March 15

Our first shoot day!!!! We lugged all of our equipment to Cabbage Beach to shoot an afternoon scene and an evening scene. Because of all the sand we had to cover most all the equipment with plastic bags for protection. The moment we hit the beach, Drew began organizing the equipment, and  the sandcastle crew built our first castle. There were a couple different things to shoot during daylight; mostly estableshing shots of the people on the beach (many of them our own crew) and some of two of the actors- Justin and Annie- doing beach "stuff" that would be action shots. Then the real scene began. Besides Billy acting, the biggest star of the day was our sandcastle, which Billy had to destroy later that night for another scene. Before we lost the light we had to complete our day scenes, we managed without a hitch. We had a break for dinner since we couldn't fishing shooting until it got dark. Because it was our first night shoot, it took us a long time to set up and get things right, which meant a very long and unexpectadly cold night for the whole crew. I think we were finished and back at camp around 2 am the next morning. But it was worth it, the scenes were amazing, and we accomplished the work for our first day's shoot.

March 14

Tuesday was scouting locations and learning to build sandcastles day. Megan, Drew, John, Adam, Brandon, and Sam left with the bus to find our hotel location, our beach, and our montage spots. The rest of us stayed behind to work on our sandcastle building techniques. It's a lot harder than it looks to build large, good looking, durable houses from only water and sand. But we conquered! When the bus returned to pick up the sandcastle building crew, we rode around and stopped at several montage shot locations to film how the characters "Rick" and "Hannah" fall in love. Once those were over we went back to camp for dinner, and to practice lighting for the following night's shoot. This meant learning how to light a night scene, which is fairly difficult with all the shadows to get rid of that would make it hard to see the actors' facial expressions or actions. After some practice, though, our gaffer and his crew felt ready to pack up.

Rick Wilkinson (our chaperone) messing around after we made a wall

Cabbage Beach, the location for all of our beach shots. This is the path we took down to the actual beach part, and yes, the water really is that gorgeous.

No, these aren't Roman ruins, just one of the locations for our Love Montage.

Shooting part of the Love Montage. To the left, standing, are Billy (Rick) and Kristine (Hannah); to the right, on the rocks, are John (Writer/Director) and Brandon (Camera Operator).

In order to film at night, we had to practice lighting for dark scenes. This is at the camp right behind the girls' cabin.

I'm so sorry that I wasn't able to update in the Bahamas. There were computer/internet problems that couldn't be fixed. And as of right now, the photos are not available to me, so I'm going to have to wet your appetite with the stories and let you see pics later. Here's a run-down of our first day...

March 13

We arrived in Nassau in the early afternoon. The sun was warm and it was hot- we were not in cold Chicago anymore. Tom (our driver for the rest of the trip) picked us up in the Magic Schoolbus. It was a brightly painted bus that we called our wheels for ten days. As soon as we got to the camp we stayed at Tom gave a few orientation details and we were free to unpack our equipment and personal luggage. Three cabins awaited us, one for the equipment, one for the boys, and one for the girls. The bathroom was a little down the trail, and like a typical camp bath, it was not the most luxurious place to shower, but we never complained about it, we were to grateful.

Debbie, a Bahamian woman who cooked for us on a few occasions, made us an amazing dinner that night. Basically the evening was chill, we just prepared for all the hard work that was ahead of us that would start promptly at nine the next morning. Fed, unpacked, relaxed, we all went to bed ready to scout locations the following day. We had made it to the Bahamas.