The Attic Door

Danny Daneau
Director

The original idea for the Reliving a Monster series was not to go through a day by day account of the production process. That will be seen coming this January when we premiere our video podcast series, Making a Monster. The idea behind these postings have been to shed light on some of the moments that stand out for me while directing the production through the ups and downs of feature filmmaking. However, ending today, I will finish my recap of the first three days of production that were cut short due to an unexpected illness with our lead actor, Jake…

It was beautiful Thursday morning in Kanab, Utah. I awoke to Day 3 with a renewed feeling of hope and excitement after getting a decent nights rest. Day 2 of production ran so smooth that many of my inner worries were melting away. Today was going to be an even lighter day as the one prior in terms of pages and camera setups I needed to get through. Things were definitely looking up.

Coming onto the film, Madison had already been booked for only two days of our shooting schedule to finish shooting her part in the film Jack and the Beanstock, starring Chevy Chase and James Earl Jones. So for today we would only have her on set for half the day before she needed to travel back to Los Angeles. This meant our entire second half of the day would be with just Jake shooting sequences that only starred the character of Darrell.

We were preparing to shoot our final shot with both actors when Jake looked at me and said, “Danny, I don’t feel good.” As the final words left his mouth, so did everything he ate that morning.

Immediately we took him outside and to our set nurse (who happens to be my sister, Christine) and called lunch. Erica, Corey the 1st AD, and myself discussed what our options were for the rest of the day. Jake was not getting any better and we had a crew of people who would just sit around for the rest of the day. So when everyone, minus Jake, arrived on set we informed them that we would wrap out the house and take the next day off while our actor recoups.

This was not the craziest plan in the world as it did reset his work week established by the child labour laws and Screen Actor Guild guidelines. At the same time, we were now officially an entire day behind and we were only on Day 3. With this sort of bad luck, what was the other 21 days of shooting going to look like?

I tried to keep a positive mentality and looked forward to the day off to regroup and learn from all the challenges brought forth thus far.

Technorati Tags: Jack and the Beanstock, Chevy Chase, James Earl Jones, flu, Screen Actors Guild, SAG