Pure Adrenaline

THIS past week has been a busy busy week/end. It all started Wednesday night when friends Bernard and Jon and I went to the kick off meeting for the Adrenaline Film Project After a little bit of talking about how to frame shots, getting location releases and set safety, we got our line of dialogue, "I want to believe it", our prop (a jar of miracle whip mayonnaise, and our genre; Fantasy. After that it was a rush job to come up with a story. Once submitted and approved at 10pm, we had to write a script and get it approved at 9AM the next morning. We stayed up till about 2 working on it, but we couldn't get a finished script. We split up to write our own versions. Then we used the best from each to compile a rough draft. The next morning, we went to the writing workshop and finished it up. We started casting and collecting props till 5 or so. I went to H-burg to get some stuff from Glens Fair Price Store (the best costume shop around) to get some makeup and junk. Then back to C-ville for casting and shotlisting, location scouting and rehearsals. We got to bed at 1:30 then up for filming, at 8am. in the rain in the woods. It seemed fun for the first hour or so, but then the sog set in and it started to feel gross. The makeup effects I put on our monster kept falling off. And we had a hard time keeping our equipment dry. But we made it and after taking a short break from filming to dry off and eat lunch, we were done with the forest scenes by 4pm. Then we went to film our interior shots but the child actor we had lined up got stage fright and refused to do it. Well, I had to leave at this point to go to Ferrum with my lovely lady Lindsay to visit her parents. Jon and Bernard spent the rest of the evening editing the forest stuff and trying to line up another child actor. Lucky for them they found one.

In the meantime, Lindsay drove us down to Ferrum while I slept most of the way. When we got there, I pretty much just headed off to bed. I kept having anxiety nightmares about the film. But they faded after I woke up to a nice breakfast. Lindsay and I went to a folklife festival they were having down there at the college. It was pretty sweet. Lots of crafts and craftsmen, bluegrass music. They had a pretty big exhibit on the moonshining culture of the area. They had a sheepdog demonstration as well. It was amazing! The farmer, a man with two prosthetic arms, had his dogs so well trained they seemed like they were remote control. He would call out or whistle commands to the dogs, and they would route the sheep. He could put the herd of sheep anywhere in the field he wanted within probably 5 feet. They also had some pretty good cooking. It was so windy down there though that the 60 degree weather felt like 30. A lot of the tents blew over. I got a little sick from being out in the rain the previous day and being out in the cold. But it wasn't too bad. The next day after church, we went to visit Lindsay's brother. They had the cutest kids and we carved pumpkins with them. On the way back to C-ville, Jon called and said that we had won one of the prizes from the competition. Pretty sweet! I got a professional headphone set and a gift certificate to banana republic, kudos to them for doing a great editing job and with filming the child actor. It was fun times but I was so worn out, I ended up taking Monday off sick. Feeling better today.