Sunday, June 22, 1997 - Summer in Los Alamos

Another beautiful day in Santa Fe. I lose Sam early tomorrow, so I have to finish up everything with him today. We have a fair amount of work to do, but it should be no busier than Friday and Saturday.

Went for breakfast on the Plaza. There I decided to shoot Scene 51 (Breakaway) over in Los Alamos. There's a nice view of the mountains on the North Mesa. We set up and got it shot pretty efficiently. But everyone's suffering from the altitude. Katy fell asleep in the car along the way.

After Scene 51 we grabbed a quick meal at Subway and were to set out to the Santa Fe National Forest for Scene 58 (Overlook II). Something's not right, though. I don't think we need to go that far for that scene. We'll simply not have enought daylight. Need to think about it.

Opted to shoot Scene 56 (Michael Talks to Camera) while the weather holds out. The location is right around the corner so let's just do it. Sam is overwhelmed by the bigness of New Mexico. The mountain storm blew over in grand fashion, leaving us with partly cloudy skies which were nice to film. The scene is working out just like I envisioned. Only negative is the noise. I wish I had a magic button that could stop all road traffic when I wanted.

The CP-16 is very noisy. I've taken to setting up the camera at a distance to offset this.

Had a great idea while shooting: Why not shoot Overlook II in the forest behind Pajarito School? It will work just as well and is so much closer. Went by Maureen's to see her (she'd kill me if she knew I was in town and didn't at least stop by) and to see if she had any location ideas for this. Danielle has grown so much I can't believe it. Didn't recognize her. She looks 25, not 11.

Ended up winging it. Found an ideal location and once again we were fighting the clock. We had about 30 minutes of sunlight left, the Jemez Mountains being just to the West. And I needed to load a magazine. While I sat in the car dinking with the camera - It's so hard to relax and load film when you're in a rush. Good therapy, though - the crew went off and set up for Scene 58. No time to even critique what they'd come up with. Wish we had time for some one-shots, but on the other hand the actors being tired worked well with the the quiet mood of the scene.

Katy rode back with me. We stopped by and visited with Maureen and Danielle some more while everyone else went ahead back to Santa Fe. It was funny. Katy's 15 though she looks 11 while Danielle is 11 and looks 20. People are so different. Katy is afraid of dogs I discovered. (Maureen has about 5 dogs.) She handled it well. We made some tentative plans to meet for dinner at Rancho de Chimayo tomorrow and were on our way.

Captured a beautiful sunset on the way back to Santa Fe. This is the one-shot I was looking for. Katy was suitably impressed.

-George