How The Weather Almost Killed Our Short Film

May 13th, 2010 | Posted by jasonmckinnon in 17 West | Filmmaking | The Climb

After a few days off it’s time to get back to it.

It’s been nearly a week since we started production on our latest short film, The Climb.

Since that time I’ve come up with a list of 22 posts to fully tell the story of how we made the movie. I’m on a bus as I write this post and at first it was difficult to decide where to start.

I eventually decided to tall about the number 1 storyline of the weekend. The single issue that could have killed the film entirely. An issue I wrote about last week…

The Weather

Our schedule was divided pretty evenly over our 2.5 day shoot. However, the forecast wasn’t being kind to us.

It literally started raining the second we piled into the vehicles to head to our first location.

By the time we got there it was a full blown thunderstorm. We spent the next hour trying to figure out what to do before heading to a nearby Tim Horton’s to wait it out.

It never let up and our night shoot had to be postponed. Great start!

The next morning we were all expecting another disappointment. Instead the weather was beautiful and we were able to film all of our morning scenes without a problem. It wasn’t very warm but at least the rain was gone. Things were looking up…

Until we started shooting the most important scenes of the film. It started pouring again… We had a backup plan to film underneath a giant bridge if it rained but strong winds blew the rain in our faces regardless.

It was then that Eric and I implemented Plan B. We moved the production to the tightest nook underneath the bridge and shot another scene that was supposed to take place in the park.

Visually, it was the best decision of the shoot as the location turned out better than the original.

There we were, soaking wet and freezing under a bridge shooting a 7 page dialogue scene with our actors shivering between takes. It was pretty rough.

After lunch the weather brightened up again. It was looking like we would stay on schedule…. Nope.

By the time we got back to the bridge to shoot the final scene it started raining again and again we had to postpone.

Sunday

Let me first start by saying this movie was supposed to take place during a heat wave!

We now had to shoot our normal Sunday schedule in addition to all the the scenes we had to delay. It wasn’t easy and Mother Nature wasn’t finished with us yet…

Sunday morning felt like late November. It was freezing. Our crew was wearing winter coats. Then it happened… Something I thought would be impossible but it happened…

It snowed!

So much for the heat wave…

We still managed to shoot everything we needed that morning but seriously? Snow?

After that the weather slowly began to warm up and we gained a fair amount of momentum.

After a productive afternoon we were once again faced with shooting the final scene.

This time we had the sun to deal with. It was getting later in the day and the shadows were constantly changing. We needed clouds! Was there clouds? Nope. Just sun but we managed.

That night a few of us went back to the beach to shoot the night scenes we didn’t get on Friday. It was still cold but for the first time, we didn’t have to deal with any curveballs.

Miraculously, we actually shot everything we needed despite the weather but I’m happy we had backup plans. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if we didn’t.

If you’re planning on shooting a low budget short film outdoors, I highly recommend a contingency plan or at least a rain cover location to turn to if it rains.

We dealt with rain, thunderstorms, wind, cold, snow, hail, cloud cover and more…

Saying the weather presented a challenge is an understatement but besides the poor conditions it was still a blast.