The last shoot
I lugged the huge, mile-long extension cord we’d gotten for the tunnel scene last year along with the rest of my gear over to Dean’s on Wednesday night, whereupon he, Rowan and I headed over to Heidi’s rooftop to film the last scene. Not the last scene in the movie (we filmed that ages ago), but the last scene in principal photography. It was a flashback (I know: the horror!) and Dean had shaved his beard and arranged his hair in as much of an 80’s style as he could stomach.
It was drizzling when we arrived at the address, which I discovered was just one alley over from where I lived in 1991, in a small room that rented for NT$3500 a month. Heidi’s rooftop is much nicer, as well as six times as expensive. We waited for her dogs to get over the excitement of strangers in the house and went up to the roof to set up. The nighttime view of the city skyline was very nice, and I set up a couple of angles to take advantage of it. We got several takes of each, but the rain was getting everyone wet, and filming on a wet, barrier-free rooftop with electric cords and lights waving around in the wind wasn’t an experience I wanted to prolong. The shots looked great, though, and after the last one I called out, “Ok, I’ve been wanting to say this for years now.” Everyone looked at me. Dean was smiling; he seemed to know what I was going to say already.
“That’s a wrap,” I said. And it was. That’s all the scenes in the movie, now in the can, or at least on tapes and on my hard drives. No more wondering if the weather will hold, no more wondering how to get locations or enough people to fill the scene. Except for the occasional pick-up and sound-catching for ADR, it’s all indoor computer work. Then comes the distribution headaches, but I’m not going to worry about that just yet.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe it took this long, but it’s also hard to believe that we’ve finally made it to this point. As Dean says, we’ve got all the pieces of the puzzle; now we just have to put them together. Welcome to the wonderful world of post production.
I suppose this means the nature of this account will change. Editing, sound, and effects milestones are harder to document than shooting, but we’ll see what happens. As always.
I’ve followed the production blog from the begining. Have enjoyed reading about the process. You guys seem to have had a lot of fun, and have been very creative in getting the film in the can, as it were, with very limited resources. A real labor of love, it would seem.
Well done, and congratulations!
Comment by Anonymous — December 19, 2006 @ 1:53 am
Thank you, it’s been a long, difficult process, but there’s still plenty to do.
Comment by TC — December 19, 2006 @ 1:54 am
Let me add my congratulations, too.
Good luck on the all that follows.
Comment by thumper — December 19, 2006 @ 5:49 am