Sine Fine Films: Survivor's Club - Don't Let the Actors Blow Away

There are a lot of days when we film in bad weather - days so hot your eyeballs feel like they're frying, days so cold your hands might fall off, and rain pouring so hard you could almost drown on set. Each month we'll remember one of those horrible weather days and celebrate the survivors who braved the elements in order to film. Why would we want to remember those days? Because going through hell on set has a way of bringing everyone closer together when they can say they survived mother nature AND filming on a Yibble set.

DON’T LET THE ACTORS BLOW AWAY!

The Windiest Film Shoot

There are a lot of days that are a little windy, most often in the spring. At the MacLeod farm it’s almost always windy, but not so bad that anyone is likely to blow away. But there’s always that one shoot that breaks all the records for various types of weather.

One night when we were filming scenes for Episodes 1 and 3 of Dream Chasers at the parking garage on the SIU campus in Carbondale, IL it became super windy. I don’t think it had been that windy all day or I might have cancelled the shoot (though knowing me probably night – if I don’t cancel for torrential rain or freezing blizzards why shut down a shoot over a little wind?). The wind had really picked up before we started filming our first scene from Episode 1, and huge gusts were hurling leaves across the streets and giving the actors a bit of a hard time walking and talking without being blown away themselves.

Aside from staying on the ground there were a few other things the wind kept messing with – the script, the sound, and the actors’ hair (especially Morgan’s). The only way to keep the script from flying everywhere was to keep it firmly closed and either in someone’s hands or under a coat or bookbag. Since no one (not even me) had the script memorized we had to keep peeking at the script without it blowing away which was quite a challenge.

The audio was a big problem too – or would have been if we didn’t have a boom mic with a windsock. THANK GOD FOR BOOM MICS! Luckily that was during the years I actually had access to a boom mic (thank you SPC-TV) before Brittany and Kate could lend me theirs. I need to get one of my own ASAP. Anyway, the boom allowed us to hear the actors’ lines but it had to be close to them. At one point the wind was so fierce Morgan actually had to hold it low, pointing up at herself, and it kept getting in the shot (boom mics are not called handhelds for a reasons).

The other problem was a bit of a hairy one. Wind + long hair = not good, and also not tasty. For some reason Morgan had the worst time with the wind whipping her hair in her face, possibly because hers was longer than anyone else’s. I’m not sure how much of her hair she accidentally ate that night, but it could not have been a pleasant experience.

It took a lot longer to film the scenes because of having to pause to check the script or brush back hair, but it had a nice…um…windblown look to a few intense/dramatic scenes so…bonus? By the time we were filming the scenes from Episode 3 on the top of the parking garage the wind had died down a little so I was less worried the actors would blow away, which was very good considering we were a lot higher up at that point.

Let’s face it – I can talk about it all I want but wind is one of those things that’s hard to tell how really bad it is unless you can see it for yourself. So watch the video below to see what the actors really had to put up with.