"It's beautiful here in Spring -- you'll love it"

Much of the crew for this film is from L.A. When I interviewed with the producers in March (which seems like March of 1955 about now), I assured them that while winters in Maryland are no fun, and summer absolutely sucks, our springs and falls are beyond comparison. So, naturally, it's been about 20 degrees colder than average throughout this shoot, and it's rained virtually every night. At one point lightning storms blew in over an exterior set. We'll work in the rain, but not in an electrical storm -- we scattered pretty quickly.

A few days ago we moved locations, from the Creepy Abandoned Mental Hospital (tm) to an old barn south of Annapolis. In that the production has but one truck, a former U-Haul renter which belongs to my construction supervisor, it ran back and forth all day, carrying effects gear, makeup, tents, tables, etc, until we finally got it to move all of the art department. Now, here's the thing: Before the move we shot for 13 hours. We had a ten hour turnaround, of which we spent about nine moving everything. Then we shot for 12 hours. You do the math. The director, who almost always remembers what it was like to be a grunt on a crew, seemed to have missed the timing factoid, and was getting pretty grumpy about there being any delays in setting up a shot. At this point I had to wrap my on-set people, as they were into their 25th straight hour. So I'm covering the set by myself, and the requirements for each take were as such: Tie down the semi-naked girl in the coffin, who will star screaming as the killer approaches. Wrangle the beat-up coffin, with its mostly broken hinges, into a position where its lid will stand up at exactly 91 degrees. Re-rig my tiny piece of minofilament that I will use to make the coffin lid fall. Then time a swing with a 20' stick that will hit a swinging light right as the actress throws her stunt knife. All this will happen while we're rolling sound, so I must be silent, and we're shooting with two cameras, one of which as an 8mm lens -- meaning the cameras "see" about 290 degrees of coverage. Oh and one of them is on a Technocrane, and moves about 10' during the shot. You do the math: Either I was in the shot, blocked by a camera, pulling too hard on the mono, the hinges on the $250 coffin were shearing off, my light-hitting stick was in the shot, etc. The director was furious. Oh, and meanwhile, the second unit was setting up a shot in which a drill bit comes crashing through the top of a coffin. Of course I'm the only one with a keyhole bit, so I'm rigging this setup between takes, and running the drill too. My poor Ryobi is too hot to touch, there's smoke coming from the bit, and I've already killed two batteries in prep.

I do in fact have the greatest job in the world, but sometimes it can be a bit stressful. Having always been a stress eater, that I've put on five pounds on this production should really come as no surprise.