Last Official Rehearsal for The Family Crystal Before Resuming Principal Photography Begins

I know I wrote an entry last month about the last rehearsal before principal photography and if everything had gone as planned, principal photography would be over now. But of course, things never go as planned.

The first weekend of shooting went great, although we were behind in the pages Elaine wanted to cover. Then again, she set a very ambitious schedule. On the Friday of the second weekend, we were moving along fine, making our pages, and anticipating getting the production done by Sunday. Then disaster struck in the form of a hateful neighbor who phoned the police and told them we were filming child pornography.

Well, the police quickly saw through that when they looked at our script and talked to us, but the one thing they wouldn't overlook was our lack of permit to film. Apparently, the law changed 18 months ago and now you need a permit to shoot anywhere in LA county, even inside a private house.

We, of course didn't know that, as who would ever think you'd need a permit to film inside your house. That would me any time you wanted to film your kid's birthday party or cats and dogs playing, you need a permit. And the permit for the weekend cost $865 -- not cheap. But I guess this is what CA came up with to solve its deficits. Thing is, nobody ever gets turned in, but of course we did, as luck would have it, because the neighbor was hateful and spiteful.

So we shut down until we could get the permit and we had to wait for one of our actors to come back from Europe before we could continue. The original shooting was backed up against his booked days.

So now, shooting is slated to begin on Friday, September 24th -- through Sunday. And we will be armed with our permit. And Elaine rewrote the scenes to make sure everything was on the inside... although in our original planning, the only outdoor filming was right up on her porch area.

What it did that was good was give us more rehearsal time. Rehearsal is so crucial and I'm glad we got more time to do that. Because we are better prepared this time. So today was our last rehearsal and on Friday, we start again. In the meantime, tomorrow I get my hair done again so its color matches what I had when I couldn't run any more.

All photos here are through the generosity of photographer Jim Metropole. Thank you, Jim.