Woodsmanship

This week’s LoadingReadyRun video was Scout’s Dishonor. Overall, the shoot went pretty smoothly considering we got eaten alive by bugs, ran out of battery power and forgot to bring anything for our “child actors” to kneel on during the shoot (despite Graham reminding us to do so, in the video). That black thing you see them kneeling on? It’s the barely padded case for the pocket dolly, which we used for the slow shots that panned across the scouts. It is now pretty dirty.

Now I know, some of you may be asking, how bad could those bugs have been? You’re a bunch of comedians, so surely you exaggerate. Well, first of all, we had to stop shots several times because you could see mosquitos crawling over peoples’ faces in shot. If that wasn’t bad enough, in the 30 minutes that elapsed before we coated ourselves liberally in “Deep Woods OFF” (carcinogens be damned), I managed to get at least four bites, Graham somewhere around 14, and Matt an astounding 22. Ironically James proved largely immune to the insect hordes, so naturally, he was the crew member who went off to get bug spray.

Trivia

• The scout sashes in the video were made by the incredibly talented Tally, who went above and beyond the call of duty to make a huge variety of fake merit badges as well. Several badges are LoadingReadyRun and/or Desert Bus themed, as you may have noticed. I don’t even know how long they took her to make but I’m sure whatever we agreed to pay her, it probably wasn’t enough.
• Maiberg is a last name I borrowed from a co-worker at Inside Mobile Apps. He was pretty chuffed when I told him I borrowed his name. Although he hasn’t seen the video, so his enjoyment of the honor may be short lived. He is not at all a smartass in real life, but he’s got a fantastic last name.
• Graham was cast as the scout master not because he is the tallest LRR crew member, but because he has a beard, and neither he, nor I were keen to see it removed for this video.