Day 7: Still Jenny From The Block

What? You have no idea what the title to this blog means? It means that J-Lo, otherwise known as Jennifer Lopez, was in my film today.

Nah, not really. But she was at the hotel next to the coffee shop we shot at. Let me start from the beginning.

Sip is a little coffee shop at the corner of Houston and St. Mary's that I was introduced to while I was working at Rumbo. Whenever we had to do a photoshoot for the fashion page and we needed to find somewhere hip and available to shoot, we'd try there. I stopped in there a few shoots ago and they graciously agreed to give us run of the place.

Just before we started, Juan had told me that Jennifer Lopez and her husband Marc Anthony were staying next door and that her security entourage had been in the day before for lunch. He said that J-Lo swears by the hotel, The Valencia, and that the hotel even special ordered her some super expensive pillows because J-Lo just loves them. Anyhow, I didn't give it much thought and we began our day.

Well, the shoot went great. We set up Naomi (aka Samantha) and Luis (aka Rick) on a bar next to the windows facing St. Mary's and shot from outside the cafe. Juan, the cafe manager, even came outside to clean the windows for us. Talk about class. We shot inside and even got to use the wheel chain in this back-track, spin dolly move for the alternate ending of the movie. We did have some minor issues with lighting, but Hank, as resourceful as any great DP is, got it figured out.

I'm getting to the blog title, don't worry.

We finished shooting the Samantha/Rick scene and moved outside to shoot the scene with Theo (aka James).

So, we're fixing to shoot the James/Rick scene. Hank loaded the camera into it's protective bag to keep it cool while he and Theo went back to the vehicles to fetch Theo's wardrobe. Naomi, Luis and I stayed behind to watch all the stuff. The entire time we were there, a tall, lean black guy with dreads had been watching us as he stood next to this black four door SUV. This was J-Lo's security guy. They were fixing to take her someplace. I think they thought we were either news media or paparatzi because the security guy kept eye-ballin' us the entire time we were sitting there.

Hank and Theo came back and we set up to shoot. I went inside and told Laura, the on site manager, that we'd be outside and almost out of their hair. When I came out, they had just loaded J-Lo into the vehicle and were pulling away.

We were sitting at the corner of Houston and St. Mary's on the Houston side. As J-Lo-Mobile started forward, Luis says, "Can we wave at her?" I said, "Knock yourself out."

The GMC stopped at the light and was right next to us. Luis starts to wave. She had the window rolled down, turns to Luis and says, "Hey, how's it going?" The light turns green and the car makes a turn and is gone.

All of us giggled at the prospect that J-Lo might have thought we were going to take her picture so she decided to be "Jenny From The Block" long enough to give us some face time. HA!

Anyhow, enough about J-Lo.

The rest of the shoot went just as good, but with sound issues. The day we'd showed up to scout the location, traffic was low, sound was low and it seemed to be a little more empty. Well, not today. We had buses every 15 minutes, lots of people driving cars with really loud engines and just about every other piece of ambient noise you could dream of. The boom was catching everything.

We tried taping it to the wall, under the table and between Rick and James, but we were still catching all kinds of pollution. Eventually, we settled on getting the master shot with them talking, despite the noise and doing two pick up shots on both of them to catch the dialogue.

The martini was Theo and Luis walking down this path above the Riverwalk on their way to the coffee shop.

Oh, I almost forgot, I semi-auditioned a guy that I'd seen at the IFMASA cattle call a month ago. Will Carter Jr is the actor's name. I had to scrap my original Frantic Man idea: a small, squirrelly guy and go for a tall, black guy. I think he can pull it off. I hope he can pull it off. What I'm looking for is the energy, not so much what the actor looks like. It's been so hard to cast that part that I'm not sure what other direction to go in.

With all luck, everything left will get done tomorrow. And what is that, you ask?:
1. Theo's broken window scene
2. Frantic Man meets Rick
3. Frantic Man meets Drunk Guy
4. Rick saves the day
5. Rick & James leave the Milam

I'm nervous and excited at the proposition of tomorrow being the last day of principal photography.

I still have high hopes that Naomi will be able to come out one last time so we can get her and Luis in their alternate take at the HEB parking lot. But if she can't, I've already found a way around that.

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