Weekend Update...

I'm sorry that my posts have been limited to one a week. We work, basically, fourteen hours a day. My only free time tends to be on the weekends. This Saturday we had to work. Most of us knew this was going to happen due to the illness of the previous director and losing a day of shooting. This Saturday was a long (regular) day...call time at 11am, wrap at 12am. It is very unfair of production to have call time on Monday morning at 7am. It is true that the weekend breaks turnaround, but this was not a true weekend. Once I went to bed, I slept about nine hours and, although I needed it, I felt like part of my weekend day was already gone. Tonight I'm going to see Hancock with a friend from production. In Bogota, when going to the movies, you have to be careful before you buy the tickets to know if the movie will be subtitled or dubbed. I would kind of like to see Wall-E, but the movie theater near me is only playing that one dubbed. Batman is also playing, but I've never seen Batman Begins, and I'm told it would be good to see that first before venturing into the second Christian Bale movie. So Hancock it is, which is okay, because I wanted to see that anyway.

The director of this current episode is Jesus Trevino, which has been great, because I've worked with him briefly on Bones. He has been trusting me, I feel, a lot more than the other recent directors, which has made my job a lot easier. In addition, he speaks Spanish, so he is able to communicate with the camera crew. This alone has made setup time a lot simpler. Our only drawback has been the schedule, which is so packed, that any hiccup in the day causes the house of cards to tumble.

Our last episode guest-starred Nichole Tom from "The Nanny" and "The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman." She was great to work with. On her last day of shooting, I got my picture with her (I always feel weird asking things like that). At this point, I'm a little hesitant to post show pictures on here. If you would like to see the picture, feel free to email me (ari@jhu.edu). Our current episode guest-stars Holt McCallany, who played Ricky on Heroes. If I remember correctly, Ricky was the brother and band leader of that Irish crew that took in Peter Petrelli when he had no memory.

Unfortunately, this weekend, with almost no free time and going to see the movie, there is not much new to report. Yesterday was Colombia's independence day. This morning, there was a peace parade, and as I walked down the street in my normal clothes, I completely stuck out because EVERYBODY, and I mean everybody, was wearing a white tee shirt for peace. I felt like there was a target on my back because my clothes didn't show that I stood for peace.

We go on hiatus from August 7 - 12, which is less time than they had told us at the beginning of the show. I have to talk to our travel coordinator because I would like to travel to Cartagena during part of that time. It's going to be expensive because that, as well, is a holiday weekend, so many people will be going away. I need to arrange a flight (one hour flight) soon before it becomes too costly. As I said in an earlier post, this country is full of holidays.

All right...I have other stuff to take care of before the movie. I hope everyone is doing well, and I'll talk to you all soon.