Nudity and Rain

It's been a while since I had a chance to write here, so I need to catch up a bit:

The wo faux nude scenes (Rosalie bertrand's Tristan and Hayley Schaffer's Nimue) were extremely succesful shoots. In reality, the still photographs taken on the set give the impression that far more flesh is exposed than actuall is. Rosie was, in fact, wearing an off the shoulder dress and really quite well covered. Hayeley, admittedly, wasn't wearing much, which made this a memorable experience for most of the crew, as Haylet's body could be the basis for a major world religion. But she is a great sport about these things, and we tried to do as much as possible to keep it from getting two uncomfortable. The exception to that is assistant D.P. Tauna Price, who tries to make as many porn and sexual references as possible, but because she's female she manages to make the actress think THE GUYS are the ones being inappropriate. I love Tauna, but she has all the subtley and social graces of a community bedpan.

The real-world battle sequence was pushed back a day because of intense cloud cover, which we were afraid would wreak havoc with lighting. We went to great trouble for this and the Nimue sequence to secure an HD camera which shoots at 60 frames per second, creating a very cool clow motion effect Patrick and I will always call "Renny Harlin slow motion", due to his effective use of the technique in "Die Hard 2." Originally, the battle was only schedule to include two or three of these shots, and the scene was actually quite dialogue driven. However, as we began filming, cloud cover increased again, and it actually began raining as we were taking the first slow mo shot of the Knights. D.P. Johnny O kept commenting on how great the storm looked. I remarked 'If we cuy the dialogue and shoot it all in slow-mo, this might look better in rain." Johnny, Patrick, Brandyn Cross and exchanged glances, talked briefly, and decided to go for it.

As it turned out, this was a TORRENTIAL storm, complete with hail and mudslides, and concentrated almost exclusively in the neighborhood where we were shooting. The cast and cre banded together like men under fire, sacrifing warmth, dryness, dignity, and, to a very small degree, saftey, as we did an off-the cuff reimagination the sequence that know adds a sort of Ridley Scott-like visual flare and makes the film twice as good. That rainstorm that nearly killed our film turned out to be the best thing that happned to it.

The only major obstacle as capturing the kiss between Arthur and Jenny. Porter and Kayla are, after all, kids. I offered them $20 each to a real kiss, but they were too uncomfortable (in retrospect, their parents probably would have freaked and I would have been in big trouble). i maintain that Porter, at least, will find within two years that this missed opportunity keeps him up nights, but the fake kiss worked.

Of course, reimagining the real life battle means reimaginig the fantasy battle. It simply won't do to have the goofy Knight in the park have a more visually stunning battle than the mythical Knight of the Round Table have. Which means we have been stuck with the massive headache of rescheduling the fantasy battle for a day when we can once again secure the slo-mo cam, and that means wrapping a week later than expected. I wish to make it clear that number of shooting days remains the same as projected, two of them just take place later than planned.

The rain battle will always be one of my favorite filmmaking experiences. We were hit with a challenge, ran with it, and made the film better because of it. In the words of Captain Malcolm Reynolds, "we have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."