Episode 3 Shooting Day 1

Working with children, animals, and... robots? Oh, the challenges and joys of making a show that empowers kids and revels in the ridiculous!

Today we began shooting Episode 3, "Grandmother's House," our pro-soldier haunt fest that showcases our serious side while still refusing to pull any punches in terms of sight gags, silly word play and all-around fun. Threatened with forecasts of snow, sleet, rain, and possibly falling cats and dogs, we braved the weather, the chill-factor, and all-new terrain to meet our first and second goal for every episode -- have fun and make it better than the last one!

Episode 3 sees us also working with actors for the first time who don't have the last name DiMarco and we're pretty nervous, excited, and delighted that we don't have to dress Maxwell (or Faith!) up to look like a 30 year old soldier or a career Major built like a... well, like bear!

But new actors is Saturday and I'm getting ahead of myself. Today was all about the robot. And hiking. And hiking with the robot. Yes, there's a robot in Episode 3 and it floats, spins, lights up, beeps, bleeps, zips, and does several other nifty things such as turn its back on the camera right after I call, "Action!" :D

We actually started the day with the incredible discovery that Erin Jennings' featured piece (front page and everything -- thank you, Erin and editors!) had run in the Kitsap Weekly -- the Arts & Entertainment insert in pretty much all the peninsula papers. Wanting to read the article online, Maxwell typed "Kitsap Weekly Ghost Sniffers" into Google and was rewarded with eight pages of *relevant* links of reprints of the article, people talking about the article, and webmasters tying the article to their topic. Wow! And what showed up at the top of all these pages? Our AdSense ad for the open auditions on January 24 :)

With four hours of commuting time and only three hours of shooting light today (plus it being our first day back) we only secured 27 of the 400+ shots. However, we stayed positive and we're ready to start again tomorrow at the crack of dawn.

Tons of photos forthcoming! We're going to setup an online album!

Jennifer