Richard Madrid and Mike Rechis rounded out today's actors as deputies. I had originally wanted to have a lot of deputies walking around in the background, but we couldn't find anyone willing to take extra roles. But, we luckily got Mike and Richard, who added so much to the role that it worked out much better just having the two of them than a whole bunch of people there anyway. Keep it simple.
Once we got everyone in costume and settled in, we hauled them down to the barren orange grove that's doubling for Old Man Roberts' property. As we unpacked our stuff, ominous storm clouds hung low on the horizon, so we tried to get things moving along. We gave them some rehearsal takes to give the actors a chance to warm up and also to let us decide about character and camera placement. It also gave us a chance to see at what point we wanted the deputies to leave the car that they were searching in the background during the Roberts/Solomon interview and walk over to Sheriff Stephens.
We only got in a few actual takes before the storm clouds let loose, so we packed up our equipment and our actors and headed back to our sheriff's station set to wait out the rain.
Since we had Richard and Mike there, we went ahead and filmed scene 20A, the opening scene in the sheriff's station. When I was writing this scene, in my mind I saw a large space with deputies crossing back and forth in front of the camera as it moved towards the desk of Deputy 6. But the set space we have isn't large enough for that, even if we'd had the deputies to fill it. Once again, having to keep the shots simple worked out. We had Richard play Deputy 6 at the desk, we put Mike on the left, and put an extra Deputy shirt on Tom with his back to the camera, to even out the frame and began filming.
Trent arrived about this time, so we had him go over and suit up, while we finished the scene. When Trent got back, we shot scene 20B INT. SHERIFF'S OFFICE - CONT. Then we shot the reverse on the Deputies for Stephens' speech since we had the deputies there. We'll film Trent's delivery of the speech tomorrow.
Once we got those scenes in the can, we packed up our gear and actors and headed back to our exterior location.
We started filming the scene over again since Trent was there, so that we could get the entire scene shot in one take. The scene is viewed from the POV of a news camera so we wanted to have one long take without any cuts.
After Dick Solomon leaves Old Man Roberts to speak with Sheriff Stephens, we had David Nevill go over to the car and start looking through it. He brought his own props to pull out of the car. So during the interview with Stephens, David is in the background pulling out a condom, money and other stuff. Then he gets spotted by the deputies who come over and arrest him, but not before chasing David around the car. I felt sorry for Tom and Trent because Jason and I are cracking up at what's going on behind them, and they had to remain serious and focused. All while watching Jason and me barely holding back our laughter.
Everyone really put a lot of energy into the scene and gave us some great stuff. David Nevill is a master at improv. It's going to be great!
Dave Roberts says: "I want you to see this movie mother fuckers!"
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