Ext:
Hannibal Missouri

There’s an old joke about Missouri.  “If you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes.”  After a week of sunny skies and 60 degrees, a lot of stress and even more antacids being taken, a lovely freak weather pattern answered my wishes. Regardless of the sunny and soggy weather outside, as luck would have it, Hannibal got hit by a freak snow storm with 6 inches of glorious white fluffy snow in 12 hours.  And this worked for us two-fold: 1) we couldn’t actually film the last scenes for fall, because they are exteriors, and everything was covered in snow; and 2) but we didn’t have to lose the weekend because the gentleman who is letting us film in our Hannibal location was going to allow us to film on his property.  So after much organizing and phone calling and arranging we packed up the van and headed to Hannibal with Winter cast in tow.  (Actually Mandy met us in Hannibal, but you get the idea….)

When we got to Hannibal, Chad had news.  He spoke to his neighbor, and his land is much flatter, and easier to access, so he got us permission to film there.  Needless to say, Chad rocks!!!  And a big thank you to the Gary Denn for permission to film on their property and his sons Dillon and Dalton who pitched in and helped us move props and equipment.  (Sorry about almost waking the baby.)

So after taking a guided tour of the property, we figured out where we would be shooting which segments, and got started.

First up, reshooting the intro scene with Mr. B.  “Do you have anything like an open field with tall grass?”   A few minutes walk and Dillon took me to a perfect spot that matched what was already in the can,.  So that one went like clockwork.  Mr. Barrister shot his scene and retired to his trailer, and we moved on to the next items.  (Mr B is a nice guy, but he has a serious stick up his ass!)  …. Sorry…. inside joke.

I have to give all the credit here to Clark and Julian.  They showed up prepared, were ready to switch gears at a moments notice, and were able to just concentrate on the performances.  If it wasn’t for them both being quintessential professionals, we would never have been able to get this done this fast.

At the end of the day we wound up getting everything but two brief sequences shot.  The snow wasn’t the problem.  The cold was.  We had some technical difficulties because of the cold, the o-rings were not sealing and holding pressure, so we called it a day.

We’re pretty much home at this point. I can finally turn off the 3 AM circus that keeps me awake.

Sunday gave us a sudden rise in temperature, and almost like it never happened, the snow was gone.   We spent Sunday prepping the interior location for shooting.  Moving stuff we’re we need it, cleaning up, and getting the location ready for dressing.  But I’m looking most forward to this weekend of shooting the last bits of fall this weekend, and then moving to the winter interior stuff.

In other news, the rough cut of Summer is done, and the rough cut of Fall is started.  So we’re quickly nearing the finish line.  There’s so much going on at the moment I’m having trouble keeping it all straight.  Lot’s more to come.