Filming Really Out of Sequence

Filming on this day was very mixed up. We began by filming a scene from Part II of Slim, then filmed a scene that takes place right after the very first scene filmed the previous year, and then finished with scenes that take place after the first scene filmed that day. If this doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, it doesn't make much sense to me either.

The first scene takes place at a prison camp where Tubba is forced to clean a pool. We were at my friend Mike's house for the full day and filmed on the deck of his pool. It was raining so none of us wanted to swim for fun.

The next scene moved to Mike's backyard, but at a different angle than the Excavation Site scenes filmed there the previous summer. As I mentioned in a previous post, even though this scene was a follow up to the tractor chase, my Dad had sold the original tractor. So we used Mike's Dad's completely different looking tractor instead. This is what you do when you have no budget. I was very picky with this scene. First take, I didn't like the lighting. Second take, I didn't like the angle. Third take, I didn't like the amount of camera movement. The fourth take was just right, or else I just gave up.

For the rest of the scenes on this day, we relocated to a field beyond Mike's back woods. Apparently, someone else owned the land but didn't care if anyone else used it, or so I was told. What I liked about the field was that it had some hills so characters could be together all on one level or be staggered, depending on what was called for.

We didn't have a generator like big time film crews, so for lighting, we had to rely on one of those battery operated spotlights that you would use on your car in an emergency. The camera had to operate on battery, so this gave a limit to the amount of time we could spend filming. When you have a time limit like this, first takes often seem to be better than usual.