Day 2 -- Thursday, August 2
This was the big day. Both of my hospital room scenes were scheduled for today, plus a little hallway scene with the janitor.
I don't even know where to begin. It was fantastic. The scenes were fun. The people were so cool. Bill was around at different points during the day and was very supportive. The director, Adam Bernstein, was calming and easy to work for. Zach, Neil, and John C. were all enjoyable to work with. Neil and I were stuck in a stairway for much of the afternoon downtime and so we chatted about many things. Very nice guy. It was great. I don't really have much else to report. Everything ran smoothly, on time, without incident. The lines remained intact. No one got fired. I didn't break anything or cost the production any extra money (that I know of).
I had some doubts about what I was doing as an actor, but that's mostly because there wasn't an audience loaded into the hospital room reacting to what I was doing. It's harder to do this single-camera stuff. While I'm doing it, it feels pretty good, but then at the end of the day, I start to question whether or not I really pulled it off. There's no audience cheering, there's no curtain call, there's only the final shot of the day and a friendly good-bye from the second A.D. as you sign out. It takes a little extra focus to put yourself in the moment when the room is chock full of crew people all standing within 15 feet of you, thinking mostly about what they have to do in this or the next shot. And yet, maybe that's part of the reward, that you can create something alive and real in this little space with hot lights and uninterested eyes glaring at you, that you take five lines on a piece of paper and turn them into a person all in a 30-second scene in front of a box recording your face onto film. It's a strange process, but it sure is fun.
Go on to Day 3