France Location Day 2: We wove our way back to the gas station, the first place the main character stops for directions. Got lost on the way several times. No rain at all; a glorious sky, with deep, textured clouds like a huge softbox diffuser. You can’t buy clouds like that in LA (well, you can import them in post- now, I guess).
The Total station was more perfect than I remembered. It’s occasionally eerie; the degree to which aspects of this trip approximate my own experience, which is still so different in many ways from the script. The gas station owner readily agreed to the shoot and hit almost all his lines perfectly. What he changed, we can easily live with.
Headed into Paris, to the office of Sycomore Films, our local production partners and frequent lifesavers. Jonah rigged up a narrow plywood sheet with screws threaded in at various points; it’s now our camera mount and steadicam in one. Works perfectly in the car, espectially in combination zith the memory foam.
A quick lunch (well, quick for France, anyway), and we were on our way to pick up the Miniflow light kit, which throws just enough natural daylight to even out the exposure within the car. AND it plugs into the car’s cigarette lighter. All this time hit us, though, as we raced to get dialogue scenes done on the autoroute before the sun went down at 6:30. (Of course, Jonah kept shooting in the cloudy Magic Hour, which looked fantastic but doesn’t fit into the story at all; it’s supposed to be a single morning/afternoon, no dusk.)