a day which will live in infamy

Yesterday was an eventful day, both for Iggy's Quest and for the country as a whole. I'm going to assume that you, the reader, know what-all-went-down with the election.

What I'm most struck by, and encouraged by, is the sheer landslide of electoral votes that painted this country blue for the next four years. This truly was a youth-determined election. I didn't expect it to happen so soon, but I knew it would: our generation has The Power. We are the crucial 18-34 demographic... we are the lords of our culture. And we just showed our force by electing Barack Obama with over two-thirds of the electoral vote. Now let's hope we did it for good reason, and not just to prove that we could.

But it's not all good news from the polling booths. In California, what I thought couldn't possibly happen, happened. Proposition 8 passed. Activists in (where else?) San Francisco have already drafted a lawsuit to try to get the courts to overturn the amendment again, but all of a sudden I'm a lot less hopeful. I guess we like our Obama here in Cali, but not our homosexuals.

Moving on, to smaller and better things.

Yesterday was a GREAT day for my quest. I actually spent a whole day (and I mean an entire day) working on a movie. Not only that, but they all liked me well enough that I'm going to work on most of the shoot from here on out, until they wrap in December. :D

I showed up at their production office at 8:34 am. It was already a stressful day, as I'd left my apartment at 8 and had to fight retarded L.A. traffic down Wilshire-- and call time was 8:30. ("sharp".) I was convinced that I'd already ruined my "first impression"; but as it turned out my boss wasn't there until 8:45.

At 9 am (sharp!) most of the crew left to go on a location tech scout. What this means is, you drive around to all the filming locations with the key creative and crew people, and work out all the issues and preparations you need in order to shoot there. Luckily for me, my boss couldn't (or didn't want to) go on the scouting mission, so I was sent in his place.

It was me, in a 15-person van, along with: the director, a producer and a production manager, the art director, the director of photography, the head production designer, key grip, gaffer/best boy, and the location manager.

For those of you playing at home: that's a lot of important people. And here I was, a "location intern" on my first day, sitting in the back with a legal pad and pen, with my only instructions to "write down everything".

Luckily... I don't think I did too badly. We went to a lot of different locations-- mostly in K-Town, actually, but we also went to LAX-- and I took a lot of notes. My location manager said I did a really good job and probably got a lot of stuff that she missed. By the end of the day I was at least on speaking terms with the entire group of people. There was definitely a little bit of awkwardness (I got the feeling several of them didn't really understand why I was there at all, and I can't blame them for that) but fortunately, everyone was really nice.

One location they wanted to use was an old Asian woman's house. In order to go inside, we all had to take off our shoes. So the director and DP walked inside, clad in socks, while we all kicked off our kicks and pumps; the DP had his little viewfinder out so he could look at shots. Then suddenly there was a cry. Apparently the director had found some... doody. Turns out, yep, there was poop scattered all across the hardwood floor of this old woman's living room. It nearly made our DP drop his viewfinder. That would have been an epic disaster for the man, I think.

There was another moment when he was setting up a shot outside an apartment complex, and this big, ugly, crazy guy walked into the shot and started doing a big, ugly, crazy dance. He then walked away, laughing maniacally. The entire crew had a moment of worry, mixed with "uh... wtf?" as you can only have when confronted with a big, ugly, crazy guy.

But overall I would call the day a complete success. I could talk more about it, but I think this entry is already pushing it for the interest/boredom ratio.

And in any case, this wasn't the last day I'll be working on this movie, by far. I go back on Thursday. :D

Oh yeah...

This is the movie we're making. I recognize a lot of names in the crew listings now. Obviously it's still in pre-production so it won't come out for a while... but when it does, GO SEE IT!