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Sunday, July 26, 2009

Day 7 of Take Me Home: Auto Shop in Burbank

Whew! We are done filming but I had a killer case of bronchitis so I took a couple days off from everything. I'll pick back up where I left off on the diary of our filmmaking. 

Here's Day 7 of the filming of Take Me Home:

We needed an auto shop that could cheat for being in the desert. Our two characters get stuck in the middle of the desert on the way from NY to LA and they are towed to an auto shop. On the road trip portion of the film, we got footage of the characters waiting for their car to be fixed. So now we needed to film the actual auto shop moment in LA. 

This wouldn't be easy as we would have to match the look from the desert to the look of Burbank. Sound difficult? Yep, it was. We had the footage loaded on a computer on set by our Red Media Manager Dillon and still pictures to reference. 

The set up took a long time but we think we worked it out. The proof will be in the pudding when we start editing and coloring the film. Luckily, audiences are usually pretty forgiving when it comes to faking locations so our fingers are crossed. 

We worked at an auto shop in Burbank. We had tried to avoid filming in Burbank as we already had a permit in Los Angeles. But this auto shop worked best. So we got a permit in Burbank, which is probably the toughest permit office in California. The permits in Burbank go through the police department and they are extremely organized and precise in their requirements. And the permit is costly. 

Despite the permit process, the shoot went pretty smooth. A Burbank police officer stopped by to say he thought our cars were blocking his driveway but it turned out to not be us! Yay! And we had our trusty permit with us proving we were legal. (At a number of our locations, we had people drop by saying, "are you even legal?" And every time, we were!)

We also went a little longer than expected at the auto shop and had to pay twice the location fee due to the overage. Ouch! 

Overall, Day 7 was a success and we had a few beers at wrap to celebrate. And that was the last day I would be healthy on this shoot! 

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