Sunday, August 5, 2007

It's a wrap!


There's only one thing more satisfying than wrapping a film and that's actually seeing it on the screen. OK, technically there are a ton of things more satisfying than wrapping a film (Sex springs instantly to mind and I'm sure I can come up with a few more things).

That all said, we wrapped filming on Room 602 this afternoon. Hotel we were shooting in has new management (they were purchased by a large hotel chain that starts with an M and ends in a 'ot'). The new managemot (like how I did that?) decided to lecture me on "proper" practices for shooting at their hotel. After the litany of items that we "forgot" he just decided that if I give him a free copy of the film when its done he'll approve everything and we'll be OK.
So I shook his hand, thanked him for being so understanding, and walked back upstairs and finished shooting our last two scenes.

A year ago we didn't have these issues in Phoenix, but since Hollywood has discovered Phoenix (and it's tax incentives for shooting here) all our local hotels have suddenly started exercising fees, fees, and more fees.
In fact, we got kicked from our original location on the day we were SCHEDULED to shoot there. And when I say scheduled, I had met with management four times over the previous three weeks, including the night before we were supposed to shoot. They had given me tours and taken my reservations. I had explained we were shooting a film. Left my business cards and STILL the hotel decided last minute to create a new channel of bureaucracy of which no one informed me (and I had met with three managers, one twice). Makes me want to shoot EVERYTHING guerrilla.

Hope the prom went well, and Happy Birthday again, Kevin.

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