Off to the doctor, marinated in other people's germs waiting and finally got to see a medical professional. He said it looked like strep/bronchitis. I declined a strep test because if I don't know I have strep it's almost like not having strep was my reasoning. I never claimed to be brilliant. I got a steroid shot and some antibiotics, poured soup down my throat and gathered my wardrobe options and props.
I did not anticipate being sick. I also did not anticipate the biggest cold snap that my little southern town had experienced since 2014. I think we filmed on two nights that were above freezing temps and one of them was indoors. The two days leading up to filming were spent frantically emailing actors and telling them to disregard wardrobe notes I'd sent them previously and just dress for warmth.
Thankfully (so thankfully) our friend Heather Roebuck was on set monitoring people to see if they were getting too cold. She also really picked up the banner on some of the scheduling and kept an eye on wardrobe continuity.
Day one of shooting was when we had the majority of our day players. I waved at them. Explained why I couldn't really hug them or talk much, ate as much food as I could comfortably swallow, drank some throat coat and went to film. Once again, getting the right people in the right roles is so essential. They didn't require a ton of direction/coaxing/cheerleading once we got going.
Day two was Rich's first day. In his second scene of the movie he bricked his head really hard on my car. It was kind of insane. I'm trying to stay in character and remember the beats of the scene while also wondering if he should be allowed to go to sleep at the end of the shooting day (which is actually night, so around 4:00 a.m.). By the end of the night I can't talk. My nightly prayer is more fervent than usual ("Please don't let me lose my voice!").
I fell into a daily routine during week 1: go to bed around 6:00, wake up around 10:30, drink tea with honey, look at the scenes scheduled for the night and run through the lines, get with Asia, our caterer, about the menu, what time to bring the food, where we'd be eating, how many people we anticipated feeding, go over the props list, give my car at least a cursory wipe-down so it's not dusty inside, go to the Link Centre (our base of operation), hand my car off to a crew member so that they could take it to get lighted, get my hair and makeup done (honestly the most relaxing part of my day), get dressed, go to set, film, try to make sure that everyone is getting in out of the cold when they can, chug water so that my throat holds out, rehearse in between takes, wrap, go back to Link Centre to return my clothes to hangers, drink more throat coat, discuss the next day's schedule with Heather and Glenn, go home and hope my sore throat doesn't wake me up in under four hours.
I am proud to say that I only cried three times during production (when I wasn't in character). Once because I was having an anxiety spell but it hurt to breathe deeply, once when I thought I was going to get to sleep in and rest but I had to do some unexpected people-shuffling instead and once when... we'll get to that.
Week two we lost a day of shooting. On his off day Rich went to visit family and got iced in at the airport. It was a bitch. But I was finally starting to feel marginally better. People seemed happier with what they were doing and where they were staying and we had several days of studio filming (though our coldest and windiest night we were outside all damn night. God our entities were tough cookies). Things seemed to be picking up and then on the second to last day of filming we got sleet. We put our crew up at a cabin. It was a really nice place in a gorgeous location off the main road. And I'm glad it was nice because that's where they were stuck when the road to the house got iced over. It was Rich's last day of filming. He didn't feel 100% confident driving on the roads in someone else's car so I picked him up. I spent probably an hour on the phone calling and texting people trying to find someone with a four wheel drive vehicle that felt comfortable picking up our crew. Michael was available because he'd requested to stay elsewhere. Greg was around because he lives life on the edge and just drove in incredibly dangerous conditions. But we were down by over half our crew. I kicked a chair over and cried. It was an ugly scene.
Driven has many heroes, people who volunteered their time, their homes or their work, but the biggest heroes of the day were Marley Maharrey and Tyler Floyd who happened to offer to help us out because they were frozen out of work. Because of them we were able to hobble across the finish line and get Rich off to a Supernatural convention with a little bit of breathing room.
And that's a glimpse into my sad brain as a producer. Up next, the acting side of it.
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