Riga part 2. - arriving of the actors and the first few scenes

The day (friday) started of like most of the days spend in Riga. First breakfast and then off for a little walk. Part of our crew had left a little earlier the night before from the bar and had found an alley for us to shoot one of our scens. That was the final location we needed and things started to come together. We had a small planning meeting before the actors arrived to Riga. Just going trough of the shooting schedule and such. We knew that even though we had a bunch of time on our hands for the location scouting etc. that it was going to be quite a busy weekend. We basically had one full day to film all the scenes plus the evening that the actors arrived to town.

At this point our car and part of the necessary equipment were still at the beach. Luckily one of the main actors was quite good with cars also, so he got the gears to work and somehow managed to drive the car to Riga with only one gear to use. The arriving of the actors and the equipment delayed a little bit of what we were hoping for and we were just hoping that they wouldn´t be so exhausted to not to do any scenes that night.

We decided to start of with an easy scene of just crossin one street. Even thought it was just one street crossing and approximately 15 second scene we knew it might take a while cause we didn´t have the possibility to shut down the whole street and direct every single person to walk by the shot not looking to the camera or such. Taking consider that the conditions were what they were we got the scene quite easily apart from a some romantic couples that insisted to get some screen time and some other nosy by passers that were still quite harmless never the less.

At this point we went to grab something quick to eat, cause though everyone was quite hungry we were still motivated and had the energy to go and shoot another shot nearby. In the first days of our visit we happened to find this super cheap and easy mix and match dumpling place that somehow came to be one of our main places to grab some quick snacks for example coming from bars or so. So we ate there and headed for the next location. It was a little bit quieter street so we didn´t have any problems with by passers. We had about 3-4 shots to get from there and even though we had some issues with the dolly track everything went as expected after all.

At this point it was almost 02:00 o´clock and all of us were quite weary from the busy day. The only thing was that we realized that the scenes we shot with the stand in actor the day before didn´t go with the scenes we shot with the real actor cause the guitar that was held by the leading actor wasn´t in the same way. So after a little consideration and cheering the crew we got everyone to go and do the shot needed before a well earned good night sleep. To be honest if we wouldn´t of done it at that time we wouldn´t had the chance to do it at all cause all the equipmet starting from cameras and dollys left with the actors on sunday and we knew already at that point that even adding one more shot for the next day schedule would be just impossible.

So the day was long, but the next one was going to be even longer. Everyone was in need for sleep though this is what we came here for so no one could be more than exited for the up coming events.

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-SPF