…Production…

Ohhhhh………

15 days. 15 days. 15 days.

So I think I've stated over and over again we started in the middle of October 2008.

The first day of shooting was in Lomita, CA. It involved Grover's apartment and the various tragedies that took place there. The Bambi dinner, the stripper visit, so at this stage the family room of the rented home was still painted white and stacked high with cardboard boxes.

We had a good first day, a little light on craft services… a little understaffed. Eh, but what'd you expect? :)

We were shooting over six pages per day in order to get done on time. Can I have a big 'Thank you' for caffeine and sugar? I love them, may they never be restricted by the FDA.

The majority of the shoot was in the Lomita house. One of our next spots though was a park in Torrance. Originally we thought that this park was in Lomita… which would have been great considering Lomita's permit prices. Torrance is a bit more pricey BUT I found they seemed a bit less eager to assign police to the shoots. Lomita wanted to assign a police officer when we wanted to shoot out doors. The cost of hiring the officer makes that location equal in cost to Torrance's actual permit cost. Anyway, the point I was rambling to was it's probably wise to get a city map (duh, Claire) and make sure certain areas are actually where you think they are. This saves time and embarrassment when you go down to the permit office and request a location they have no control over. The map is also helpful for when you request hidden areas of the city. A few locations we found in Torrance were right on the Lomita/Torrance border and the permit office had to be shown the spot we were talking about. It made me feel very smart to show them a section of their city they didn't know was in their jurisdiction.

Right away we were dealing with the stress of being understaffed. Don't skimp on Production Assistants, it costs you more to not have enough people. We could have used about three more people on set. The Grover Complex was such an art heavy film we definitely needed more people in the Art Department. As it turned out Raisa Miranda and Elizabeth Garner somehow managed to get everything done. They stayed many extra nights though and during the shooting days worked their asses off along with Brad Harris and Matthew Horan.

During production they had to repaint Grover's apartment and turn it into Bambi's house. They also had to finish Ricky's complicated room that involved a cowboy mural and various tributes to Ricky himself. There were no real days off for Art Department. Not that there were many days off for anyone else…

There was one particular day that stands out in shooting… on this day we were shooting in that park in Torrance. Fernando had to swap his car for the convertible that Grover drove during the film. There was absolute chaos in the morning resulting from discovering we needed an extra $30,000 to avoid shut down and during this we didn't pick up the car and did not pick up an actress. These two omissions were eventually solved but not before Fernando had to act in a scene where Grover was excited to be making his movie.

Talk about putting up major blinders to the outside world to get through the day…