since this blog is primarily a personal reference for myself, i am transcribing what i started on myspace a few months ago.
I worked for 6 weeks in south and central america. that there is the inverse of the notes i made------
full circle
so, yes. back in LA. the whole trip fading into ..but a memory.
i'm so curious who's been reading this. cause...well, frankly my parents don't use myspace.
would love a line from anyone who has been.
and if you want some illustration, i've started posting pictures.
http://t-kim.com/funstuff/main.php?g2_itemId=150
and
http://t-kim.com/funstuff/main.php?g2_itemId=151
the first is the snapshots, i've barely started putting them up.
the second are the ones i actually like as photographs.
in a month or so i'll be trekking on m yown to new orleans.
now that i've started this habbit i may just keep it up while i'm there too.
we shall see.
cheers.
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
simply worlds away
it just kept getting more interesting.
from lake titcaca we continued on to the bolivian border.
we crossed the border on foot, since buses were not aloud to cross. which meant unloading all the gear and loading onto these bycicle porters..just guys with carts on their bikes and you pay them a dollar to carry your load accross while you walk. then onto another bus for the trek through bolivia.
in the immigration office we met a southafrican traveler and tom offerred her a ride to lapaz, but they wouldn't let her through without a visa. undeniable priveledge of being american.
tom had been raving about how great lapaz was to party in (he raves about what icnredible times he's had in every city) and i wanted to party but when it came down to it my body still wasn't up for it. the next day we didn't shoot till 2pm. i thought lawson was just hung over or had food poisoning at first. he shot out the scene we were doing that day, but ...puking and curled over. by 9pm when our bus to the salt flats was supposed to leave he was still miserably sick. i mean, it was painful just listening to him vomit from outside in the hall.
still, i couldn't believe it but he actually decided--after much detailed description of the long trek on unpaved roads through blistering cold to the middle of nowhere with no bathrooms much less hospital facilities--he decided to stay back and leah, hassan and i would shoot for him. between bathroom runs lawson croaked out what advice he could,
and at 4am that night, i was on the bus, watching the moonlit landscape pass me by. everyone in good spirits. the guides "blanket fairies" covering us with sleeping bags while we slept. glad lawson wasn't vomiting and shitting his pants in the back. hoping he's ok alone in the hotel at lapaz.
secretly excited by the opportunity, especially as a 3 person team w/ a geniuses instruction ;)
in the morning (have i written this before), after all night of roadless driving, we unloaded into jeeps and heeded even deeper into nothingness. coming to in literally the middle of nowhere. as far as the eye could see...nothing. endless expanse of blue sky above and solid, pure, flat white below. simpler than being in the middle of the ocean. no movement, no sound, ...nothing. just nothing.
the guide told us to run. after only a moment's hesitation most of us agreed, and...yes. strange. just completely detached from any sensory perception. nothing mpoving yet you're exerting everything. like a dream.
and that's oretty much what it was like. there were a couple islands of coral (yes, from when this was the bottom of the ocean) now with cactuses growing on them, and a hotel made of slabs of salt, and an area with minerals and small geysers bubbling up, but other than that...nothingness.
leah was incredible. she was decisive and listened to our comments and concerns but...quite the natural. i was very impressed with her. despite the day leading to the biggest outburst to date (not saying much, there hadn't been very many outbursts to speak of) but tom seemed at his end all day for some reason and well-there was one moment of contension.
oh, that was the second day. i forgot--the night we stayed at a home, essentially, just on the noutskirts of the flat. while chris got a hand bath (frigid water, we all knew better having stayed inhotels without hot water) i smoked and walked with hassan and eventually relaxed enough to stetch and move around on the open makeshift basketball court. i can't believe that's all i needed, but my stomach cramps instantly relieved for the rest of the trip! my body had just missed stretching and moving.
so i went inside and drank bolivian booze with everyone to celebrtate. yay! to enjoy the last couple days.
salt flat highlight: in 15 minutes or less you could walk far enough out so that the only things you can see on the horizon are dots. that dot is a bus, that clump of dots is our jeeps and crew...no human in ear shot or eyesight. you can hear a bus approach 5 miles away and fade into the silence.
the bus ride back. 14 hours or so back to the border (hightailing it now, picture wrapped, to drive back to peru to catch a flight as the airlines in bolivia were bancrupt)
flower smelling bolivian booze picked up at every market we passed, spilled most in the aisle or on each other -celebration attemopts while offroading.
taking my sleeping bag out of th ebag i SEE soemthing. glowing orb things. i confirm with chris, i am seeing static. electricity.
the last 36 hours of the trip were pretty much spent on buses and planes as we drove ...like almost the distance of the continental US, straight through-- to catch out plane in Lima. and reflecting on the reality that was all too soon going to slap me on the face again.
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Saturday, September 09, 2006
titi caca (seriously)
skimed down, production finally bought the good stuff, we got a 48 passenger double decker bus to drive from cusco to lake titicaca.
amazing drive elevatd above the road, the landscape already at eye level with the clopuds, 14,000 above the treeline, the women in layers of skirts and hats pick axing farmland, herds of llamas, cemeterries every mile, people making the bricks to then build their homes. mountains in every dirction cause you´re just in the iddle of them.
sweeeeeeet. i don´t know how everybody else slept. i just love open spaces.
looks like tomorrow we´re going to bolivia despite political unrest.
wish us luck!
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Friday, September 08, 2006
copa cabana is a real place, and i spose that where i{m headed.
to my surprise, honestly, the frustration with production lasted up to the last day of ,real, production (no, i don{t care to learn how to use these crazy keyboards properly)
complaints becoming more like jokes, yet everyone for the most part in good spirits, but, you know, a lot of people over it.
we all liked being in cusco, i think, but there were tons of issues with permits and crap and so there was a lot of time sitting waiting, which people don{t like, as much because theyd rather just be working as cause they{d rather be sightseeing.
but the last 2 days before most of the crew were sent home were the highly anticiapted climax of the job--machu pichu.
we ended up getting to take the orient express equivilant train the ,hiram bingham, which is this really posh train with waiters in suits and we shot of the back care with brass rails and glass walls. i have to say as much as i enjoyed the yacht island experience, the landscape through peru was just otherworldly. a dream. passing lone farmers working their plots seriously made me want to buy som eland and move there. and then it works its way up into the andes and follows a big river and-just awesome.
when we got to aguas collientes-the town outsiside of machu pichu, the crew split up, the ´´neccessaries´´ stayed at the top of the mountain at a hotel literally on machu pichu ($700 night) and for the first time i wans{t included in this crew, which was fine with me cause i had a fever and was gratefull to be able to relax. so we stayed in ahostel down below where there were hot springs. i took a nap and then went to the hotsprings, where this native peruvian with long dark hair and jewelry kept trying to communicate with me from the balcony above the pools, i ended up having a beer with him and 4 of his friends and it was fun to attempt to communicate, me speaking poor spanish and their limited english. but it was fun. the first real local encounter i{ve had strangely enough. suppose it was cause iw as alone. it killed me not to go salsa dancing with them but i knew i needed to maintain what little health i had.
the next day we met the rest of the crew at machu pichu, the bus ride up was pretty gorgeous. i opted out of the 5 AM BUS CAUSE I WAS SICK AND THE MAIN CREW WAS SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING SOME SUNRISE SHOT FROM THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN SO I DIDN{T THINK I{D BE ABLE TO find them, but as it turned out that ´¨permit´fell through too so the whole expensive hotel thing was kind of a bust, bummer.
but we did spend a whole day shooting at machu pichu, which was incredible. steadicam shots chasing actors through ancient ruins. a romanctic scene ion a doorway on the edge of a cliff looking out to mountains and clouds at eye level.
pretty cool.
then we got to take the nice train back too, even though we were supposed to take the backpackers train and i was kind of lookin gforward to it.
most of us slept, but there was a full moon and a few spectacular sights when we{d come around a bend and a mountain would move to reveal the moon. there was a lunar eclipse but we weren{t sur eif it was that night or the night before and tried to see it but i di on{t think abyone did.
i was feeling pretty mcuh up to par by the end of that excursion but as soon as we got back to cusco´s colder climate (higher alltitude) i almost instantly got feverish again. most of the crew was heading home the next morning but they were mostly too tiredt o rally to celebrate, so a couple of us ended up going out for drinks and i nearly fell asleep at the bar so i left for another feverish night{s sleep. they, of course, went out dancing till 5 am. i{m such a ¨mamaw¨¨ (crew term)
today we began the skeleton crew adventure. shbooting one lasty golden hour scene in the central square. tomorrow mornin gwe get on a bus to start our road trip through bolivia.
aparantly, even though the director{s mother is from bolivia and he has been there, they have not scouted any of the locations or things we are supposed to shoot. will certainly be an adventure. and assuming we can all regain our health will be quite the party too, since these guys barely put their drinks down to shoot.
i{m looking forward to it. glad to be on the last leg of the shoot, since i think it will be a very cementing bond.
bummed knowing that when you get back home the memory fades so quickly. will the other crew guys even be thinking of us by the time we get back? we all talk about gatherings and parties and staying in touch, but we know better, right?
i have a lot of love for each person on this job. it{s pretty incredible that we got along so well, even thought some of us had our moments...heh.
and really the human experience of living with people for 5 weeks has in a way been the most interesting part of this.
heh.
well, don{t know what bolivia is going to be like (other than cold --which, by the way is interesting too that i left in the heat of summer but it will practically be fall when i get back...
another note, i{m still dreading going back to LA. there was one moment where i got exctied and ready, reading and email from kimberly mccullough, but ...for the most part i don{t want to go back just yet.
i{d rater keep safariing even if it is in louisiana. sitting quietly and painting just sounds soooooooo good right now.
ok. nightly night.
ps-chuck if you start reading this you should comment.
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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
production deteriration
what we,ve come to:
our call sheets are now slips of paper, handwritten with the call time and scene description.
last night they were put under our doors after we went to bed.
more and more often, no one knows what we,re shooting an hour before we shoot much less the day before.
we still complain about not knowing, and not being able to do our jobs well, but i know we all have to be enjoying the laid back vcation-ness this job is becoming in some way.
everyone except lawson who actually benefits from the film being the best it can be.
the crew still feels like family, and is in many ways more a machine, more willing to help accross departments since we are paired down to the basic LA crew.
right now we are having a ,siesta, after lunch while we wait for a permit to com ethrough.
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cue the practical jokes
we shot in the hotel this morning, in the room right next to ours in fact (yesterday we shot in our room...neither of which look like anything that couldn{t be shot on a sound stage).
at one point early in the day leah stuck her head out of our door and called me over. she was smiling, but i still thought i was in trouble as she lead me into the bathroom--paranoid about what disgusting neglect i had left behind. instead the little terd in the toilet that she wa slaughing at was really one of the knit finger puppets all the kids on the street sell, a monkey.
she was dying with laughter.
we took a picture of it and when we got back to set had to announce it to everyone and ask who put a monkey in the toilet.
everyone was entertained, confused but entertained even after we explained. then garry (our rather eccentric sound guy who has been fairly open about hie prostitute frequenting in pananma) reminded us about a story leah had told the night before.
before she left, without time to make arrangements for a caretaker for her pet beta fish, she ha dlfushed him down the toilet. it had been weighing heavy on her the whole trip and she finally got it off her chest. (she{s famously a vegetarian as it has been at times a feat to feed hert on the tirp)
the fish,s name was monkey.
well, it continued to be a topic of conversation between takes, i narrowed my suspicions down to garry or chris who were both the only ones directly involved in the conversation.
i had to step out of the room during takes because we werwe shooting in a small room with a HUGE tent built in it, so i would confer with the rest of the crew and then back to chris, garry and leah on set.
well, during one take there was a hoopla cause shannon, holly and connor had all found puppets in their toilets.
i brought the news back to set.
we all had our theories, but since i had the most information, i found myself being in the middle of all of them. personally, and i told people this, i think garry or chris (or garry AND chris which would be even more excitingly surprising een than just garry coming up with it) had put the orioginal monkey in our tooilet, but someone else enjoyed the idea and snuck into everyone else{s room. possibly even tom-the director, who was frustrated at the distraction on set but always a sport for games, told brian or some other minion to do it.
so far it still has not been settled, but i for the first time realized the fun of practical jokes.,
you laugh at the thought and the imagery and imagining someone sneaking and its totally entertaining to specualte and do detective work.
it inspired me to try to pull one off myself and although i forgot that secrecy is the key and told shannon my idea, i still think i{m gonna try to pull it off if i can.
i just need to get some yarn...the 3 producers..director..writer are all in the same room....
i.ll kep ya posted.
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Sunday, September 03, 2006
mountain people
a few moments before we load gear.
so, guess what. after 4 weeks of being sweaty as soon as i left the hotel in the morning, i am COLD!
we are in this mountain town in peru and it{s like colorado in the spring.
11,000 feet elevation. the oldest city in the americas, i{ve heard (although i feel like i wrote that already about that city outside managua...grandada?
anyway, we ha da whole day to ´¨acclimate¨which meant walk around the city shopping and taking pictures and even drawing! which is definitely the most time i{ve spent doing that. and what a city to do that in. so old, and still to traditional. the area where we are is very touristy, people dresed in traditional gard carting around lamas and babies, and even baby lamas trying to get you to pay them to take their picture. and little kids making these knit finger puppets scurrying around you.
but when you walk out of the touristy part it is estill just as traditional! the older women where these poofy scirts and tlal white hats.
ok--AD is calling us in.
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Thursday, August 31, 2006
the sound of wind
before i get started, i havn't been giving updates on the last subject of note but,
things did get juicy for a while, only dangerous on one occassion, but oh what ademeaning occassion it was. but they are almost completely back to normal now.
ok.
just before the sun started lighting up t he sky, leah and i finished prepping our camera package. the camera was built and the bozes we were taking with us were stacked next to the door.
we showered and slept in our clothes so that when the call came at 8:30 we just had to stand up out of bed and walk out the door.
this day of work was "optional," which was how they got away with such a lacking turnaround. i, of course, optioned for it.
the dock was a paparazi funday. luckily we were on another continent and no one gave a shit. about 20 of us, half crew, half 'entourage' boarded a yaht destined for a little island off the pacific coast of panama city.
on the bow, everyone was elated. such a heavenly relief from the brooding overhang of the jungle. the wind blew blood into our cheeks as watched the city of panama, being built before our eyes like the next martian addition, fade into the horizon.
the pilot followed the trail of barges lining up to enter the canal locks out into the pacific.
we had come through something together and we were on the toher side.
the joy we all knew we were experiencing in common gave us a decided sense of family, which i was enjoying when we all noticed a dark cloud of smoke being left behind us. like a sticker on the plexiglass keeping us from some glorious playground, we knew it was too good a feeling to be true. nothing had been this perfect.
and sure enough the boat started heading back to the martian construction.
i sat at the very front of the ship, trying to soak as much of the experience in as possible, presuming i'd be sent home when we switched to a smaller, faster boat.
lucky for me, the entourage volunteered to go home and the whole skeleton crew got to continue sans accoutrament.
after daisy-chaining our gear to another yacht we headed back into the pacific.
i sat on the tip top next to the 'skipper' letting the wind drown out every other sensation. the subtly changing rhythms of the wind were all i could hear or felt as i entered the quietest state i have ever experienced.
blank. clear.
i opened my eyes again just in time to see the tale of a whale flip off to tthe left. i shouted for everyone and for a few minutes we all whale watched together.
still not sure if it was a whale or abnormally large dolphin cause about 20 minutes later we wateched a pack of dolp[hins play in our wake.
eventually a bump on the horizon grew into a small clump of islands straight out of a pirate tale. cliffs and crevases and birds circling above, emerald green water all around.
the boat pulled close to shore and everyone-- director procuer, casdt and crew jumped in in their swimsuits or underwear, carrying a handful of dry clothes above their heads. i noticed that John-- the stoic determinedly professional AD, had a pair of goggles and he mentioned his love of snorkling. i had to admit i'd never been.
the island resort was nearly abandoned. i suppose it was the off season but i can't imagine why there would be an off season there.
while we were waiting for our lunch order i looked up to see john moltioning me to follow him, so i followed him to the ocean where we dove in and he showed me the coral reef he found. he showed me how to scout the reef for drop offs and crevesaes. i laughed out loud looking a fish in the face in a nook in the coral.
awesome. and so much like this whole trip incredibly romantic, despite no romance. as much a human experience as a natural one, i felt priveledged to have been ivnited along.
just as i was climbing the rocks to go back to WORK johns hand popped out of the water and he motioned me to come quickly, he had found oan octopus!
i couldn't believe how well it was camouflaged with the rocks. if it hadn't been hunting somewthing and moving a tentacle we never would have seen it. i still can't bleive he noticed it.
i thought they were small but this one didn't seem so until i r ealizeed how close we were to it!
incredible.
back at lunch everyone was almost done eating. my departure had been 'mysterious' and suspicious but by now they know the two of us well enough to know a fling was unlikely.
we hired a local boat--sort of a deep canoe painted bright blue called 'lucky devil' in spanish, to take us to t he yacht to load gear.
we shot a love scene in a hmoock on the porch of a cabin built into a cliff right over the water. the crabs on tyhe rocks below more distracting than the nudity of the actors.
the sun went down quickly in the overcast sky and it was dark by the time we loaded our gear back on the yacht.
so, of course, we went for one last swim--nude.
on the ride back despite less than 3 hours sleep i couldn't find any tiredness in myself,
instead enjpoying the wind, the company and a rum and coke.
felt like a weekend away with dear friends.
it wasn't until the bus ride back that the weight of it all hit me.
when we got home at 11pm, we wrapped the camera and prepped with just enough time to get 3 more hours sleep before our call to begin our journey to peru.
and here is it, in the airport in costa rica, still too excited to write.
i lost my first attempt to write this, so some of my personal reflection have been poured out already, but for my own record-
i am unbelievably gratedful for the experience. it is definitley something that will change the course of my life. it came at a very significant time in my life where i have to choose my path.
i d on't imagine after this, going back to LA to stay. at least not for a while.
thjere are only 2 things that could keep me there.
one of the doesn't want me and the other shouldn't stop me.
he's probably right, despite my feeling that we could have both, each other and freedom to grow, but regardless that decision seems to be made for me.
so on the other hand, i can't seem to let my career hold me hostage in LA. i have a good enough sense of what the next few years would be like there and the most important thing in my life is self-eduation, which other than on-set experiecne i can do anywhere and potentially with less struggle.
so, i imagine i will stick to my as of now plan, returning to LA to tie ends and then a stint in NO.
and now to make some birthday calls! Malakai and mudi are both 2! i can't blieve it. and it has been a whoel year since my uncle and cousins lost their homes in katrina.
wow.
love.
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the in between stories
our last day shooting in the jungle, our last day with the panamanian crew.
sharing beers around a campfire in front of the camera. cheers then hugs and goodbyes when we cut.
3 am back at the hotel waiting for the truck to arrive.
people (crew) had been freaking out about the short turnaround which they called "optional" (most people didn't have to go to the island the next day if they didn't wat to. of course i wanted to and knew it was my choice, but leah and sound pretty much HAD to and so a 3 hour turnaround was not rediculous for them to be upset about. so i went with leah and gary to find tom and brian at the casino and talk to them. none of use were clear what "overtime" meant exactly, etc.
they were, of course, at the bar. all the cast was enjoying and celebrating their last night together, brian and tom were 'obliged to party'
you could tell they really wanted to go to sleep, but if they had to be there...
so again a sit down.
again me feeling compelledc to put my nose right in their, i always have to know everything that goes on. like being right in the action so i can derive as close to truth as possible.
and they were cool about it.
i knew once the crew left brian and tom would be much more capable of 'taking care of us'
before i get into the interesting stuff, some notes for myself.
about crew negativity. my friend who has been sober for 6 months and i am sure having a tough time being around such partiers, has pretty much checked out from the job and even people unrelated notice his negativity. but i actually just realized what being around him and the other complainers does to me.
i indulged because i am trying to learn to stand up for myself better, you know, demand to be paid for work, etc.
which i more often than not don't do. i just roll.
but we did agree to work a set amount of hours and anyway i believe that if we hold them to it they will be more likely to get things on time.
but the negativity seeps in. i wish poeple could be proactive and productive about it instead of whiny. which is why i helped convince them to approach the producers both these times. just to have the conversatins in the open, since they are so pervasive in our private convos.
and of course, this reminds me about negativity in life in general. who uyou surround yourself with. all that.
for the most part i thin ki naturally surrpound myself with positive people. but it's something good to be aware of.
:)
so- the next story. i can't believe and am so greatful that i have been accumilating so many incredible experiences that is another reason that ifeel guilty complaing about hours and stuff, but relaly if they wanted the "experiece" to be aprt of our pay they should have been up front about that. instead they presented a very professional front explicitly mentioning hours and turnaround in our deqal memos (which i signed but have not gotten a copy of...)
anywya-
so-truck finally srrived, leah and i unloaded everything to the hotel and with the help of some leftovers from our night off the other night (of that whole blog got deleted before it got posted, heh. guess i won't record that night of debauchery. one of the wildest nights of my life. ending in the gentlemen's poker story. very fun) seperated the B package that was being returned and prepared the A camera for the next days trip.
up-bathroom break before i jump in to yesterday's story.
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Tuesday, August 29, 2006
lost notes
i've taken to jotting things down throughout my days to remind me of refelctions i felt worthy of writing about.
well, i've lost my notes for the past few days, and i have to say it is rather disconcerting. i should be able to remember it all, but so much happens in such a shotrt time...that's why i write it.
so this will be unstructured search of my meomory.
horrific shit tons of cats and dogs pouring down on us, organization and leadership desperately lacking as the director and writer went with whims without sufficvient comunication downflow.
ankle deep orange poop mud for 15 hours. huge internal disent.
a mouse-sized black scorpion.
i wish i could remember what shots we got off, casue ti'm sure there's story there but i can't. and so to my current memory the day seems like a farse.
like we barely got any shots off,
oh i rememebr being on the side of a hill shooting a 'montage' peice of the cast pushing the jeep in the mud. having discarded the camera's raingear as practically disfunctional (the DPs call) and run-and-gunning so much that we4 only had time to set up an umbrella over the camera, the back end was exposed to direct rain for a few moments, and sure enough we finally got a truew humidity warning.
i rain down to base camp to get little silica packets that would fit inside the tape deck and rememebred reading that the camera spins the drums internally for 80 minutes, and won't shoot. so i told them we should switch cameras if they wanted to keep shooting and that's what we did.
leah freaking out at this point and even speaking her mind (loudly and angrily) to the director and dp when they said they didn't care if the gear got ruined--but her career/reputation was at stake. still, we continued to shoot in it.
the medics we hired had a huge medic tent, just like a triage unit form mash, and we had decided, as an attempt to create a reain plan, to set up our night campfire scenes inside the tent.
problem was ewveryone knew if we could shoot it inside a 'studio' we could shoot it inh LA so they wanted to keep pushing outside and we never used it.
enbded up ending the day a little early,
and the mutiny came to head and i was delegated to talk to the producers/higher ups to tell them we needed a production meeting.
i made3 sure all the heads knew this was not a vent session and they should be prepared to offer productive solutions.
cause during the day we had become accusstomed to pretty intense venting, in the open really.
ha- oh yeah, we gave up on the day a little early and they decided to give us our day off the next day, since morale was so low and i guess there was a SAG issue too.
so we finnaly packed up all the shit, it probably took 2 hours, for the first time the whole 'lazy' american crew stepping out of their departments to help other departments.
when we finally got it all packed and everyone in the bus we started to leave and watched nto make sure the truck could get out, it could,
but then coming out of the driveway onto the real road i have no clue what happened but it ended up in a ditch, the whole left side about 4 feet lower than the right, head and spare tire underneath nudged in mud.
all the men instinctively went out to look at it,
the lights had been off and everyone cozied up in the bus but i went out too,
always curious. the silhouette of the men from the truck lights in the rain was enticing.
it was fucking shit stuck.
i had moved on from tiredness to excitement emergency mode.
we may have a fucking all night adventure on our hands.
then the AD, trying to be contientious asked about sending the bus home and leaving a few people here to deal with it.
the local coordicnator immediately shot him down, he didn't speak english well enough but the director pretty much explained that that's not the latin way.
but a few moments later another of the local crew was herding us all back on the bus.
i was pretty annoyed to leave them too, especially cause i wanted to stay, but i more than likely wasn't going to be of help in the situation anyway.
the AD, in self- defense opted to stay, as did the key grip, but when the director and writer tried to, they told them there wouldn't be enough rtoom to drive them back. valid point. and the gaffer didn't even try to stay.
(good freind of mine but has pretty much checked out for weeks)
anyway we left them and i shared another ipod experience as we got lost in dark residential panama, seeing the mid night lifew fly by.
when we got back we decided not to have our meeting without everyone that stayed but while waititng to go to dinner it happened anyway.
we ended up speaking out mind, professionally, calmly, maturely and even positively to all the producer4s. lawsom breaking it down rather eloquently. we all want to make this movie, we are all here to see this happen but it could be happening so much more efficiently, we could be making our days without the rain stopping us since we have to p[lan on rain here, etc.
they were only slightly as defensive as we expectwed, sidetracking on kind of irrelevent arguments like the fact that then locals feel like we don't delegate enough. he got hung up on that for a while and we had to point out it really isn't the issue.
but generally i'd say it went very well.
although at the end i could tell tom (the direcotr) was still generally annoyed an frustrated at us for being "whiny"
i know most of the crewe are just being whiney. but i also bleive their arguments are valid. they are having union type complaints.
and so then it becomes a discussion of what, exactly, we signed on for.
should we accept and have expected choas and "low budget"ness?
we were trying to base whininess on failures of things they calimed in the deal memo.
anwyay- that's that.
we had our day off--and the next day woke up and cleaned mud off all our gear and then yesterday things went significantly smoother (they finally got us functionally walkies!!) and moral was a little better.
today is out last day in the jungle. tomorrow we shoot on an island and the enxt day we leave for peru.
more about the day off to follow.
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