In a Charm City Minute

How do people do this??? Really. You might already know that in a screenplay, one page roughly equals one minute of film. But did you know that that one minute takes roughly one hour to shoot? It is exhausting. And I don't even do the heavy lifting.

Monday night we filmed for four hours with two actors I had never met. They both did a fantastic job and I think we captured some great moments onscreen. I haven't seen the raw footage yet, though. Never assume anything, I am learning.

Tuesday evening, Director Sean and I drove around the city collecting some "B-roll" footage. That is all the extra stuff, the random shots of the city, the iconic buildings and neon signs, and as Sean says, "the obligatory Baltimore cobblestone shot," in Fells Point. Basically, all the same background crap you see on the local news.

Last night, more filming, this time with two actors I do know. A few technical glitches, one family heirloom, four sub sandwiches delivered to stave off low-blood-sugar-crankiness, and four hours later, we got some more good footage. I hope.

I'll tell you about the heirloom later. It is kind of funny. As much as, you know, breaking-a-china-bowl-that-has-been-in-my-family-for-longer-than-I-have-been can be funny. These moments are always followed by the director saying, "but the important thing is...we got the shot!" Yeah. We better have.

But I can't go into that right now. My job today is to script the voice over, the "glue" that is going to string together random moments from about half a dozen random scenes that we have shot from the script, and shape them into some sort of congruous story for the teaser/trailer to be screened at my party two days from now (breathe, Jeanie, breathe!). This is tougher than it sounds, because the scenes that we have shot really jump around through the script. It wasn't something I was thinking about when I chose to use these scenes as screen tests. Then Sean has the very tedious, thankless task of chopping and splicing and cutting and pasting and taping and stapling it all together in a neat little package no more than three minutes long.

But, we will, "make it work." So, I'd best stop procrastinating and get on that, as my deadline is 7:30pm this evening. And if I don't have the goods, Director Sean might up the ante from breaking my china to torturing my dogs or chopping off my little finger.

But, hey - we'd get the shot.