Asheville shoot: Friday

Friday:
With a 7:30 call in the Great Hall we decide to meet for breakfast at the Inn. At the Horizons dining room we’re offered menu choices or a buffet. Two guys jumped into the buffet and the rest waited on the menu. I jumped on the buffet only after growing impatient on the waiter. Jules and I have decided that the nicer the place is the longer you might have to wait. $110.00 later we’re headed for the golf course. The food was good but we had more to get done.
At the club house we commandeer three carts, load our gear and roll to the back nine or #10 of 18. We get set up and roll after a little time futzing with the equipment. Soon we’re working our way through the golf course. Early on we’re having some audio problems because the camera guy can’t hear what’s being said through the camera speaker. Slowly we’re making our way through the course. Phil meets us at a small cabana at the club house at lunch time. We start discussing the rest of the shoot day. The original set up was that we were going to stay on the course until dark, around 8pm and then shoot one of the restaurants. It ends up that the chef has got two different parties booked and will not be available after 6pm. A little bummed because we were now going to have the leave the course and be at the Inn some three hours ahead of schedule we press on. When five rolls around we leave the course and take the carts to the Inn and do a very quick and spontaneous set up because everything that had been planned was now completely changed. In one hour we set up, shoot and wrap the dining at GPI piece. Plates prepared are fried lobster tail and fresh baked crab cakes, a succulent veal chop and seared Chilean Sea Bass over chive and cheese mashed potatoes covered with a sautéed onion and sweet pepper mix. Most of us took a few samples and it was wonderful! Phil had said that if nothing was going on with us tonight he would like to buy the crew dinner. GPI has a seafood buffet every now and again and tonight was one of those nights. When Chuck and I got to the room to get cleaned up he collapsed on the bed and bluntly stated “Jodi thought I would be goofing off.” (The gist of a shoot like this is: Set up one “talking”: tee box. Set up two cameras, set audio, talent going over lines, stand up, hit multiple shots of ball from different positions. Strike and move some 100 plus yards down fairway to ball landing position. Set the whole thing up again, hit ball to green. Strike, set up at green, do the whole thing over again putting in. In the mean time Chuck is taking script notes or holding a reflector or holding off or waving through the next encroaching foursome. Set up two “B-roll”. B-roll is rolling to a position, setting cameras, rolling, moving to the next position, setting, rolling, moving to the next position, setting, rolling etc. Chuck you should feel pretty relieved this course was only 88 achers and we only covered half of it.)
We met up around 7pm in the Great Hall to head to dinner. I was a little bit late because I had to return the golf carts we took to the Inn. We find our way towards the buffet in two groups. The first group included me, Chuck, Ed, Greg and Phil. Once we were in a cute hostess named Sarah told us that she would be giving us a tour of the buffet rooms. We all made jokes about having to get a tour of a buffet. We needed it. Two large rooms with three distinct areas included the hot foods room, the cold foods room and dessert area. The only thing that I really didn’t see was lobster tails and claws. Everything else was there. A creamy rice seafood dish, baked white fish, seared tuna, boiled and pealed shrimp, salmon prepared some 10 different ways, a selection of Russian tapas, sushi, everything in between. It was the equivalent of the Opry Sunday Buffet only in seafood. The table split a bottle of wine and some heavy drinks and concluded our meal with a $468 bill Phil happily took care of. I’ll tell you this, if the PR guy spends the evening talking about the most expensive meals the Inn has paid for our table wanted to take a chance to be the new title holder. We didn’t come close.
Phil left us to our own sometime after 10pm and we continued to talk at the table until it was necessary to take the conversation out side for some fresh air. We got a couple of drinks and smokes and hit the veranda. It was around one am when we decided it would be wise to get some shut eye.