It was now Sunday, and unlike Saturday morning’s excitement, I was simply filled with anticipation for getting there, getting the needed shots “in the can” and staying warm as long as possible…

We had nixed the idea of getting any band footage on Sunday after realizing that without John said footage was kind of pointless, and we still had more shots to get during the day to realize the vision of the girl and the wedding dress…

So what else could go wrong?

LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

You would have thought that by now everything would have gone smoothly on Day 2, having figured out the lay of the land and working out the kinks on Day 1? Me too! Alas, while Dave was setting up shop next to our beloved tree, there was apparently a change of plans possibly due to faulty lighting or wiring (now my memory is probably inventing things) that moved our location to the top of a steep hill, to get a different shot of the girl running down a different hill.

Problems with this idea?? By the time it was envisioned and carried out, which I think involved several people carting or driving that 300-lb generator from the old location to the new one, it was already dark. Plus, the hill was steep and contained small falling rocks, and thus having a girl run down a hill she couldn’t see was problematic for her safety. I think she slipped more than a few times before someone said, “hey, maybe she should stop running down that hill.” And no one bothered telling Dave what the plan was, so I understand he sat for more than an hour waiting and wondering where everyone disappeared to…

More possible problems? Besides the girl nearly falling down the hill repeatedly in the dark, it was becoming crazy foggy-the kind that you can barely see in front of your face.

I think I was in the girl’s car watching this all go on around me, keeping as warm as I could until someone said they needed me for a shot. I recall imagining how we were capturing footage in these conditions…

DO THINGS HAPPEN IN THREES FOR A REASON?

THEN, I noticed the absence of a droning and particularly comforting sound when it stopped; the 300 lb, sturdy, infallible generator suddenly and unexpectedly went out…

So all of a sudden, we were scrambling in the dark, in the cold, soggy fog. There was a lack of leadership, and no one could really make decisions about whether to simply call it a night (DUH) or keep shooting. We did the latter.

Someone suggested using the girl’s car headlights for lighting our shot, and I remember thinking they provided minimal light. I think it was around that time that a mirror (a prop?) that was somehow laying on the ground broke into many pieces: 7 years bad luck perhaps?? At least one really long, unending night…

I recall the camera man saying “let’s just get whatever we can in the can now.” I realized later I think we shot on top of other footage to get the mirror shots-but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do-and in retrospect, it is the one thing that I think we salvaged from the shoot!

I remember a lot of tension on the “set”… tempers were running high due to the stress and challenges of working outdoors at night without a backup plan, having to think things up on the fly; to the lack of leadership, experience, direction and plan; and of course due to unforeseen and unexpected setbacks… At one point I think Dave threatened to kill one of the tech leads due to what he termed incompetence…ahh, all in a day’s work.

Then, when I thought things couldn’t really get any worse and fought the tears-we were shooting with headlights in the dark and fog and grasping at whatever we could to get something “in the can”-the girl decided she needed to drive/back her car down the hill (I don’t recall if we called it a night or we were simply going to go back to the beloved tree…)

When she went to leave, there was no sound of her engine starting because her car would not start. She had drained the battery from using her headlights to light our shot… “At this point, maybe we should call it a night??” I’m sure I was screaming to whoever would listen. Someone must have given the poor girl’s car a jump start. We all had to take all the gear back up the hill. I had had enough after a night of “whatever could go wrong would” and too many trips of schlepping gear up a hill, and Dave and I finally made it home sometime in the wee hours of the morning.

Like I asked, is there a reason things come in threes? Let’s review Day 2 shall we? Estimated hours on location: 10+ Footage in the can: 2 minutes or less. Success? Do we judge by the what was “in the can?”

So then what happened?? Why did it take until 2009…ahem…Dec 2010 to finish the shoot?