By Paul Boerger
Mt. Shasta Herald
Wed Aug 8, 2007
At a rented house above the city of Mount Shasta, Jerry Alden Deal paces back and forth waiting for the set to be ready amid a bewildering collection of equipment.
“It’s a lot of hurry up and wait,” says Deal, the director, writer and co-producer of “Dreams Awake,” a movie now being filmed in the area.
The plot of Dreams Awake involves a dysfunctional family of four from Los Angeles coming to Mount Shasta and having transformational experiences.
Movie sets are used for multiple scenes, and the house is heavily draped to create a nighttime effect for the family’s home is Los Angeles.
The scene involves star Erin Gray as the mother, walking down a hallway. It’s maybe 10 seconds of film.
The crew constantly moves through the hallway and rooms, dragging cables, setting up lights, checking sound and doing dozens of other things that defy description to the untrained eye.
At one point 17 crew members are in sight in the house, scurrying about their tasks. Outside, trucks full of equipment are being unloaded, instructions relayed on radios and logistics checked on computers.
What may look like chaos is really a dance of experts who know where to be with what is required at the right time.
While Deal moves from room to room in deep thought, assistant director Vernon Guinn provides direction.
“My job is to make sure Jerry has the tools he needs so he can focus on the creative,” Guinn says as crew members continue to move and adjust equipment. “I am the reality of the day. Jerry is the creativity of the day. It’s a serious juggling act sometimes. You have to have a passion.”
Guinn and Deal confer, then Guinn heads for another room while Deal paces.
“Five minutes to talent!” Guinn calls out, meaning Gray will be coming onto the set to shoot the scene. He calls out the same words three times before all is ready.
Gray arrives, saying hello here and there with a smile.
The hallway is narrow, so Deal watches the action from a monitor in an adjoining bedroom.
Suddenly, everything is ready and the cry of “Lock it down!” echoes through the house and outside. It gets quiet quickly, and all movement ceases. Gray takes her position at the end of the hall while Deal watches on the monitor.
“Roll sound!” and then “Action!” starts the shooting. Gray walks down the hall and enters the bedroom. About six seconds have elapsed. Immediately, the crew vaults back into action moving gear and performing mysterious functions, swirling around Deal, Guinn and Gray.
For some reason, the shoot was not quite right and they do it again, then once more. Three takes and the scene is done. The crew begins once again to rearrange the equipment for the next shot. A full hour has passed with just a few seconds of film completed.
On another shooting day at an outdoor set high above the Old Ski Bowl parking lot on Mt. Shasta, Deal is still the calm eye in the movie making storm. Calmly pacing and checking the shot through the camera, he lets his people do their jobs with little interference.
The gear has been laboriously humped up the trail. The camera, microphones and props are perched precariously amid the rocks beneath a soaring cliff.
Gray is also in this scene, which calls for her to respond with anguish to a dire situation. During several rehearsals Gray builds up the emotion for the actual filming. Again and again she practices the scene, each time reaching a new level of intensity.
As in the house, at the moment of filming the beehive of activity freezes as the camera begins to roll.
Gray is full on with a terrible expression of grief and tears spilling down her face. She’s drained when Deal yells, “Cut!”
“I hope you got that,” Gray says to Deal as she wipes away the tears.
Deal assures her he did.
There is no time for extended conversation as time is money on a movie set. Gray takes a seat off the set while the crew springs once more into action setting up the next scene.
Between the two scenes in the house and on the mountain, perhaps a minute of film has been produced. It is no wonder films cost tens, sometimes, hundreds of millions of dollars; the precision and support crew required for even the shortest scenes is immense.
The next time you watch one of the epics, say Ghandi, consider the cast of thousands, the number of locations and the amount of dialogue and remember what it took to get Erin Gray down a hallway.
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