Call Me Cap'n Crunch-time

Or actually don't. Because I bet that's probably copyright infringement. Who owns Cap'n Crunch anyway. Post? General Mills? Probably not what you're reading this for, anyway... So I'll move on.

It is sort of a crunch-time, though. Saturday afternoon we'll be doing some lighting and camera tests on the Wicked Witch of the West make-up and costume. Marie Rizza, the actress portraying our WWW, will be trying it all on together for the first time, and we'll try out some different lighting schemes, camera angles, and various combinations therein, all of which will inform how the Witch scenes will later be directed.

Everything's all set to go. Sean lives in Virginia, make-up artist Norman Rowe lives in Virginia, Marie lives in Virginia, the prosthetics and costumes are in Virginia... Yessir, all set to go for camera tests in good ol VA. Except... of course... I'M in Maine... And the camera as well.

So I've got a bit of a drive ahead of me. About twelve hours, actually. I'll be leaving tomorrow evening, and driving through the night until I reach the sunny shores of Dahlgren, Virginia. So if anybody for some reason holds a grudge and wants to bump me off (I know you're reading this, Raimi)... I'll be somewhere on I-95 South from Maine to Virginia between the hours of about 6:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Plan your bombing accordingly.

With a journey like that ahead of me, to be followed by a five week or longer stay away from home, some pretty intense packing is required. Which is what I'm up to now. Or rather... What I SHOULD be up to now. I'm currently putting off the packing by taking the time to tell you about the packing I'm doing... Packing blows. And this particular jaunt requires me to pack up two PC's in addition to all my clothing and shooting necessities. So. Many. Cables. I can feel the aneurysm starting to form already.

But it's not all packing, oh no. There are other, more interesting things afoot. Slightly, anyway. The Wicked Witch of the West, or WWW as she's known anytime you forget about your caps lock and try to type an url, shares three scenes with our gal Dorothy. Long-time followers will know that our Dorothy footage has already been shot. Two years ago, in fact. In da can. Marie gets to dictate the flow of any other Wicked Witch scene, but not these three. She'll need to adhere to the timing and rhythm set by young Mariellen Kemp back in June of 2009.

Sean had a little discussion with Marie, and she said she'd be more comfortable doing the scenes if she had time to familiarize herself with the scenes as shot. Since I needed to edit the Dorothy footage anyway, to determine where my Witch cameras need to be, I didn't see any harm in getting it done a little early so that she could have that prep time.

It was mostly a straight-forward edit of our existing footage featuring a dreary, despondent Dorothy:

"I don't understand, what would Michael Vick want with poor Toto? He's only a little dog..."

 But I also needed the occasional cut-away of the Witch, or perhaps a Winged Monkey. Which necessitated the creation of some shoddy stand-in CGI:

Sir Topham Hatt stares down a Weeping Angel with pretty slick headphones...

 Or perhaps a hastily scribbled doodle:

What does Lord Voldemort want with that rather well-dressed egg?

 Though they may be uglier than the current monstrosity we're all letting Joan Rivers call a human face... they get the job done. The edits are finished, and I'll have these rough cuts on Marie's laptop hard-drive Saturday afternoon, leaving her with a week to prepare. For the Dorothy scenes, at least. We'll be filming other Witch material starting July 4th, so be on the look out for a plethora of Witch-related posts coming soon to the blog...

Now I'm going to go actually pack. Maybe. I have some Colbert on the DVR...

As an aside... I just looked it up, Cap'n Crunch is a Quaker Oats thing. TOTALLY should have guessed, the good Captain looks like the Quaker Oats guy's cocaine-addled screw-up of a little brother.