Out in the Ocean

When I got back, I only had a few days before the next big shoot, this one on San Clemente Island, below Catalina.  I spent a day or two getting the crew in the office up to speed on the new footage, and then got a day off.  I had been talking with H about getting together for quite a while, and at some point the idea of jet-skiing had come up our conversation, so we decided to go do that when she came to visit me.  She was still dealing with her infection, but she assured me that wouldn’t prevent her from enjoying herself.  We rented a wave runner in Marina Del Ray, and headed out into the ocean with it.  I am always a little nervous about those out in open water, after getting stranded on one in Folsom Lake after the engine failed.  But we had a great time, and H seemed really excited to get to drive it.  Sometimes I think girls are even more into speed than guys are.  She came back to my place after that, and we spent the next few hours having a pretty intense conversation.  I realized after she left that I hadn’t even gotten a chance to change out of my bathing suit, and that the sea water was not having a positive effect on me.

 

My legs were covered in little bumps the next morning, which was a little unsettling, but I had to head down to San Diego, to catch a Navy flight from Coronado out to the island.  It was my first time and only time in San Diego, but we went straight to the naval base.  Once again we had decided not to bring my trailer to set.  There was a barge full of production vehicles that we shipped out there, but it was pretty full, and my trailer was not essential.  The crew was ferried to the island on a Navy airliner, and we had the flight to ourselves.  It occurred to me to ask for a seat in the cockpit, since it wasn’t a commercial flight, but I didn’t think that would fly.  Turns out I should have, because someone else had the same idea, and their request was agreed to.  I am probably not going to get too many more opportunities like that, and I hear they had a pretty good view from up front.

 

When we landed, we were taken to the SEAL training facility, where we would be staying for the week.  Unlike our private rooms at a cheap hotel in Slidell, we were stacked eight to a room in the barracks, with garbage bags over the windows to keep out the light.  Some of the guys took a nap before our shoot that night, but I can’t sleep like that, so I just explored the place.  My legs were still a concern, and some of the bumps were getting worse.  We shot all night for the next three days.  The first shots were of a helicopter drop in at sunset.  They went around a couple of times, and we got some of the best shots in the movie during that scene.  I got a great still shot of the directors running back to the cameras as the Seahawks were landing in the dust behind them, that ended up being their profile picture on our website for the next few years.

 

We had built an entire village on the island, which would be used as a combat training environment once we were done with it.  Unlike the fake city nearby, that had blocks of five story buildings for urban combat simulation, but no detail besides bare concrete, our village was meticulously dressed to look like a third world country.