Our strategy for today: Wake up and get moving pre-dawn, get to the location and shoot before the air heats up and starts blowing around noon.
We get up early. Before the sun is up. Everyone is moving. I'm amazed. We have a big, tasty, well organized breakfast. I'm amazed. It's slightly overcast and cool, looking like an ideal day to shoot. We load up and scramble and drive to our location as the sun is creeping over the distant horizon.
All of us that is, except for the camera van. For whatever reason, the camera van was lagging behind on the bumpy road into the dunes. Lagging behind so far that they lost sight of the rest of us. Lagging behind so far that they took a wrong turn and got stuck in the sand. Not only that, but it was Friday, and the dunebuggy crowd was gearing up for their weekend fun. Not good for us.
Well, with the entire crew digging and laying down sage for traction and pushing and towing, we managed to get the camera free after an hour or two. All of our efforts to blitzkrieg and take the desert by surprise had essentially failed. The dirtbikers were blazing away on their noisy cycles leaving tracks everywhere and mid-day was fast approaching. So we get everything set up and ready to shoot.
And then the rain begins. And the wind. But this time we can't give in. We couldn't let the desert know that it had us beat. It can sense your fear. We stuck it out. All of it. Skin-flaying gusts of sandy wind, pummelling drops of rain... The worst of the rain, a massive thunderhead that would have ruined us, passed by a mile or two to our West thankfully. We stood there watching its fingers of lightning streak down to the ground and listening to its thunderous roaring as it slowly rolled past. It was close. Too close.
But we held out. We shot our scenes and got some fantastic cloudscapes to boot. We won, by God. Halfway through the dunes...
Photo Addendum - Bronze, Muskrat, Torpedo, Short-Fuze and N.O.R.D. smile as they push the camera van. Barfly pulls his hair out in the background as Straight Flush supervises.
