The Desert. Our Greatest Asset. Our Most Feared Enemy.
I've always loved the desert, but then again, I've never been a part of a film shoot out there either. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Obviously, we're home and alive for the most part. It'll take me a few days to get the journal back up to speed, but I'll give it my best shot.
Our location was on an open expanse of sage plain across from several small ranch-style chunks of property. We introduced ourselves to the neighbors so as to avoid any trouble and make ourselves accessible. We didn't want to ruffle any feathers. A few of them were a little strange and overstayed their welcome on set and around camp, but most of them were incredibly kind and helpful. One of the locals even let us charge our batteries and such at her house, which was a Godsend since The Intruder was once again malfunctioning severely.
We had a lot more people around than normal. A lot more. And babies. That was quite a challenge out there in the heat and the dirt. People, babies and horses. I started to have second thoughts about my logic in writing the scenes we were shooting. But to hell with that. We're making a great movie! Trifles be damned!
If only I knew then what the next two weeks would hold. Today seemed rough; the heat was drastic, everyone had headaches as a result of a general lack of aquatic preparedness. One of our nearby neighbors, Hank the Donkey was a constant source of entertainment and agony with his erratic bleating. But of course, we got our shots. Half of a big action sequence. Good stuff, I can't wait to check out the footage.
Exhausted and hot and dehydrated, at the end of the day we all decided to find a local reservoir we had heard about for a refreshing dip. Well, we didn't find it. We had three or four different sets of directions on how to get there, none of which were terribly specific. After a wild goose chase down bumpy desert roads, we drove forty minutes to a completely different reservoir. It was nice, but the sun had set by the time we got there, and we could have driven to any number of other closer bodies of water had we driven in a different direction. The water was just what we needed though, and we went home happy. One of the other actors had found the nearby reservoir in the meantime, so that was the end of that fiasco.
Slept out under the bright stars and the brighter moon, and readied for another day.
Photo Addendum - The lot of us iron out some wrinkles in a fight scene.
