[The 48] Getting it together

At 6.20am I panicked, realising that I still had to send a copyp of the script (and therefore the props list) out to the crew. Originally, the idea was for them to read the script at home, gather up anything around their homes that matched our requirements and then bring it in to the production meeting. Nice and ordered.

Instead, after insisting Gino wake up, I stumbled into Jenni & Lee's where they fed me instant porridge and Beroccas. As our crew tricked in, I simultaneously pretended I wasn't tired, tried to keep my seat from being stolen, planned for the upcoming briefing and wondered if I should get angry that people hadn't all arrived at 7am like we'd said they should.

By the end of the meeting, people had a rough-to-good idea of what they'd be doing. And I was starting to freak out about the upcoming Jungle shoot. There were many reasons for that:

Our Wilton-Otari location had 2 entrances and we were making on-the-fly arrangements about where to meet.
We were starting much later than we should have been due to the need to assemble props and costumes.
The location was bad for sound: close to a road and with a working bee going on nearby.
Parking was so bad we had crew standing in spots - but we were too polite to block people who insisted on arriving.
We couldn't go off the paths into deeper bush.
The location didn't really look like jungle.
The light was fading.

And most importantly, this was the most complicated scene in the script - an action scene with 20+ setups. It was our first scene to shoot, our team hadn't jelled yet and we had to be out of the location by 2pm to meet parents at Jenni's library. In my estimation, we wouldn't be finished till at least 3pm.

I thought we were screwed.

But something amazing happened. We worked hard, we pulled together. People quickly learned what they were doing. I don't know how we managed it, but we finished the Jungle scene with an hour or more to spare and managed to sneak up to a nearby waterfall location to quickly sneak in the Training Montage - a scene I believed we'd have to drop until Sunday.

The Montage was fast and fun. I was yelling directions at the actors off-screen while Jenni checked the shot ... and then we were off, to eat the great lunch that Luke & Sam had bought (as well as a few of the 200 bananas that they'd managed to find to bury Gino in).