"Look it's the most glorious rainbow ever!"

--Anchorman

Movie Production Update #3

Our set is almost finished, and it's coming along very nicely. Everyone who has seen it so far loves it. For the past few days we've done more sanding, painting, measuring and cutting of wood, spreading carpet glue down on baseboards and arranging the wood pieces on that, creating ceiling pieces, staining floors and large wooden planks to go over the windows, etc etc.

It's really beginning to look like a shanty now. The floor is made of these old, dark wooden planks that pop up in different places, and we've nailed these large boards over the windows so no one can see into this character's room and see what he's up to.

And boy it's hot. Every day the radio voice tells us in an overly enthusiastic way that "It's going to be MISERABLE out there today! With highs in the 90's the humidity will make it feel like 105 to 110 degrees!!!"

Why he's so excited about that, I don't know. That punk sits in his air conditioned loft and just laughs at the rest of us, I know it.

Every afternoon, though, we get rainstorms that cool everything down. Two days ago we had a huuuuuuge thunderstorm pass through. Before it hit, we could hear thunder in the distance, but there was so much deep rumbling that it sounded like continued explosions in the sky, like there was a war up above in the heavens.

I stood outside and watched the approaching darkness. The winds picked up, and I saw a flock of swallows come hurtling over the warehouse roof. They got caught in a huge gust of wind and it actually flipped some of the birds over and scattered them through the air before they could readjust their wings and avoid crashing to the ground.

Then it was like the sky opened up and we were bombarded by heavy rain. The doors to the warehouse were swinging open, and I got drenched running around trying to pull them back in and latch them. Our power went out so we couldn't continue to work, so we just stood by one of the big loading doors (that go up so people can wheel their boats inside- we're right on the marina) and watched the downpour. Trees thrashed about, branches flew into the distance.

Then it just ended. Boom. The storm became a gentle sprinkling and the sun came out.

We walked outside to check things out, and wouldn't you know that off to our left was the biggest, clearest, brightest rainbow any of us had ever seen in our lives.

I mean it was a full arc, going from a field way off in the distance, arching through the curve of the Earth, and ending in a group of trees beyond the sound in front of us. I know that's where Warwick Davis was hiding his pot o' gold.

As we stood admiring the brilliant colors of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, I noticed that a second rainbow was forming above the first. It was faint, and didn't extend all the way into a full arc, but there was just enough of it to see that there were two rainbows before us.

Incredibly beautiful, I tell you.

Eventually the power came back on and we got back to work, and soon enough the second rainbow disappeared, and the first grew faint and finally faded into oblivion. But little did we know what kind of portent this rainbow was.

When we got back to the production house that night, Mark the director told me that Will Patton had signed onto the movie that afternoon, probably about the same time as the rainbow appeared before us.

And this is huge. He will be the one big-name actor in our movie that will hopefully get normal people to see the film. And apparently Will is excited and nervous about it. He's been turning down movies all year, so this will be the first one he will act in, and he doesn't want to let us down because he loves the character so much. He wants to make it the best he can for us.

Shooting begins August 3. More crew are coming in on Monday, and either I'll be moving into a hotel or the bedroom upstairs. Currently, I've been sleeping on a couch in the office, so I'm always woken up by everyone else when they come down to work in the morning.

I also found out Rosemary Harris (she played Aunt May in "Spider-Man") lives in Winston-Salem and serves on the board of trustees for either the town or NCSA, I'm unsure of which. She was almost in the movie. How cool would that have been?

--Cbake