Hello from the desk of Pam Beesly. We are back at work on Season Four! Things are going very well. The scripts are hilarious...we are laughing a lot. The other day we got Steve to break in the middle of a scene - and Steve NEVER breaks! Let's see…a lot of you have been asking about the Season 3 DVD. It comes out in two weeks on September 4th. And then Season 4 starts on Thursday September 27th with a special hour long episode.
We've been working a lot of overtime to produce hour long episodes to kick off the season. There will be 4 of them! Our usual 12 hour days have expanded to 14 or 15 hour days. Crazy! Our crew is working like mad. But the scripts are amazing and SO funny. We just read a scene from the third episode that made my heart skip a beat. SO GOOD!
In other news…the music video I did with Willie Wisely is online! If you are a faithful reader of this blog you know how much I love this guy's music. Back in January we shot a music video for my favorite song – Through Any Window. I was TRHILLED when he asked me to participate and even more excited when I heard the concept for the video. The entire thing is only ONE shot. No cuts. Screenwriter, Lee Kirk ("Sad Happy Sucker" in my Top Friends) wrote the concept and story for the video. John Cabrera (you might recognize him from his role on Gilmore Girls) directed. These two are brilliant. They've worked together before. A short film called "The Man Who Invented the Moon" starring my brother-in-law Sean Gunn. I've been wanting to work with both of them for a long time.
We shot the video over 2 days. The first day was all rehearsal. John made an animated version of the song with a little cartoon me and cartoon Willie. Here we are studying the video. That's Willie on the left and John in the blue. Our Director of Photography, Scooter, is on the floor.
Next was blocking. We spent about 3 hours trying to hit all of our marks on time with the song. I loved working this way. It made the project very exciting. I got my start in theater and I was in a ballet company when I was little so this was a lot of fun for me.
The next day we arrived early and started shooting the Polaroids. This took longer than expected. Lots of wardrobe changes and set ups. But it was fun. They are real Polaroid photos. As you can see in John's hands below.
We started shooting the actual music video around noon. We messed up a ton in the beginning. Willie and I ran into each other in the stairwell and missed an entrance. A lot of times you could see our shadows as we tried to sneak past the camera as it panned. And, Willie had a hard time putting the photos down on the table straight. After over a dozen tries, we broke for lunch. Here I am crashing at lunch. I was a little sick that day too. But it helped me keep the sniffly sad look on my face.
Things picked up after lunch. Every time we got to the end of the song without a mistake we would get SO excited. We knew we were doing well if we could get past the part with the guitar. It was usually smooth sailing after that. But our director is a wicked perfectionist. If there was one little thing off, he'd make us do it again. I'm not exactly sure but I think we taped over 20 takes. Here we are near the end of the day watching what we thought was our best take. Look how serious we all are!
Oh…after you watch the video, if you are wondering about the face behind the hands on the table…that's our writer/hand model Lee Kirk. Here I am expressing my awe. He had never done hand acting before. Nice huh?
In the end…I LOVE this video. And, I'm tickled to have been a part of it. It was a very creative experience. I love Willie's music and our crew could not have been nicer. Here is the whole gang at the end of a very long day. I hope you like it! Let me know what you think. I do read all my blog comments. (But, I only read them in order. I don't read the first page over and over again. So if you comment another comment, I'll probably miss it.)
Enjoy! (And, thanks to Tori for teaching me how to put the video into this blog! See...I told you I read my blog comments!)
A Note from our Director...So, to clarify: The video was indeed all done in one take. In fact, it was take 37 that we ended up using. However, the picture you see above is of us watching take 35. We got pretty close with it, but if you notice in the shot, my mouth is moving. And it was not welcomed news for this tired crew, I'm afraid. Luckily, though, we got it two takes later.