Day 01 Blog – Action!!

Dear Backers’ Club Members,

It’s hard to believe it, but we’ve started filming the movie!

Making a movie is a little bit like getting married. You spends month and months of long hours working out all the fine details – and then BAM! The day arrives in a sudden rush of time. You look around and you can hardly believe that all the wheels are in motion, but there is no doubt that Corner Gas is back in a big way. With you in mind, I kept my eyes and ears open for what would be surprising on Day 1 for someone not familiar with the sights and sounds of a film set, and I came up with three things.

Holy Crow, that’s Brent!

If you get easily star struck, then pack yo85ur breathing salts. Maybe it’s no surprise that a film set is full of stars, but it still makes your heart skip a beat when someone you know from years of watching television is all of sudden standing in front of you in the breakfast lineup! Within a second you’ve compared their height to yours, made a judgement on how they are dressed, and decide on whether you are going to run over to them or pretend like you were actually looking at the croissants and they just “happened” to be nearby.

The one and only Brent Butt (“Brent Leroy”) was in the first shot of the day, and was one of the first to take his turn in hair and makeup trailer. It takes a brave and generous man to allow me to pop in and grab a shot of him in hair and makeup first thing in the morning (or, perhaps a man who is half asleep), but Brent was kind enough to let me grab a shot. Here he is with Krista, our key makeup artist.

 

 

 

Location, Location, Location

The second thing you’ll notice is that we move around a lot.

Now and then I’ll have an opportunity to share a phrase that you’ll hear all the time on a set and explain what it means. For today’s blog I wanted to talk about what it means to “shoot on location.” It seems simple enough; every place is a location, after all. What it means to a film person is that you are not shooting at the studio where you’ve rented a huge space to build custom made sets.

It means you pack everything up and head out into the town. You know when you see all those white trucks parked on the street and people running around with cameras and fake snow and taxi cabs supposedly from New York? Those are people filming “on location.”

For our first day, we shot at three separate locations. These included a courthouse and the 20th floor of an office building in downtown Regina. I can’t tell you what we shot, but I can say that Brent wore a suit, and that Will Sasso (a comedian from MADtv and the recent reboot of “The Three Stooges”) was there. Need proof?… about the suit, I mean? I’ve included a picture below. Just in case you were wondering, I’m not in the picture, but my water bottle is. I’ve labelled with an arrow for your convenience.

 

 

Gearing Up

Now that you’re used to rubbing elbow with the stars, and you’re starting to talk like one of the crew, my bet is that the last thing that would surprise you is just how much stuff we take with us when we’re shooting on location. Our final location of the day was outside near the Saskatchewan Science Centre. We pulled up with our white trucks to shoot a simple scene and then we started unloading… and unloading… and unloading. I’ve done this a few times in my life and I still have to shake my head in wonder when I look around at all the wires, stands, boxes, boxes of boxes, clips, chairs, pins, sheets and other gear that we move around. It’s like a mobile town. I quickly shot a few pictures of the gear that we took with us to the Centre.

 

 

If a few pics aren’t enough to whet your whistle, check out the little video we made called “Gearing Up” where we follow one of the production trucks unloading all of its gear.

OK Backers, that’s it for today! See you tomorrow on location for Day 2!

Davin and the Digital Team