Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1526889
Alex always arrived before call to walk sets with me, not allowing distractions. The day we shot the carnage at the shattered strip mall and downed helicopter, he pulled up in his car and I got in with him to drive the huge expanse of set. We had added a used car dealership with a burned office trailer, and the destroyed vestiges of a waffle house-type diner, piles of bodies, burned vehicles, smoking rubble. Alex never missed a thing. As we passed a vapor light that was cordoned off with caution tape, he asked what that was for. During prep, the crew noticed a mama goose sitting on her eggs in the middle of the huge empty parking lot. We couldn't move her, so we made our set line as far from her nest as possible. We named her Esmerelda. When I told Alex this he just said, "Well, we'll have to look out for her then, won't we." I drove by that location every day on the way to the office and always stopped to check on Esmerelda and her project. One very early morning, I saw that the goslings had just hatched a few moments before, and one was still pecking his way out of the shell. I made a video and showed it to Alex next time I could waylay him on set. He remembered Esmerelda fondly. The end of day one of the film takes place at a train yard. Lee and Sammy sit on an old couch watching a dreamily beautiful distant light show. Could be the Fourth of July except for the gunfire. Day two starts with the journalists covering the battle that they had witnessed in the sky the night before. Alex wanted to periodically insert images that indicated there were other unnamed factions at play besides Western Forces and Florida. We came up with a palette of magenta, blue and green C D E F G