It's been a busy few weeks. After the crowd scene on the 18th, we went back and did some pick-up shots at the same location, since we'd run out of daylight the first time and I decided there needed to be a couple more shots from within the car, and shots of Jonathan looking at the forest. Jeff Delano also allowed himself to be chained to the wrought-iron fence again (as seen in our trailer), to re-do a shot that didn't come out very well last Winter.

We also did some shooting on a dramatic scene with Mrs. Henniker (Claire Curtis). It isn't done, because we could only shoot the parts that didn't involve a truck. She's working on getting the truck out there, so we can finish that up. It's really only three extremely brief shots.

On the 9th, we got permission from the Manchester police to do a scene in the pavilion at Derry Field Park. Erich and I couldn't actually make it to the location until the afternoon we were going to shoot the scene, so I was pleased to find that it was perfect, in terms of the way it looked, and even had lights , which made our night-time shoot infinitely easier.

Less appealling, was the freezing wind that whipped through the pavillion that afternoon. It was dangerously cold, and blew powdered snow everywhere. Even if we could do the scene without getting frostbite, it was likely we wouldn't have any useable sound.

I came close to canceling, but Rob pushed to do the scene, so we met there after dark. Fortunately, the wind had nearly disappeared. It was cold, but not at all as bad as it had been earlier, and we had no trouble with the sound. The footage from the scene looks really nice, although a bit surreal in the light from the pavilion. At one point, Jonathan is supposed to show Nathan a supernatural ball of fire, sitting in his hand. This effect will be done digitally, but we had to illuminate Rob's hand and Cory's face with an orange light. This ended up being accomplished by using a super-bright LED, wrapped in an orange Easter-egg-shaped gel, meant to stick to a window as a decoration.

This past weekend, we returned to the Dover Middle School - now an office building - to shoot a scene in which Laura drops Jonathan off at school, then the police show up. Since this is directly across the street from the Dover police station, and Kevin was wearing a real police uniform that we ordered online, we again got permission, to avoid any accusations of impersonating police officers. By now, unfortunately, our police car magnetic details are looking a bit shabby, and tend to barely hang on the side of the car. Few people would be fooled. But one by-stander was last year, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

The footage looks good, but again we had problems with wind. This may be the only scene we've filmed so far that needs dialog replacement. Ugh.

We're nearly done with all of the outdoor Winter shots. There are some night shots left and a few brief scenes in the parking lot at the clinic, which can hopefully be framed so we don't see the fact that the snow is melting rapidly. If we're lucky, we'll get one more good storm, before the Spring really sets in. Everyone else in New Hampshire will hate us for wishing it, but, hey - this is art!