The lowlight, Our WB story progresses

I guess I haven't actually written about it here, and I feel like I should. On Sunday we were shooting Tony's commercial before I was going to head to church, (so we were in a little bit of a hurry) and we started with the interior scene. We were shooting this hilarious snickers commercial, where I got to be the main character (again!) and after we lit the living room, we shot all of the interior scenes. Once that was done, all we needed to do was get a shot across the street at the infamous dollar store. I was going to go straight to church from there, so I said, "Hey lets drive so we don't have to carry all the equipment." I jumped in to drive, and right before Tony and Armando (the other actor in the commercial) got in the car, Tony (who had the camera) set the camera down on the roof of my car, helped Armando put the tripod in the tripod bag, and then jumped in the car. We got over to the dollar store (honestly like 20 seconds later) and Tony immediately said, "Hey where is the camera?" right when he got out of the car. I said, "What do you mean where is the CAMERA?" He said that he set it on the roof of my car, and we all realized immediately what had happened. I told him to run back over across the street to go and assess the obvious damage that the camera had taken. I drove back over, and the camera was GONE. No pieces, no nothing. We checked everywhere. Under the cars, in the gutters, across the street, in the apartment, back over in the dollar store parking lot, down the street, I mean EVERYWHERE. So, in a matter of about 90 seconds, the camera was set on the roof of my car, we drove off, it fell, and BAM someone came by and stole it. We have no idea how badly it was damaged. What peeves us is that by some miracle, it may not have been completely smashed and broken. It also annoys me that we couldn't find any pieces or anything to confirm our suspicions that somebody stole it. I actually saw a cop across the street and went and talked to him about it and he told us that it would be considered lost property and would not count as a theft. Now, Tony had to file a little report with USC telling what happened and he is still waiting for the response on whether he only has to pay 500 bucks (cause the insurance on it has a 500 dollar deductible). I'm a little worried the insurance company will file this under negligence, and consider is lost property and not pay for it. If that's the case, Tony has to pay the full price for the camera, which is somewhere around 3-4 grand. What made things worse is that the BIG battery was on the camera, and his tape with his commercial in it. So he lost his project, but luckily our professor was gracious enough to let him re shoot it this weekend. So needless to say, that was the low point of our experience here...but we're trying not to let it bother us too much.


As for better news, all of our crews have directors! Today all the wannabe Director's pitched for whatever story they wanted, then the producers and writers collaborated (Tony and I talked over a nice Taco bell lunch) and chose a Director. Then the producers (me!) had to get up and tell the class who they chose. Now I know how those judges on reality shows feel. It was hard telling people that they didn't get the job, but it was also really fun to tell someone that you loved their pitch and they got the job. Very interesting to be on the other side for once. Our director is this girl Anne, who goes to film school in Chicago and is a really talented cinematographer and editor with a solid amount of experience and a great vision. She is our director, I'm the producer, and tony is the writer. We still need to re-write the script, assign the rest of our crew, hold auditions to cast our actors, and so on. Everyone is really excited about the story and getting to shoot on the Warner Bros. lot. The story is a gritty Film-noir action story. Right now the working title is "A New Don." I'm pretty sure it would get an R rating for the violence and language it has, which is interesting, but hey, I didn't write it. I'm really looking forward to casting our actors, it will be a lot of fun to bring the story to life, step by step. This weekend is really our last weekend before we are SUPER busy, thus why we are trying to go to Disneyland on Friday. Tonight I'm having dinner with our writer and Director to talk specifically about the story and things we need to get done.

Anyone seen Harry Potter yet? I'm looking forward to seeing it soon if I can...it looks amazing...