Busy day: Don arrives, painting porches & costumes galore

Yesterday was a busy day. C has been anticipating the arrival of the lead actor, Don Wood, who flew in from San Francisco to play the part of Tom Sukanen. There's been a lot of preproduction going on for the movie but Don arriving from SF meant the shoot is only a couple of weeks away. Gulp! That morning, C and I went over to the airport (yes Regina has its own airport) to pick him up.

Wood slips into Regina

"Hi Don!"

After we picked him up, we headed over to the Freehouse to meet Dauminique for some lunch. It sure is good to see Don again. For those of you who don't know, Don's also a reverend and married C and I over a year ago. Thanks Reverend Don.

Smile if you want a burger.

After lunch, C and Don stayed in Regina running errands while Dauminique and I headed out to Moose Jaw to catch up with her husband, Kevin, and their daughter, Kristine, who had started on painting one of the sets we're going to use for C's movie.

One of the scenes is a post-harvest party which takes place in one of the farmer's front yards. The Sukanen Museum south of Moose Jaw is letting us shoot several scenes there including this one. We found this old farm house at the museum that looked perfect, except the paint had chipped off and looked too worn out to be a prosperous 1920's farmhouse. So we painted it, just the porch which will be the only part of the farmhouse that we'll get in the shot.

The Sisu Painting Crew

With the four of us, the painting wasn't too bad, but the heat didn't make things easy. Later in the afternoon the sun was shining right into the porch but luckily we were just about finished.

Show me... Paint The Farm.

Kristine is the Art Director on the film so all of our work had to be approved by her. Dauminique tackled the railing which looked like a pain in the butt to paint. The wood was so dry and cracked it was hard to get a nice even coat of paint on.


By about 5:00 we were done and packed up all of the tools for the ride back home. The porch actually looks pretty darn good.

Looks as good as new (1920's new that is)!

We drove back to Regina and met C and Don for some much deserved pizza and beer at the Copper Kettle. They've got a great spinach, feta and garlic pizza there. Mmmmm.

But the day wasn't over yet! C, Don, Dauminique and I went over to the university to help Candice, the lady in charge of costumes for Sisu. There's gotta be over 150 different costumes pulled from three different sources, the U of R costume department, the Regina Little Theatre and the Motherwell Museum (which is a living history museum). Candice had to make sure each costume made it back to its cooresponding home so we spent a couple hours pinning ribbons on each costume to mark where it came from. If that doesn't sound very fun, it wasn't. Especially after painting under the hot sun all afternoon and with a belly full of pizza and beer.

Can't we have this worked shipped overseas to China or Korea or something?

Here Dauminique and Candice's partner, Roberto, are making costume rack labels.

After the costumes were squared away, I was ready to crash. What a busy day. I'm sure there'll be more of these as we get closer to the shoot.

Until next time... adventure!
R-