Days 6 through 9 of 10

A goofy picture.

No... we're not making a comedy. But after 9 days of production, you need a bit of goofiness.

Left to right, our set photographer Rich Prugh, behind him our 2nd AD Kaveh Taherian, then three of our wonderful cast, Asad Durrani as the neighbour, Ralph Lopez as an officer, and Junes Zahdi as a soldier. Ralph also played one of the two corpses that the film centers around. Cardo Blas was another soldier in this scene, but was not around for the picture.

Days 6 through 9 have been challenging, but we made it through, and managed to enjoy ourselves along the way.

Day 6 was the continuation of scene 10, the "Big One" from Day 5. We got up to letter U in coverage. It was particularly fortunate, because this was both the most complicated scene, and some off set issues had prevented me from doing my usual prep the day before. Despite the obstacles, we made it through and shot a good scene, well covered.

Day 7 we stayed at El Toro Airfield to shoot the scene when Malek first sees the two dead bodies that start him on his journey. We did so well with that scene that we were able to sneak in a few more close ups from scene 10, before closing out the location. We also managed to have some fun with Ralph and Mir, who were playing the corpses. After a long shot of them in the car, they asked us to roll again for a surprise. We slated it "10 Z" for "Zombie", and I called "action"; to which Ralph and Mir slowly woke up, snuck out of the car, looked around cautiously, then BOLTED in the opposite direction. It was a great laugh.

Day 8 we filmed our neighbourhood scene, where Malek sees his neighbour arrested, and later brought back tortured. It was a rainy morning, so we shot our close-ups first, which was a good gamble. By the time we were finished, the rain had cleared, the ground had dried, and we were able to shoot our wides.

Day 9 was a green screen day. We had a slow pace, got more than we planned for, and finished earlier than scheduled. We shot various driving scenes, which we will then combine with footage from Kuwait.

Today is a day off. We have half a day left at Huntington Beach. Then we go into post production, and start seeing cuts.

Updates will continue to be posted. Thanks for following us on this journey.