Day six. Warner Pacific College (aka for GTD: Baker High School). This is the first group of teens that showed up as our extras. We were supposed to have a lot more, so again, we made a little look like a lot. One thing that should be said is that the original script called for much taller bleachers (more on that later). I kicked myself because it was one of the only locations I didn't check out ahead of time.
	Rick works with the extras, pairing them up as dance partners. I'm not sure everyone knew what they were getting into, but they were game.
	Rick lines up more extras. Off to the right in the pink shirt is Melissa Wilent (daughter of Steve Wilent - GTD Co-writer). She plays Vanessa, the dance coordinator who angrily comes after Phil for messing up everything. She was very understanding when we had to reduce her role because of the bleacher limitation.
	More extras show up. You'll notice a glass basketball hoop just at the edge of the stage. After taking a good look at it we found that it was permanently mounted, no movement any direction. The problem is that it was directly line of sight for "Jason" to see the dance audience. We decided to shoot around it.
	We also had to contend with the lighting. Rick would agree that this was one of our more difficult locations. The dance was supposed to be at night and with those windows shining the light in we compensated by fogging it up a lot and using redder lighting to offset the blue color balance of sunlight.
	Our dance. The music was pumped through the band speakers. Rick continues to coordinate the extras, getting them in just the right place to make the dance look big.
	A break in shooting for some fun. Don't you just love Michael's shirt. I felt bad because we never really saw him in this dance sequence, but he didn't seem to mind. The girl with her arm around him was our kisser, Jennifer. The group in the back has some fun of their own.
	I caught this shot of Chris as he was coming back from playing frizbee on an upper field of the campus during lunch. Teenagers always seem to make time for fun.
	I almost burst out laughing after I took this shot. I wish I could have gotten some of what Chris was saying on tape. He had these three girls, who were friends of his already, talking very seriously about the role of "Phil" and what it took for him to accomplish it. You've got to know Chris, he's not like this very often, and the girls seemed to be hanging on every word.
	The band setup scene. Ahh, the basketball hoop, that lovely basketball hoop. I imagined a cool shot with a close-up on "Jason" as he sung and then a pull back over the crowd, but it was not to be. As mentioned above, always check out a location before shooting there.
	Jacob practices the song. By now I had the songs on CD. On one of the days off I went and purchased a CD burner. It made it a lot easier to re-cue on location instead of using the DAT player. I think it was Danny backstage doing the cuing using my laptop.
	We kept the camera on the jib all day. It makes it a lot easier to get our static shots quickly. Because it was a slow song Jacob started singing the song in a more subdued manner, which tended to look flat on-screen. This was one of those times when I hopped out of my directors chair, jumped up on stage and stood right next to the camera helping to bring our the passion that "Jason" would have felt singing this song.
	I was trying to get the jib monitor in the shot, but the flash was on and washed it out. It took Dana a while to actually assemble the jib with all of the sections, wires and cables.
	Since the girls are not in the performance section of this scene they take a quick nap next to our gear.
	Smoke please. Rick had everything on that trailer. His smoke machine was used in two band sequences and also served in our smoking car and treehouse scenes. I remember asking Rick about smoke detectors and if we would set them off. Not a problem. Then, halfway into our shoot, the entire building erupts in a loud buzz. I immediately ran to the head office and told them to call the fire department and not to roll trucks. Fortunately they were on a campus system and the call would have to be manually made. I was relieved, the fire department charges a lot for false alarms.
	Although the smoke machine was cool, it was also small and couldn't necessarily cover the whole stage area. Here we concentrate on Chris's scene playing and looking off to an imaginary spot where "Nicole" would be standing. If you look close you can see the fog machine sitting right behind the drums. Rick used a 2K light in the background with some diffusion.
	The camera always looked so cool sitting on the jib.
	Our bass player striking a pose.
	Now that's more like it. Give me some passion behind that playing! In the movie we never see Jacob playing the guitar, well not really playing. There's a good reason, he can't really play. I always hated those movies where it's obvious the person can't play and they shoot it anyway.
	Dana on the jib again.
	Jacob continues to practice. Cool shot with the jib and all.
	The smoke rises above Chris as he plays. That smoke was sometimes hard to control. In a couple of different takes Chris disappeared in a could of smoke. It was reminiscent of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
	I go over the script with Chris. His 'looks' are to cover some voice over sections so I want to make sure he understands what he's thinking in his head as he acts.
	A very dark shot of Jacob, Michael, and Chris.
	Chris plays on in the background as Jacob sings.
	A very cute shot of the 'fearsome four'. This was taken when we were just about wrapped up. That day we were supposed to also shoot the 'table tip' scene, but ran out of time. It's always hard as a director/producer when you run out of that valuable commodity, time. We came back a week or so later and concentrated on that back wall area.