Why There Is Suffering In The World

I know why there is starvation and suffering and genocide in east Africa. I know why there is evil and pain and loneliness in the world. It's all because God is too busy making the weather on my set go perfectly right. I keep telling God honestly, we can shoot in any weather, really, we can! East Africa needs you! But nevertheless, God keeps doing things like this:

We already shot the wake after funeral for the cop shot down by two gangbangers. It was snowing hard--perfect for the gloom and sadness we needed. We also already shot the scene immediately following the funeral for the woman who dies happily and peacefully after a long, full life. For that we had a brilliant blue sky. The problem was, we were shooting both funerals on the same day, which meant that one of the after-funeral scenes wouldn't match its funeral. We shot the cop's funeral first. Gloomy grey sky, old tombstones edged in snow, everybody's breath showing, bare snow-dusted branches. Perfect. Then while we were moving to the other location for the happy funeral, the sun came out, and we shot it under perfectly blue skies.

!!!!!

Also that day, I got The Moment in the church described in the previous post. It's not 100% joggle-free but it's close enough. The way it ended up working is that at the beginning of the shot the actress is standing with the arched roof of the church perfectly framing her and then, as the camera zooms in and pulls out, the luminous stained glass windows, at first hidden by her head, grow out from the background and ultimately fill the screen behind her. Could be an amazing moment.

The photo above is us setting up the shot in the church, with the stand-in doing the boring part--standing there while the camera crew sets lights and tests the move--while the actress chills. Actually, she doesn't chill at all--she's prepping to make the magic happen, and make the magic happen she did.