Back In The Land Of The Living...

... which means, sadly, there's a lot of bills to pay and paperwork to get done!

Howdy everyone. Most of last week was spent playing catch-up on everything that had "sagged" during the filming of The Outbreak, so I didn't really have much time to sit back and blog. It's a brand new week, though (and most of the fires have been put out), so I thought I'd take a moment over my morning cup of coffee to get you caught up on what's been happening (and what's coming up).

First off, lets get this out of the way... my MySpace and Facebook friends have already been emailing me wondering about my "status" update: "Harold is going to miss Trish when she's out of town this week... :(." Yeah, Trish is indeed leaving for a week. We have a good friend in New Orleans who recently went through a major surgery. Trish is flying down this morning for a week to take care of her when she gets out of the hospital... I am, of course, pretty sad to be without her for the week, but glad that she has the freedom to step in and care for one of our best friends (we've known "Jelly" for almost 15 years). So that's the deal... no great tragedy (well, other than the air fare) is taking her away, more an errand of mercy.

As I write this she's busily rushing about packing and making last-minute arrangements... so I'll have to be somewhat quick :) So, lets talk about the past week...

>>The Outbreak , as you know, wrapped shooting last weekend. After resting up I had a couple conversations with director Chris Lund. He's happy with the footage he got overall, but no so happy with the ending... we'll probably be shooting a couple more days in the next couple weeks with a new and improved ending.

The stuff we got in the can, though, is fabulous. Chris sent me a still he captured from footage for the end of the film... how cool is this? There's some more shots from rehearsals and filming at my MySpace page... I'm still putting together a behind-the-scenes gallery for http://www.haroldphillips.net/.

>> On Saturday, I shot a new commercial for First Federal, a financial institution in McMinnville, Oregon (I say "financial institution" because they're not technically a bank in a legal sense... more a community savings-and-loan). The shoot went really well; Jacob Hinmon led a small crew of three through the shots with ease and good humor, and we wrapped much earlier than I expected (though not early enough for me to make it to my friend Kathryn Bukowski's stand-up show). It's going to be a funny spot; I got to clown around a bit, and I think I gave Jake a lot of goofy options to use in post-production. Unfortunately, unless you have Comcast Cable in Yamhill County, Oregon, you're not going to see the spot... but I'll be sure to post a copy on http://www.haroldphillips.net/ when I get it.

>>Streetcar Named Desire up at Clark College is going swimingly! I attended my third rehearsal with the actors on Tuesday, after I wrapped shooting on The Outbreak. Since we'd only gone through the choreography once, I went in expecting to have to re-train the cast in the moves I'd laid down for them... but everyone remembered their sequences flawlessly, and we spent the entire rehearsal "tweaking" and polishing instead of going down roads we'd already traveled. I have to say, this cast of young actors is taking to the material (and the violence) exceptionally well; Lisa Abbott has done a great job in directing them (I'm sure she helped to keep them on-track from a stage combat perspective, too), and they're all bringing their A-Game to the production. I attended their first full run through on Sunday to take some notes, and they're in really good shape to open this Friday. Any of you up Vancouver, WA way should consider popping down to Clark this weekend or next and checking it out!

Well, that's the nutshell description of what's been going on the past week... this week I've got an audition for an Oregon Association of Realtors spot, final rehearsals for Streetcar and a rehearsal for Crackin' The Code lined up. At least that's what's on the books today... lord knows it'll probably change by the time you've read this. In a way, it's good that I'm so busy... it'll keep me from missing Trish too much while she's out of town. Luckily I set up our Skype accounts with web cams yesterday, so we can at least wink at each other while we're apart.

Ok, time to head to the airport... hope you're all doing well!

-Harold