Cupid Takes a Holiday

We spent most of our hiatus in Panglao, with that view of Tagbilaran Bay and Maribojoc Bay in the distance, but one day we got on one of those ferries and traveled 90 minutes to Dumaguete on Negros. We traveled to the very tip of Negros to Antulang Peninsula and there we snorkelled and read and made valentines at a wonderful place called Kookoo's Nest.

Cupid is usually cooped up for the cut and paste period in the frozen North. This was a nice change.

Cupid can't be stopped

Some of my sweet valentines have asked if I'll be skipping production this year. No way. I spent most of my two week holiday in happy cut and paste. this was my view from Cheeky's Seafood Haus which is part of Olman's View Hotel. Imagine that from across Tagbilaran Bay you can hear singing from the church, the occasional bing-bong-bing departure announcement from one of the ferries, the sound of kids playing in the shallow bay, and from right near the ek-oh of a gecko.
Inspirational.

Heads Up, soldiers

Make-up on this movie will basically be dirt and sweat, and you’ll be here long enough to need at least one trim in mid-shoot. I’m hoping actors can shave the night before or before leaving the comfort and light of the hotel (very early in many cases) as we’ll be in tents on the location. You don’t see stubble in any of the old photos, not even the more candid ones, except one I’ve found of troopers just off a week hustling after Aguinaldo in the boondocks (Filipino word). So I assume guys got their razors out every morning, maybe right after mess, and trimmed up. You see the enlisted men in various states of uniform when outside off-duty- unbuttoned blouses, shirtsleeves rolled up, sometimes even just in their prospector undershirts with suspenders dangling, but the officers are always very buttoned up. We’ll be using the accurate material for the uniforms- pretty heavy stuff. Having shot on the Tex-Mex border, actors look appropriately moist but tend to short out the body mikes. As the method actors say, use it-
John Sayles

Who is this masked man?

Remember the hollow block house that was having its kitchen removed? Well it's inside the church now and the plywood frame of the church has been clad with styrofoam cut into blocks and those blocks are being spray-painted as stone.

Bamboo

It's a miracle.

In front of RAFAEL'S

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Here is Erin (Fergus's twin, as it happens) in serious conversation with Dan. On this day Erin will locate all the animals we need including twin pigs and 5 carabao.
Rafael's is the biggest of the huts.
They would be facing each other as in a real conversation but I haven't quite learned how to move pictures around...

In the garden

Fergus is Assistant Prop Master. In this case, his job is to plant the garden that is the subject of a neighborly dispute in the opening scene of the movie. It will have had 6 weeks to grow before we film it.
Sweet potatoes, I know, and maybe eggplant. Some will grow on a trellis.