals and desserts. It’s a milestone, and a much-needed one at this point. We’re close to having all of Maurice’s scenes done as well, and we need to work on getting April’s stuff done before she leaves Taiwan next year. In the meantime, Dean has to work on his thesis and I have to pick the best takes for Josh to do looping with at Darrell’s before he leaves Taiwan next month.
Next week we’re planning to go back down to Yangmei to finish the wild jeep shooting. Hopefully that will work as well as it did last time.
