[for Wednesday, Oct. 17]
(click photo for notes)
They’re filming a movie at my place of employ. The whole process is mostly interesting, with just a smidge of annoying crap thrown in.
Annoying: There are lots of tattooed, unwashed dudes walking around with ladders and boxes, installing lights and blinds and green film over the windows. The newsroom is now so bright that we all feel like we’re working under spotlights. The green film on the windows is a little post-apocalyptic for my taste. They’ve removed all the televisions from the newsroom, so we can’t even watching the effing news. There are tacky homemade signs posted everywhere, directing people to the restroom and craft services. And the smell of tattooed, unwashed men is something I would prefer to not deal with, if possible.
Interesting: They’ve constructed a glass-walled conference room to shoot meeting scenes, and we might get to keep the room intact when filming’s over. (We’ve discussed what/who to put in there, and the leading suggestion isn’t very kind, so I’m not going to write about it.) Matt Dillon and Kate Beckinsale are supposed to come around sometime soon. In fact, Kate Beckinsale is going to be shooting her scenes right behind our deputy metro editor’s desk. Which means I’m going to wear day-glo orange and make several trips to her desk during every freaking take.
I think my favorite part of this is sneaking around and looking at the sets as they’re being put together. They’ve created a “reporter’s cube” (which is actually the aforementioned editor’s cube; they gave her the boot so she’s temporarily at the adjacent cube) with books and papers and coffee cups and fake photographs and a fake computer and everything. And the fake conference room is coming together with a map of metro D.C. on the wall, a bookshelf, posh chairs, and stacks of newspapers. And they’ve created a cube that’s full of Christmas decorations to, uh, help set the proper mood. I suppose.
A production designer showed us a photograph of David Schwimmer and said it was Beckinsale’s husband in the movie. Our metro editor quipped, “It’s good to see there’s life after Friends for some of these people.”
Ha haaaaa.