Wednesday, Nov 17
Beautiful morning, though cooler. Finished up the Bernsen photo compositing and drove up to Belvedere with Cathy again.
Closet scenes in the morning, with Betsy and John’s walk-in closet working perfectly as the much smaller Bernsen closet. Lincoln ingeniously wired the lights to work off the actual switch. Then we ran upstairs to shoot scene 8 (Tom and Mary arguing about the car) and wrapped Don for the week.
Diane showed up in a fantastically colorful “Vanessa” outfit and we shot scene 16, where Mary greets her at the front door. Diane ad-libbed some priceless lines and business, and it brought out the best in Cathy – we got some beautiful reaction shots from her, too.
Wrapped the actors, then went back upstairs for the after-dark dream sequence. Couldn’t get the shot I had envisioned to work, but Lincoln had some nice ideas, and came up with a brilliant poor-man’s dolly, dragging a weighted tripod on a furniture blanket down the hall.
We were pressed for time when we got back down to the bedroom for the scene 1 shots – Betsy and John were due to return home any minute – but Lincoln rose to the occasion and we raced through the setups as Cortney and the PA’s cleared and reset the upstairs of the house. We were on our way out as Betsy and John arrived, and it looked as if we had never been there. And so we wrapped our main location and our first week of shooting.