One of the requirements of the indie grant was that we had to finish filming by October 31st. Since we wanted as many hours of darkness as possible for filming, we scheduled our shoot as late in the window as we could (without pushing our luck by waiting until the very last weekend). But the tradeoff for waiting for more hours of darkness was fewer degrees on the thermometer.
Charleston is usually pretty comfortable during the winter – it’s not unusual to be able to wear shorts for Christmas. But as tends to happen with these things, there was a cold snap the weekend we filmed, so the temperature hovered in the mid 40s. Now we know our northern fans are snickering at us, but that’s dang cold for those of us with thin southern blood, especially because the weekend before and after had low temps of 60 degrees. But on the bright side, our anti-rain dance worked perfectly and there was not a cloud in the sky; so any time we were tempted to complain about the cold, we reminded ourselves that it could have been so much worse if it had rained.
The entire cast and crew were real troopers about the chilly conditions. The crew was lucky in that they could pile on the layers and stick hand warmers in their pockets. Our three actresses weren’t quite so fortunate, especially poor Johanna who was wearing a tiny dress. But we did our best to keep them bundled up between takes, and as you can see from the picture, they got to know each other up close and personal.
