Shitty Shitty Shit Shit!

So far, today has been a total heap of shit-tastic shittyness -- and it's not even noon!

Today was supposed to be the day that we rented a helicopter to get some shots with. Our morning started with an argument between us and Bert as to how much of a shattered catamaran should be placed on the rock island off the shore of the beach, that our protagonist is stranded on. Then another argument because there was miscommunication between us and Bert, which led to the helicopter being booked for a half hour instead of the full hour that we would have needed in order to get the shots off. Once we get out to the boat, there are huge black clouds that are starting to roll in. Natalie, Marc, Bert, Joel (sound), our driver and I head out to beach in order to set the shot up. We get there, and Bert says, "Okay Mathew, here's some flippers, you can swim with me and help me put the pieces of the boat up on the rocks." Then I had to explain to him that I'm not a good swimmer, so he has to go off and do it by himself; plant the mast, the sail and a pontoon up on a small island of jagged rocks, guarded by sea urchins and barracuda.

So then while Bert is doing all that, we get a phone call from Shab saying that the helicopter won't fly in the weather because it's raining to hard on that end of the island, etc., etc. Unfortunately, the helicopter is booked almost solid and we can't reschedule for later today, so we have to push it back until Friday! Obviously, Bert is less than thrilled that all of his setting up was for nothing. Now one problem that we're looking at is that Friday might now be calm like today was, and that might make it all but impossible to get the pontoons, etc. back onto the rocks without getting killed in the breaking waves. So we shot some B-roll of the rocks with all the stuff on it from the boat, just in case we can't get the shot on the helicopter day and then we have something else to cut to later on in post.

Now we're back at the house, waiting for our actress to come by so that we can shoot some pickups of other scenes that we weren't able to finish earlier, and guess what! The sun is out again! Murphy's Law prevails, once again.

We also tested the footage from the airport (the tape that went for a swim with me) on a bunch of other people's cameras, but no luck, so we have to re-shoot it again! And that means coordinating with the airport to come back for another day of shooting on Saturday, and ONLY Saturday, which we don't even know if we'll be aloud to do or not yet.

Also up in the air is what we had planned to shoot in Dominica. Basically put, acquiring film permits for Dominica was put off until just a few days ago, and now we're in bind, trying to get in touch with the film commissioner and hopefully get permits to film in Dominica by this Friday. If not, then we have to cancel the flights and shoot the 2 pages that we had reserved for Dominica here in Antigua.

Basically, a lot of shit has gone wrong, and if anything else goes wrong... we're f$*#ed!

So keep your finger's crossed...