March 21, 2011 05:00PM EDT

Sure-Footed Ponies: Cameras Rolling, Cue the Lightning

ENTRY 8: Cameras Rolling....and Cue the Lightning
March 17, 2011—Semonkong, Lesotho
Ten days into production, and some amazing footage in the can, things are running smoothly for Andrew and the crew.


           
We're now ten days into production. For the most part, everything has been running okay. Well, I should say better than okay—we have some amazing footage in the can. But the weather hasn't exactly been on our side. I had expected Lesotho to be drying out in March, so this is why I chose this month to film—the wet season over, a lush landscape, the harvesting of crops. But instead, the rainy season is kicking and screaming its way out the door. Foul weather has compromised our filming to the degree that I now find myself waking up several times during the early morning hours to go look at the sky, anxiously calculating the percentage of cloud cover, making humble prayers for a dry dawn.

This morning,  I'm feeling uneasy as I look over the storyboards of what was supposed to be today's shoot. Just a few hours ago, we sloshed our modest motorcade of production vehicles thirty minutes down one dirt road after another to arrive at our set, but then cancelled the day when drizzle turned to downpour. Predicting weather here is a total crapshoot. The municipal airport, which we had hoped would offer some sort of meteorological service, is in decay; a herd of bovines graze on the neglected runway.



The rainstorms have been a major inconvenience to the production of The Forgotten Kingdom. The lightning, however, is a real threat. Last week we were filming a scene where Atang and Tau make the ill-advised decision to pass through an initiation school, a secretive rite of passage ceremony for teenage boys. On a razor's edge between two mountain peaks, we had fifteen young extras, each of them in loin cloths and painted in red ochre, while holding spears, slingshots, etc (think National Geographic meets Lord of the Flies). Just as we were about to roll camera, a deafening lightning storm came through. It was a mad scramble to cover up the gear and get all our extras under cover. I jumped into a tent with Ntsane, our child actor, while holding up the flimsy tent poles as the downpour of rain turned to hail, with lightning striking the nearby mountain peaks. Incredibly, the kid kept his cool. Nearby, TR was on his hands and knees, holding down another tent that held actors. The catering tents had blown over, and our horse wranglers, Meri and Kefue, were taking cover behind them, trying to prevent them from blowing off the cliff.

When the storm finally passed, the cast and crew gathered back at the vehicles. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and no gear was destroyed. The next day we set up for the same scene. However, just as the initiation boys got to their marks and camera was set, the familiar ominous clouds rolled in, accompanied by an unseasonably cold wind. My assistant Papali and I observed the children dressed in loin cloths shivering around a couple of tiny fires that we'd built for them. Ntsane was, reasonably so, terrified of riding his pony so close to the cliff, so we quickly procured a ten-year-old stunt double (and expert horseback rider) from the nearby village. As a wall of rain approached from the mountain horizon, we managed to pull off a couple of shots before deciding to release the kids and get all that lightning-conductive film gear off the mountain for the second time in two days. We may have enough to edit the scene together, or we'll do pickup shots later this month. It seems that the Gods are not too happy about us filming a scene that involves the Basotho initiation school.



With other scenes we've had much more success, and the horses are behaving like champions. Kefue, the wrangler/horse whisperer, is an aspiring actor himself. He may not be Redford, but he's got a good screen presence, so we cast him as a Sangoma. Other non-actors from Maseru have come to Semonkong to deliver stellar performances. The Joburg actors are settling in well to life in the mountains. Zenzo and I spend evenings discussing the script. He has incredible intuition for this story, and his character. We rehearse with Ntsane when he's not with his tutor or running around taking photos with an old digital camera that I gave him.

The maintenance and efficiency of our vehicles continues to be one of our greatest challenges. Not a day goes by when at least one vehicle has not been stuck in the mud (presently two of them are stuck on the wrong side of a flooded river). The ministry of tourism had once agreed to provide us with 4-wheel-drive vehicles, but the offer came under the condition that we would not take them to Semonkong. Our small fleet of banged up trucks is now under the care of Rajah, the Indian mechanic who we brought in from Maseru.

In the making of this film, there are so many moving parts, and every day feels like a gamble. If I stopped to think about how many things could go wrong (the present foul weather scenario is number 23 on a list that goes to about 70), I'd be so paralyzed with fear that I wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning. Vehicles breaking down, bridges flooding over, power outages, actors suddenly becoming unavailable, actors falling off horses, crew members not getting enough sleep, camera gear malfunctioning, and of course, foul weather (yes, every one of these things have happened, and we're only in week two). There's also an African stomach bug going around; my producer TR has seen the worst of it.

In the midst of this chaos, I sometimes find it difficult to find the vision, and I certainly have my moments that I wish I hadn't taken such a big bite on my first feature film. My shoes haven't been completely dry in two weeks. There are times I wish I was back home, doing something very ordinary, not hanging so much out on the limb as I am now, not feeling the strain of so many things that seem on verge of breaking. However, these feelings dissipate when I look at the scenes we've shot. The footage is beautiful—we're filming landscapes that have never been seen before. And the actors performances are incredibly real. We are telling a great story. Or at least I have to believe that.



Last night one of our production assistants arrived from Maseru with a sealed envelope from the "Palace Maseru." The letter inside was from the private secretary of His Majesty King Letsie III. The king would like to meet us this Tuesday, 12 noon sharp. A meeting with the King! Unfortunately, because of the weather pushing our schedule back, Tuesday has now shifted to one of our heaviest shooting days. When I asked Cecil if we can reschedule the meeting, his jaw dropped to the floor. "If Obama asked you to come visit, would you really respond with a request for a rain date?"

So it's been decided that I will continue directing that day, and producers TR and Pieter will go to represent TFK at the meeting with the King. It's a shame—it would certainly have been good material for this blog! My humble requests to His Majesty will be that he please make it stop raining in Lesotho, and also loan us his private helicopter so we don't have to drive our tired trucks 45 minutes up goat paths each morning to our filming locations. I doubt he'll be able to help with either request, but maybe he can let the TFK team crash in the royal palace when the landlord kicks us out for sleeping too many people in the house.

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Want more Sure-Footed Ponies? Get caught up:

Sure-Footed Ponies: An Introduction
Sure-Footed Ponies: The Beginning
Sure-Footed Ponies: Return to Lesotho
Sure-Footed Ponies: Tortoise's Pace
Sure-Footed Ponies: Rain, Rain, Rising Rivers
Sure-Footed Ponies: Where There is no Sunscreen
Sure-Footed Ponies: Finding Our Tau
Sure-Footed Ponies:  Great African Location Scout