Winter Vacation - Day Four

The longest day so far...

Up early and out in service with Jeremy and Molly. The temperature was somewhere in the twenties. Bracing! We got a little something warm to drink at Meldiva, and I got to finally check out the place we were supposed to play our acoustic warm-up show. Nice place, hopefully we'll tape a scene there shortly.

We parted ways and headed over to Dean College to meet up with Jainie from the Facilities department. She had returned my pre-departure voicemail looking for a place to shoot the Random Kate video. Wow, what a contrast to all the high school staffers I have been talking to. She, and all the other Dean staff we ran into, just bent over backwards to accomodate us. It was like it was a done deal before we showed up, and we would only have to pick which buildings and rooms we'd like to use. And they did it in our budget, too!

While talking to Fran we noticed the office next door, with the name Vincent Bravoco. Hey, wait a minute, Vincent Bravoco was the long-time drummer for The Moon Is No More, was he not? Indeed! However, this turns out to be Vinnie "Rocko" Bravoco's father, who we had heard about for a long time, but only now got to meet. Is there any further doubt that this is the perfect place for the video?

Fran took us on a tour of the campus, in search of the perfect locations. We finally worked our way to the older buildings, and the Memorial Hall, with it's rich wood paneling, high ceilings, and neo-classical architecture will be the centerpiece to this video. Think of it as private school students go wild! We'll go tomorrow and sign the paperwork. No one will be around for us to bother or worry about, just the campus facilities staff to let us in and lock up afterwards. Sweet!

After that we head out for a half hour drive south to Best Buy in Attleboro, MA in search of a decent on-camera microphone. The web site reported that the store had two of the Sony ECM-MSD1 we were looking for, and so did the in-store computer, but there were none to be found. So, we headed out another half hour further away, fighting traffic and hunger all the way. This Best Buy, in Warwick, RI, did have the four microphones they reported to have in stock. Now there's a surprise. I had bet Angie that since the computer said they had four, they might have one, two max.

We got in the car and unpacked the mic on the way back. Not five minutes out, and probably with the Best Buy still in the rear view, we realized someone had absconded with the tiny battery that was supposed to be in the package. No matter, I was not turning around and fighting the insane, and inexplicable, mall traffic. We'd find a battery when we got back to the relative calm of Franklin. An hour later, we hit CVS and found a battery. Five bucks for this quarter-inch round piece of metal!

We headed over to Jeremy's to begin rolling on the Chinese Movie. It was like starting over, I had to sell Jeremy on the idea all over again. And it was his idea in the first place! Beyond not seeing the point, he doubted we would be able to pull it together in the tight schedule we have. He may be right, but we wore him down, and he was throwing out great ideas after not too long. However, he had a talk to write. So, I headed out to buy some refreshments (San Pelligrino Aranciata orange soda, Pepperidge Farms Mint Milano cookies, and Dole sliced Pineapple rounds (that's for the film!)). By the time I got back, prepped the equipment, and cleaned up the house's little details to get the look and lighting I wanted, Jeremy was almost done and ready to start shooting.

So, we shot about a half hour of footage, improvised some good things, and basically got Scene 1a shot. In tearing down, I realized that I hadn't turned on the power to the hard-won new microphone, so we have no audio for the footage. Fortunately, the audio is not as important for this scene, or I'd be jumping out a window after all we went through today. We worked out a rough schedule, and it looks like we can get most of the movie shot by the end of day on Thursday.

After this, we headed out to Bertucci's in Holliston, MA for some dinner. The waitress didn't speak English very well, and there were lots of mess-ups besides the food simply not being quite what it used to be. Time to scratch Bertucci's off the list of must-eat restaurants on our East Coast trips. We worked out some ideas for the Random Kate video while we ate, and put together a practice schedule for TMINM. Wow, is this going to be tight!

On the ride home, Jeremy pulled up some of the rarer TMINM songs on his iPod (with iRadio, or whatever the in-car radio broadcasting accessory is), and we all sang along loud. Good memories. Dropped Jeremy off at home, said good night to Molly, and it's off to BMH to turn in.

Let me break this down in case you didn't catch it: I didn't eat a thing until 9:00pm today. I had a beverage at 11:30am and 7:00pm, and that was the extent of it. I'm pretty punchy, and I feel burned out. I can only compare it how I felt after twelve hours in the Phoenix sun waiting in line for the Pumpkins surprise Machina show in 2000. Burned out!

I'm going to try to get some pictures up for future posts. Hey, Jer, when does that new digi cam of yours arrive? I guess I could take stills with my camera, if I got a memory card.

Random thought, you can make anything sound intelligent and important by using a learned (that's learn-ed) British accent. Try it, say "I'm spicy." (Warning: This may not work in Great Brittain and her various territories.)

Yikes... good night all.