Night shifts are starting to take the toll on me. We are doing long days and long nights and I can barely walk after a shooting day and since you have to keep the head at full speed the whole time when shooting, it’s really hard to slow it down before you go to bed, and even then, the sleep is erratic at best. Also, my room is devilishly hot. The central heating is on and can’t be turned off, because right now it should be colder in Qingdao than it is, so the moment sun rises (which is usually by the time I get to bed) it starts heating the room and I wake up sweating like a pig many times during the night (I mean, day).
During the days, I try to go to the gym to lift some weights to keep my back in shape and do some leg work to keep my knees operational (I may have mentioned this but I have pretty shitty knees, we tall and big guys usually do). After the shoot, I have a nice one hour talk with Annika on the way home from the set. The breakfast/lunch is usually terrible McDonald’s or KFC bag of junk food, because I don’t feel at all adventurous during the shooting days. I munch my lunch while listening to David Bowie and go through the day in my head. My car is my little cocoon where nobody can bug me.
The day went past waiting big stunt actions to happen, explosions and more explosions, trying to keep up with the tides (we want water on the picture, but the tides are always up at the wrong time and down at the wrong time). But one thing I can tell you:
Nothing is as boring as shooting an action scene.
Most of the day I just wander around the set waiting for the stunts and SFX rig and prep for it, and then suddenly when it’s done it’s all over in 10 seconds. Director’s duty takes about 15 minutes: explain what you want, how you want it to look like, and then all you do is wait for hours.
But oh boy does it look good on the playbacks.
So yeah, we shot some amazing scenes!
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