Firebird Film

On Friday and Saturday of a weekend in May, I was able to help with a film that was shooting nearby. One of the dads from the home school group is the director and I asked if there was anything I could help with. It was really a neat experience. The film is called The Legend of the Firebird. I was a production assistant. What does that mean? Well, basically I did whatever was needed - from purchasing a wedding dress to use as one of the costumes, to picking up food for the cast and crew, to  operating a puppet that will be the visual for a special effect in the film, to hauling equipment and/or actors, to... Well, you get the point. It was a lot of fun though.

The actors consisted ofworking actors from the DC area, college students, recent grads, and friends with combat experience for some specialty scenes. The make up artist was great. She created some really cool makeup to completely transform the evil sorcerer. The actress that was cast as the Firebird already had gorgeous red hair that was enhanced with beautiful bird makeup with golds, reds, burgundies, and oranges. If I can figure out the picture thing on here, I will post some pictures. 

The film crew was fun. The main guy, I guess he would be the cinematographer (I'm new to the film world :-)), was a guy named Chris Newhard. He has directed videos for Train (pretty cool) and just got back from Africa filming a documentary for a month. Pretty cool stuff. Feel free to check out his website www.chrisnewhard.com. 

So, the filming is complete and the computer stuff and editing starts. The idea for now is to create a 15-20 minute film to gain interest and funding for a full length. We will just see what happens from here. But or now, it really was a great experience. Long days, but a great experience.


Prince in lily pad pond - I have to add here that he was such a trooper for doing this. It was a smelly pond, at the end of the day, and he was barefoot. Trooper!


Filming Prince in a lily pad pond


Fight Scene filming in action


Prince (Jared Calhoun, actor) & Firebird (Elyse, actor)


Firebird actress, director and film crew

Evil Sorcerer


Chris Newhard

Critter pics and the tree

Tree frog on the gas tank


Momma and baby having dinner


Tree frog hitch hiking


Tree that didn't scratch the house



Turtle

Tree frogs and Terrapins, continued and The Tree

If you've read any of my posts, you may realize that we have critters around here. I previously posted specifically about the frogs and the turtles that we see and their eggs that hatch in our yard. Well, we have now seen the remnants of about 20 hatchlings. Unfortunately (well for us and our curiosity) we have not seen the actual baby turtles. Just their opens egg remains. If I'm remembering correctly though, they tend to hatch at night. We are night owls around here, but we have not been turtle hatch searching in the middle of the night yet. I guess part of the problem is we don't know where the eggs are in the ground to keep an eye on them. Egg remnants just appear and a whole in the ground at random times. I guess I need to have terrapin study and letcha know :-).  Hunny and I have both seen turtles in the yard, and thought they may be laying eggs or prepping to lay eggs, but seeing us may have deterred their endeavor.

Now for the frogs.... They are still here, not in the large quantity they once were, but we still have hitchhikers every once in a while. At the end of June/beginning of July we had a few storms that took out a few trees. One of which God gracefully laid down as close to our house and on our back deck without a single scratch, chip, bending of pipes (we just had an irrigation installed and the pipes from the crawl space come out where the tree was laying), gutters were in tact....graceful....you wouldn't know a tree fell on our house. We figured God wanted us to have an even better view of his creation, so he took that tree down for us. And it did open up the view, which we appreciated. Apparently, the frogs loved this tree though. Hunny was cutting the tree into smaller more manageable pieces to be able to pull it away from the house and off the deck. As he did, the frogs rallied. There were the usual abundance of frogs across the back of the house - probably 10. The sun was starting to go down and we were trying to finish up, then we saw something fly from the top corner of the house off of the gutter. Then a minute or so later, again, something flew off the house. The first time I thought I might have seen wrong and that it was a piece of wood flying from the tree as he was cutting. But after the second, I started watching closer. The frogs were jumping from the house to the tree. I watched one make his way down the corner of the house to the rail of deck. I stepped away from the railing. He hopped down the top rail to the corner where he perched in a Titanic "king of the world" moment at the very corner of the deck rail, the leaped. Some jumped from the bottom of the deck, others of windows, then the brave leaders that started the tree jumping movement that jumped from the second floor of the house. It was really quite fascinating to watch. Over the next few days, we had someone come in to haul away the few trees that had fallen - about six in all. I don't know if the frogs clung to their tree or not. After all, they are tree frogs. I can say that there have not been as many on our house. We had one on the gas tank on the grill, and a few hitch hikers on the car, but that's about it. We still hear them occasionally. They are part of the beautiful soundtrack for our house.

We've realized that the animals are very seasonal here also, well most of them. The deer, bald eagles and Frasier the crane (or possibly a blue heron that lives here) are constants. But most are cyclicals. So I will keep you updated on our critters. Hatching terrapins and jumping tree frogs.

Enjoy afunnysomething today!!

Asome!

For our 11 year anniversary, we celebrated as a family...at a bar :-). Ok, seriously we did, but let me explain. Not too far from us (relatively speaking) is a dueling piano bar called Bobby McKeys. Usually it is only open in the evenings and is 21 and over. On a previous visit when we were in the moving process, we stayed at the Gaylord just down from Bobby McKeys. As we were walking back from dinner, the doors were propped open, so we stopped to watch and listen. Scooter Button started dancing in the doorway. Mind you, it is normally 21 and older........ She might have been 3. The place wasn't  crowded at the time and they said something about here being cute, then we went on our way.

But back to our anniversary, and taking the kids to the bar, and the title of this post........

Once a month, on Saturday afternoon, Bobby's has a family day. See, you don't need to call the authorities on us. We found out about the family day on that initial trip when Button danced in the doorway, and had been wanting to go, but had just not made it yet. Then we saw that the family day was the same as our anniversary and decided it would be a great way to celebrate. It really was a lot of fun. For the admission price, their are the dueling piano players and a food buffet that included hot dogs, m & c, wings, salad, fruit, pizza... being gluten free we did not partake in most, but there was plenty to choose from, and we were going to dinner soon after also.

If you've never been to a dueling piano bar before, the idea is that you can request songs by writing them on napkins and then setting them on the piano. If you actually want your song played, you include cash with the napkin. The larger the number on that cash determines how quickly your song gets played. Comprende? Hunny and I wrote a few songs down, but had asked the girls what songs they might want to hear. The only song Button wanted was "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Each time we asked, that was the only one she said. So, it went on the list. After all, it was family day. Punkin didn't really have one she wanted, but we put some of her dance songs on the list because we knew she'd enjoy that. Each took a napkin with cash and took the request on stage. It was so cute watching that throughout the day. Little kids going up, some would wait politely until they had finished playing and hand it to the pianist, followed by a polite thank you. While others looked like seasoned pros and would slap it on the piano. All very cute. We had a couple of our songs played....and wouldn't you know....Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was one of them!! Woo Hoo!  They did a conga line, had a frog and a bunny come out (not real ones but life size characters) that held a limbo stick for the kiddos. Plus had great music. It really was a lot of fun.

The other thing you could request was fore them to write one thing on the mirrors that were behind each of the pianos. On the napkin you wrote "write", then whatever you want and they would write it up there. No keep in mind that it was family day, and that some of the requests were (probably..hopefully) written by kids. There were only two written requests while we were there...one of which we have enjoyed ever since. Here goes "This place is Asome!!"  And that's what got written on the mirror. I'm sure it was suppose to say awesome, but it didn't. We have delighted in our new declaration of greatness pronounced long-a some. Button will randomly say "what's that thing we say instead if awesome?" Or we will say awesome, and Punkin will say "you mean Asome". I love their sense of humor and whit.

Our anniversary was followed by play in the Gaylord with a Peep doll that was purchased at the Peep store - yes there is a store filled with peeps, peep stuff, shirts, socks, onesies, dolls, plus Hot Tamales, and the fruit version of Hot Tamales that I can't think of their names. It's actually a fun store...but who knew? A Peep store. Then we went to dinner at Rosa Mexicana. We thought this was appropriate since we went to Mexico for our honeymoon. And they have the BEST table side guacamole, that makes people who didn't like guacamole convert to guacamole lovers. Yumm! Then all was followed by a car ride home inclusive with naps.

It was a great day! Or dare I say it was Asome!