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Day 4 -- Wednesday April 22

The big day approaches! Tomorrow we fill Stage 4 with an audience and find out if there's any hope for our little show! And so today? Well, not so exciting. Today we spent many hours trying to block the camera movements so that all of America can someday (if we're lucky) take a look at this slice of family life. Meanwhile, we are running the scenes, so it's helpful for drilling the lines, many of which were newly handed to us this morning. So practical concerns were addressed today for the most part.

Still, at least one scene was continuing to undergo major reconstructive surgery. We actually blocked it for cameras in the morning and then when the rewrites appeared, it had changed so much that we had to camera block from scratch. It's an odd phenomenon to spend the day memorizing lines for a scene and then having them disappear, but that's the nature of the beast. Ideally, the show is improving every time rewrites land in our fingertips, so you have to roll with it.

Now, this whole camera-blocking phase does involve us running each scene for the camera crews while they watch and get a feel for the movements and such. Unfortunately, they did not seem to be so bowled over by the whole thing. Admittedly, we did show them the scenes out of order, and they do have other things on their minds when they are watching it, but their responses did not inspire confidence.

At the end of the day, we had our last producers run-through. The performance was sparsely attended. Either everyone is satisfied with our show or everyone has given up on it. Kevin, the writer, was there, along with Robin and Daria, our producers, all chuckling along as usual. The presence of the cameras made it crowded on the set, so it was probably better not to have too many other folks around. Gil, the director, seemed to be happy as he gathered us to dismiss us. He said it all looked and sounded good. I would hope on the eve of the shoot he would say something like that whether it was true or not so it's hard to take it at face value, but many people have worked very hard this week to make this happen, so maybe, just maybe it really is all coming together nicely. We will get at least some idea tomorrow. Sleep tight...

Go on to Day 5

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