This brought me to my last 2 scenes for filming on “For Tomorrow We Die” in Rochester, NY. I arrived around 10 AM and got myself situated. It was cold thru out the day but there was a heater in here so that helped. I was in the 1st scene-I was in the midst of an argument w/ the head commander (played by Ken Dauer) with support from the Sarge (played by Al Young). It was an intense scene-in part cause I had to stay kinda low or my head would smash into the steel girder above me. We did multiple takes at multiple angles. We finished around 2 and broke for lunch. At this point, we saw only a few snow flakes starting to fall.
-The 2nd scene was Ken getting new orders via his commander (a hologram). Can’t say what happens, but it’s an emotional scene and was done great. The end of it was being set up when we heard Jabilo (played by Josh Radford) would be late coming from his theater performance due to snow (& not having a GPS). Snow? It was pouring out there. Wonderful huh? So we broke for a quick dinner and got things situated.
-Josh arrived and the final part of the 2nd scene was finished quickly. The 3rd scene was me visiting Jabilo in the infirmary-after he’s treated by a doctor. Turns out the doc was being played by Scott lancer (producer / director of a horror movie I was in summer 2011 called “Equitable Exchange” (think it’s now being called “Slow Food”). We caught up on stuff while the staging was being done. So we start getting ready to shoot this final scene when there’s problems w/ the sound gear. One of the batteries was draining rapidly and the other stopped working. So the one that still kinda worked had to be thrown on a charger after each take. We did manage to get all the filming for this scene done-which meant I was all done (barring pick ups-even though I believe me & Josh’s white helmets are mysteriously missing). By this time it was between 10-11 PM.
-With filming done, now came the time to drive back to Syracuse-which was hellacious. You’d think the roads would be at least a little plowed. I was driving about 25 MPH just to get to the thruway-and about 30-40 MPH once I got on that. many times the only thing I saw was the head lights ahead of me-otherwise it was just white. As I got into the Syracuse area the roads seemed plowed a little better. I was starting to nod of a little but I powered thru and made it back-it was after 1 AM when I got back.
-I want to just give a big thank you to all the cast/crew of FTWD-it was great working with you all and hope to be doing so again in future projects. Very much looking forward to seeing the final product.
WAYNE W. JOHNSON 