The end of a film.

I think I blogged a bit about the adventures we had a while ago – but I never had a long reflection on my memories of that day and what it meant to me. Here we go (posting a month later).

The last day was the best day I find. Even though there were a handful of us who would be awake for somewhere between 24 – 48 hours and working straight through, and even though by the end of the next morning (into the afternoon) things were getting kind of rough – it was a great end of day/end of shoot. Our main unit is wrapped and we move on to organizing the summer unit.

On this last day, Mags and I were without our laptops. Thank you God. We were able to spend more time with the cast & crew working with them and on set helping out. This meant the world to me. Even though we became (along with Chris) the official ‘runners’ of the production, we had a blast today.

I started my day out in Toronto. On top of that, I started my day late. I drove back home the night before so that I didn’t have to drive in the day of our 18 hour production day. Why add more driving to that day. However, driving home was very hard after our splinter unit day – so very tired. I left home to head off to PS in rush hour – ugly. On top of the ugly traffic, I forgot my cell phone at home. So not the day to forget your cell phone at home. I had to go back – no choice. Grabbed the cell, and just called PS and said I had to hold onto the filter for one more day – cause by this time it’s after 9am and I have to be in Hamilton by 11am, and on top of everything else, I hadn’t arrived at WFW yet – and worse, I was across town in morning rush hour.

Today was the last day and what better way to spend your last morning then by picking up gear. Don’t get me wrong, I grew very fond of my boys at WFW and all the mornings that we spent together picking up/returning gear. But today would be the best day – and ‘Red’ (one of the guys) probably didn’t smile as much at me on this day. I had a great deal of gear to pick up – mostly HMI equipment. Oh yeah, and like 50 sandbags????

Ah, the gear that I was told would fit into a panel van was not so. I go to WFW and probably freaked the boys out there – we had the biggest puzzle to figure out – which can make packing a vehicle with equipment fun. It’s almost always a puzzle. We could not get the 12 seater’s seats out – so we had to work around the angles. So while two guys and myself are carefully packing away the gear – Tore calls. After SEVERAL protests on my part that now was NOT the time to talk about production stuff (as we were in the middle of packing up gear, and I was at least 30mins behind at this point in time – and had the gear that people would be waiting on) – I was eventually able to hang up my phone. Frustrated none the less - as I was now further behind. The packing went fairly smooth at Whites, and after about 20 mins, we did in deed figure it all out. Yay. These boys rock my world – they are very friendly to distressed women.

I remember this one morning where Goose, Martine and I all went in to WFW to pick up some gear before heading out to Hamilton, and we just couldn’t pick up any of this pathetic gear. After the boys had a chuckle, they did come by to help us out. It was the 5K generator that threw Magali and Martine – while I just could not for the life of me wheel this Ski-hi to the stupid van.

Good times all around. So I’m finally on the road. Pick up Chris at his house (mind you I’m a speed monster when I need to be – so at this point I’m only 15mins behind at CJ’s house). We go pick up the generator and head out. Now, something happened at this point in time – we forgot something. I can’t remember what it was but we had to go back. Bummer.

We get to the church in Campbellville a little over an hour after originally leaving the Jones’ household and our van is flooded with crew trying to get today’s special gear out of the vehicle. It was amazing – we had all these extra people who were brought out – it was a beautiful sunny day and we were going to be shooting on this blue skied wonderful day.

The day at the church was interesting. Set up for everything took a while. The traffic never did help our sound. Even with our PDOs blocking traffic – our church was just down the street from two main roads (secondary highways) with quarries around. So simply hearing the trucks on their breaks was unbearable. Laughable at times – but more in a sad painful kind of way. The PDOs could only stop traffic coming towards us – they couldn’t stop the traffic travelling on the street perpendicular to ours. Which is where we ran into the problems.

The driving schedule for this day was crucial. We had to figure out who would be driving what vehicles where, at what times, who would be doing the offloads and who would be driving them back – all the while planning the fact that none of us would be sleeping. It was a crazy schedule – but Chris figured it out. The first thing was to get rid of a cube truck. So we spent some of the time at the church cleaning out the trucks – cause Camera had to move into the art cube in order to make sure the returns went smoothly. By the time we got to our next location we had to have one empty cube that would eventually be driven to Hamilton at which point, Chris would then pick up his car (conveniently parked at Carter Trucks) and drive back to set with freshly awake drivers. Smooth plan.

So I helped out Brent a bit with setting up a 12 x frame. That was fun. Setting up the kitchen went smooth with the team. Our only actors were David and Dan for the moment. The day was going smoothly. Smokey was back out on set with us (D Ottier’s dog) kicking his food around and actually whimpering. For some takes if you were near him but not beside him he would bark – so you had to go by and pet him and suffer puppy love overload to make sure the take was quiet. Funny dog.

Sunny weather – not what you expect for a ‘winter’ film. We of course were not prepared for this – and had no sunscreen. I went out around 2.30pm to pick some up – but the effects were already evident. We had people cooking (most of us got some form of sunburn or heat stroke by the end of the day). The sunscreen was too little too late. Oops. I will always remember to have that in our kit next time – especially when you shoot out in the country and a small bottle costs like $26.00. Ugh.

The caterers, sweethearts, gave us a delicious chocolate cake to celebrate our wrap. So nice of them. It was so yummy. After finishing up the main part of the exterior church scene, we had lunch in the basement hall. We cleaned up the hall/kitchen – packed everything back in the trucks, wrapped out the pick ups that a small group were shooting outside the church (incl. sound pick ups) and we headed out as a fleet to the Munn farm.

Just driving up the driveway was funny. Some of our PAs put the cones along the driveway (to indicate where to turn) and it was great, except the driveway was too narrow to turn onto with the cones blocking the path. So, one by one, we drove over the cones. I think I hit all four on the one side. We moved them aside and as Darryl drove up, one got severely trapped in the back tire. Nice little moment.

Whatever vehicle that did not need to be at the location had to be parked at the Faith Mission (our holding area just down the street). It was sooooo nice to be out there shooting. We parked our empty cube truck and all production vehicles at the Mission and walked down the country road back to the location. This would be the only walk I would embark on this road, because when the sun set a darkness lurked about on the road that none of us could explain or predict.

Craft and hair/makeup were set up at the mission – and it was kind of creepy. Once darkness fell – there was really very little around this space and the building wasn’t fully locked. I was worried for Elaine at times. When we were in the kitchen with her at one point she made a reference to the fact that it felt like “The Shining”. Fantastic – now I’m worried.

So night came, we started shooting with poor Dan (who was the only actor on for 18hrs), Kori and our three dummy children. Just funny. We’re shooting. Mags and I ran around the area trying to find an open beer store (had to go to Burlington – thank goodness we remembered this one spot that we drove by days before). We get back and hang out. Fun times on set. There was the little frog that Matt had (cute little guy). Smokey whose playfully enjoying the weather and all the attention.

There was a really funny moment with one of the China Balls. Hugh was bringing down the light from where it was hanging over the garage door and for some odd reason a lot of us were watching it. Anyway, when he brought it down a part of it caught onto the side of the garage and tore. Everyone watching the event just went ‘Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww’. It was hilarious. Poor Hugh had an audience.

At one point, in one of the many runs back to the mission from set (a 2 second drive) I realized that Cristy’s car was blocking me in. So I was about to turn to get her to move it for a second when I saw someone on the road staring at our set. I thought it was a crew member. “Hello whoever is at the end of the driveway”. I was like 15 feet away, but couldn’t see a thing in front of me in detail. The person didn’t say anything. I was like “Creepy”. After Cristy moved her car, we noticed that this guy went down the road. Two of our PAs were in their car coming back from the mission and saw him in their headlights. By the time Mags and I pulled out from the driveway, this guy was gone. There were no roads that lead away, he just disappeared. The PAs didn’t know what had happened and we were creeped out. So we all started locking our doors – cause we honestly didn’t know who it was. They didn’t answer when called to, and they simply vanished on the road.

So this creepy vanishing guy becomes like a legend on our film set. I was shuttling people to the mission and the van was filling up quickly but everyone wanted to see how many people we could cram into this 12 seater. By the time Todd tried to get in, he decided to just walk. At this point, the creepy man story had spread around set and we protested and crammed him into the car. On the drive to the mission, they documented on the BTS camera the story of this creepy guy and why there were like 22 people in the van. I went back for the rest of the crew and Magali stayed behind to do fire watch – what the hell is wrong with her????? I was going to join her, but passing out paycheques and the shuttling took up the entire time. And with creepy guy on the loose, I had no idea why she was motivated to stay behind. In the end I think she began to creep herself out – but I was back with crew that were done eating before her thoughts got the best of her.

We had ‘an imaginary’ PA for a while on set. I don’t remember exactly why we started with this guy – but we did. I can’t remember his name – but eventually it was what we called the creepy vanishing forest boy – so that we could reference him quickly.

Driving some crew back from holding, I told Darryl about the story, cause he was curious and he started signing a song about how he was going to come out and kill us (in a funny Darryl amusing kind of way). I was like ‘no he’s probably already dead on the side of the road’ – so he sung about zombie creepy man coming back from the dead to get me. You have to understand Darryl and his humour – it was a moment where you had to be there but it was so funny. So yeah – difficult story to portray through a blog.

So goose and I went and ate after everyone was back at it. Chris was in the building trying to sleep. Elaine was trying to sleep. Martine was sleeping somewhere. Everyone else was working on set while Goose and I were cleaning up (vaccuming, packing up the trucks again). We missed certain parts of the filming while we were working at the mission, but were able to come back for the window shot (we couldn’t miss our last shot). It was sad though, cause we missed the shot of the beast beside a tree looking at the house. From the road – that shot looked incredible with how it was lit. Goose and I drove up and couldn’t help but pray that the crew had taken one shot from the road. I couldn’t capture it with the digital camera, but it made this farm house and pond look amazing. Eery and beautiful.

We take the last shot – and we are now wrapped. Beer comes out, people celebrate, and start to pack up all over again. This time, we have to get everything into 3 cubes and make sure we’re ready for offloading in a few hours.

It was a time to say good bye to everyone, thank everyone and appreciate the end of a long day/shoot. It was nice. At one point David put me on his shoulder though – and I’m not a big fan of heights. So I was freaked out. He eventually dropped me off on the hood of a cube truck – gah. After checking the location again, we got people in their cars and shuttles and back home. We packed up the trucks and the drivers came in with Chris and they set out on the road. Those who were driving and had been on set all day had accountability partners to make sure that they would be okay on the road – no falling asleep.

Goose and I finished up at the Munn farm – and were going to head out in separate vans. At one point, I put the last case of beer (collected all the full bottles into one case) on the driveway. Goose pulled the red van up right behind the case and got out. I can’t exactly say how long she was out of the van, but when she got back in, she continued to drive forward. I was walking behind her at this point and thought ‘she must have picked up the case of beer – that’s nice’ and then CRUNCH. Everyone around started laughing and she slowly backed up revealing the busted up case. There was beer everywhere. Quickly we began to clean up the driveway and put the broken glass in one box and the somewhat intact bottles in another box. Well, these ‘intact’ bottles had dented caps, bubbling beer and were fizzling. Eventually they started to combust and beer was squirting out of the caps and from the sides. We had a problem here. We took a few boxes from the garage to contain the spillage, but nothing was helping. Our garbage bags were all at the mission (Mags & my next stop). Then the phone call came. Chris called me to say that the home owner was on his way – perfect timing, he was pulling up the driveway as we spoke. Goose and I looked at each other and just threw the bottles into the Jones’ van (which I was driving) and prayed that they wouldn’t leak on our trip to the mission.

Before leaving, we went behind the garage to say good bye to the electrics (Hugh, Kendall and Nabil who was sleeping in the back seat). Our fun moment of the day – Hugh was in the driver’s seat. Kendall was at the back with the hatchback open changing and Mags & I knelt down by Nabil’s window to wave goodbye. We had no idea he would wake up. We didn’t hear the yelp – but we did see him jump in his seat. Hugh started laughing up a storm while Kendall was throwing comments from the back. It was hilarious.

So back to our dilemma. Goose and I travel back to the mission and I rushed to pull the beer out of the van. It hadn’t spilled yet – but was starting to stink up the vehicle. You might be asking yourself why I didn’t just put the bottles in the trunk – well the vehicle was full of stuff, that’s why. I was about to get on the road with a ton of busted up beer bottles, stinking up the car and praying that I would not run into a cop – cause oh my goodness, that would be terrible.

At the mission, Goose was getting ready to head out to meet the boys at WFW to offload. I was driving back out to Hamilton to pick up Chris to drive out to Toronto to help offload and also pick up the art department cube truck and drive back to Hamilton. It was at this point where I saw over her shoulder that the back end of our production van was dented up. It was terrible to see this. There was yellow paint etched into the back end. A huge side dent as well as a smaller dent on the back bumper. The paint was rippled. It was just weird – and this vehicle was supposed to go back in a few days. Terrible.

I took some pictures to show Chris and Goose drove it into the city where eventually Tore would be able to have a look at it.

Driving was unbearable. I was on a lot of country side roads before getting to the main highway. It was morning rush hour in the country – which is significant enough. All the while, I was terribly tired and becoming very sleepy. I started calling everyone who was on the road – cause I was sincerely worried about all the crew who worked the 18 hours who were on the road driving. Mags and I were in the same pickle – sleepy and stuck in traffic. Chris was okay and was already in Hamilton. Couldn’t get a hold of Martine/Lisa/Darryl. But considering that I eventually was in their cube truck, they were okay. They also had each other to keep up the energy. Goose and I were flying solo (very dangerous) and probably had the least amount of sleep in our systems.

We all eventually completed our tasks. I offloaded at Chris’ house with his wife and his brother. We took some time at Carter with the 15 seater drop off – as Chris was going over the details of the damaged van with the manager (the van was going to be with us for a few more days still). By the time we got to Toronto, the team was finished at WFW, so we never did meet up with them. We waited at Martine’s house to pick up the cube truck. Chris drove me home with his brother and then they returned to Hamilton with the last cube truck of the fleet.

It was a long and exhausting stretch of time. We were all so happy, but couldn’t express it due to the tiredness. I don’t remember sleeping well right off the bat – but I’m sure I passed out right when I got home.

: )

Good bye Hamilton. Will miss the family, the experience and that cute firefighter. : )

I’m such a girl.