1 day down...

The beautiful Las Vegas strip at 9:00 PM. (Click to enlarge)

Yesterday went very well. We had lunch at Tyler's Taste of Texas around 7:00. The Venetian blinds made everybody look like they were in a film noir movie. After that, we filled up at Acro for an incredible $3.19! (How depressing is it to get excited over a $3.19 gas price?) Since there was NO traffic going into Vegas, we arrived in Vegas about 3 hours too early (Noon), so we went to the Grand Canyon Experience, Gameworks and The M&M's store (which is super lame). After we had killed enough time, we mosied on over to the hotel and checked in. I decided we would be as inconspicuous as possible if we had the bell-hop bring our various bags up, rather than everyone taking a single item (which would take forever). So, $40 in tip money later, all the bags were up in the room. An hour or so later, we started setting up for the scene in the bathroom where Aldo talks to himself in the mirror.

That scene worked well. As I stated before, we shot the scene two ways. The split-screen and the greenscreen method both seemed to work equally well. I opted to use the green posterboard on the mirror, rather than the chromakey tape we had tested the scene with earlier. The decision was made mostly for time reasons. (The tape took a long, long time to remove successfully.) Also, it gave us more green surface area to work with which means Jarrod wasn't as confined in his movements.



After we shot that scene, Rebecca went to the store (K-mart) for provisions while everybody else went across the street to have Dinner. (We picked Rebecca up something there). Around 8:30 or so, we set-up for scene 4 1/2 which involves Jarrod and Rebecca sitting on the couch playing drunken card games. This scene is another Dolly/Crane move, so it took about 2 hours to set up. I just used a 1K on either side of the actors. Each 1k provided the key for the actor it was closest to and the fill for the actor it was farthest away from. After numerous tries to get the camera set-up to remain level, I finally abandoned that idea and just decided that the scene would work better with a Dutch Angle. (Because Rebecca's character is not being entirely truthful with Jarrod's character.) After the moving shot, we shot coverage of the scene from a tripod. And that was the end of the first night's shooting in Vegas. I couldn't be happier with the way it went. We are all about to go out to lunch now. When we return, expect another few posts.