Day One of Principal Photography on The Family Crystal Web Series

We finished shooting our first day on our web series, The Family Crystal, which I'm starring in. Talented people and a brilliant script came together to create magic. We have only 5 days to shoot 26 episodes for the Internet... some as short as a half minute or as long as 5 minutes.
It didn't start out great. My call time was 7 am. The I-170 was smooth sailing as you would expect that early in the morning, but when I hit the I-5, it was bumper to bumper crawling. That was because they had closed one lane, then a second, then a third -- the three right lanes. But worse than that, they closed the ramp I was planning to exit on. And the next ramp. So there I was, going to a place out in what I considered the boonies, where I had never been to, and they closed the two adjacent ramps. I don't have any fancy GPS. So I was worried about whether I had overshot the street I was looking for when I got off and circled back After all, who knows whether the freeway angles. Turns out I didn't overshoot the cross street I wanted but I had to go to the very end of the street before I knew that. And of course, I panicked before then, calling the producer and asking, have I gone too far.
Once inside, the first place you deal with is the makeup room and the costume room.
Then when we tried to shoot the first scene, we kept blowing fuses, so we'd lose a camera or sound -- we were shooting three cameras at a time, the master and two closeups. So we lost at least an hour while the crew brought in extension cords and latticed the plugs around the house until we could run everything we needed without blowing fuses.
With all the delays that were unexpected, we were only about to shoot about 10-12 pages rather than the fifteen director Elaine Zicree wanted to accomplish.
When it gets up on the Net, and you have a chance to view it, then I'll give some behind the scenes tidbits.
As you can see, a set is a busy place. But it isn't all hard work. We do get a chance to play as well.
Tomorrow we will be shooting day 2, but this time my call time is at 8 am... a much more civilized hour... better to have to get up at 6 am than 5 am...
Labels: Barry Alexander, Crystal Ann Taylor, Elaine Zicree, Eric Rubin, Leah Allers, The Family Crystal, web series, webisode
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