Production Diary, Day 12: The Clinic, at Last

The clinic interiors were the monster of the original schedule. Nine and six eighths pages, the single biggest day on the board, originally slotted for Memorial Day. The schedule had other ideas, Trinity Center graciously gave us a flexible window, and today the monster finally got shot, Scenes 37 through 41, fifty-two takes across rolls A023 and A024.

We were back at Trinity Center at 304 East 7th, the downtown church campus that also hosted our exterior day last week. Like Sunrise, Trinity is a true production partner on this film, a real organization doing real work with Austin's unhoused community, with a genuine voice in how that community appears on screen. Shooting the film's medical-bureaucracy sequence inside a building that actually serves the people this story is about kept everyone honest. You do not play these scenes for satire when the real version is down the hall.

The clinic trio

Today belonged to the clinic trio: Dave Janjua as Dr. Thomas, Soji Brown as Dr. Wilson, and Janessa Marcarlin as the clinic receptionist. All three came in surgical. Dean Stanfield has spent eleven days being the immovable center of this movie, and today he got to be the ball in someone else's pinball machine, bounced between desks and doctors and forms. The logline promises bureaucracy. Today we filmed the bureaucracy.

Personal disclosure: the receptionist character is named Claudia. There is a Claudia in this movie and she works a front desk and it is not me, and I will be fielding jokes about this through the end of post, and I have made peace with it.

One more department got its moment today: makeup effects. There is a practical prosthetic in the clinic material, built by VFX makeup artist Madison Vega, that the crew refers to exclusively as the disgusting toe. It is disgusting. It is also perfect. Cinema is a broad church.

Twelve days down. Tomorrow the largest block of the shoot begins, and with it the end of Odie's long day.