We started building sets for my next short this weekend. "Myopic Cowboy" will shoot on Sunday, March 2nd, at the Playground Theatre, and will require transforming a very nice black box theatre into a saloon set. Thanks to the incredible talent and planning of Master Carpenter Heather Elam, we're off to an excellent start. We drove out to Home Depot Saturday to buy supplies. I had a sneaking suspicion at checkout that the number they charged us was strangely low. Sure enough, after securing the seven faux-wooden panels and plywood to the top of Heather's car and loading in the 1x4s, 2x4s and 2x6s (I sound construction-y!), I checked the receipt and found that they didn't charge us for any of the panels or plywood. We basically (accidentally) walked out with about $100 in building materials. So Home Depot gets a credit.
Afterwards, we transported everything from the car to my basement, Ryan Gilmour having very nicely chipped a safe path through the glacier forming in the back walkway of our condo building. Every time it snows, people trudging through to walk dogs form a new glacier that gets incredibly slippery and dangerous if you're carrying anything heavier than a fountain pen.
My original plan called for us to buy everything next Saturday, start building immediately after the final Playground show, and then tear everything down after we finished shooting and before the evening show on Sunday night. The modified plan is only slightly less insane. Now, we'll build 80-90% of the sets in my basement, transport them to the Playground immediately after the final Saturday night show, finish and rig Sunday morning until the cast arrives about 8:30 AM.
So far, we've got a bar and several panels of what we're calling "wainscotting" for the back wall. The Playground is a very wide theatre, so I thought the majority of the cost of this project would be the back wall paneling. Thanks to Home Depot, I can now blow that money on my weight in M&Ms, if I please. As the week winds on, I'll be finishing the top of the bar, buying sheets to cover the back wall of the Playground, and staining the shelving for the area behind the bar. I've got a talented cast and director and can't wait to see how this turns out. Basically, Sunday calls for a lot of coffee and optimism.
I'm very excited. Can't you feel it?
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