I haven't time to update the blog in a couple weeks, but we've been busy finishing up the first two-thirds of "Resurrection". There are a few scenes yet to go, while we plan to film the final scenes.

On the last Sunday in April, Kymra and Rob and I got together to film a critical scene in the Derry House kitchen. There isn't much going on, action-wise, but we finally get some of the exposition we've been hinting at earlier in the film. One of the problems with "The Sacrifice" was that it was extremely heavy on exposition, and ran slow, as a result (up until the end). We've been trying to avoid that in "Resurrection", keeping all the scenes short and just dropping bits and pieces of exposition in, as needed. (There is still a scene in which Jonathan reads from a book, but we've tried some different techniques to hopefully spice things up, during that scene.)

The kitchen scene also gives Kymra a chance to expand a bit on Laura's character, and make her seem a bit more knowledgeable than she seemed in the first film. She's a librarian, after all!

We also managed to finally film the scene in which Laura is psychically attacked by David. That scene is one of our most fragmented -- we've shot bits and pieces of it over the course of a year (a brief bit appeared in the trailer) and now I finally get to splice it together. (At that, there's still one critical shot missing.)

The first weekend in May started out disastrously, from our point of view. We'd spent a month making arrangements to film a baby goat (otherwise known as a "kid", but talking about sacrificing kids upsets people) at a farm in Hubbardston, MA. ("Cauldron Farm" -- http://www.cauldronfarm.com/ ) for a mock-Satanic sacrifice scene. In addition to assuring our friends at Cauldron Farm that the goat was not going to be harmed in any way, we had to make arrangements to get several of our cast members down there. (The location was a bit remote.)

So, we get there on Saturday, to participate in a Beltane ritual at the farm and meet the star of the scene (the goat), and...it's pouring rain. And cold. Plus, the weather report indicated it would only get worse on Sunday, when we were planning on filming.

The goat, for his part, was adorable. He had huge floppy ears and immediately jumped up to start licking my face, the moment I was introduced to him. He also, we discovered later, made a tragic, bleating sound when he was distressed that could melt the coldest heart. Perfect. (Technically, the sacrifice scene should have had an adult goat in it -- it was supposed to take place in December, after all. But cute and tugging-at-the-heart-strings trumps logic, in this situation.)

I made the decision to plow ahead, unless it was absolutely pouring on us by Sunday afternoon. There were too many factors to easily re-schedule the scene.

Sunday morning, I woke from a nightmare in which I arrived at the farm with my cast to discover that the rain was coming down in buckets, and found that yes, it was raining. But I checked the weather report and there was a glimmer of hope for the afternoon. So I kept putting off canceling. By the time we left for the farm (a two-hour drive from Derry), it had stopped raining, and by the time we arrived, the sun was actually starting to show itself. We filmed the scene in a moderately dry, sunlit field.

With the rain gone, the biggest problem became bugs. They were suddenly everywhere, including crawling on the camera lens, looking like giant monsters from a 1950s B-horror movie. But overall, things went off without a hitch -- the goat was adorable on cue, Rob remembered his hastily-improvised Latin, and the shots looked good. No deaths, no injuries.

It was a good day.