The Six Fifty-Seven

Christmas came early for me this year. In fact, it arrived at exactly 8:47 on December 10th when I arrived at South Station and saw that there was actually a commuter rail train waiting for me on track 13 because this meant that we could FINALLY shoot the pilot episode of The Six Fifty-Seven.

Frequent readers of this blog (all 7 of you) will know that this has been a long time coming. We had three false starts between August and December. We also had seemingly endless rounds of back and forth between ourselves and the powers that be at the MBTA, NEU and everyone else associated with our little show.

Finally, December 10th arrived. We had a train, an engineer, a conductor and 16 extras ready to shoot a sitcom pilot. Our engineer kept our train running and kept us all warm. Our conductor made sure "Bobbi" was appropriately attired and showed me how to turn the fans "on" and "off" - which may not sound like much until you need "Quiet on the set!"

Extras are truly the unsung heroes of a project like this. I have to thank all of these people for dedicating their time on a Saturday to stand around and wait, then just sit around and be filmed. They made our empty train seem full, and added color and realism to our palette. All of them rose to the challenge of "bouncing" when needed (don't ask), filming establishing shots and just plain being nice folks to spend a day with.

Dan Kammer (our director) finally got to let loose and direct this thing - and direct it he did. We filmed a 22+ minute film in 9 hours time. If he ever missed a beat then I was unaware of it. Dan Kammer is usually a fun person to be with. He's very engaging and full of energy. Behind the camera the man is a dynamo. Wow. I will never be able to thank him enough for all of his efforts for our show.

Last but certainly not least we also had a ridiculously talented cast ready and willing, able to go on. After months and months of starts, stops, rehearsals and memorization they we going to be able to bring their characters to life.

It was worth the wait.

Liz' confidence, Jack's crankiness, Jenn's optimism and Tim's earnestness were all on display as 5 wonderful actors brought our characters to glorious life. It has been a fantastic experience to watch these ridiculously talented actors work together. We started with a very strong cast and their chemistry only improved as time (sometimes) dragged on while we waited to film. I hope that they enjoyed each others company as they appeared to. I saw five people laughing, working and sharing their craft with each other without an ounce of ego present.

They are all intelligent, hard-working, creative and TALENTED performers who are destined for greatness in film, TV or whatever medium they choose to play in. Above all of this, they are great people that I am proud to call friends and I am grateful that I have met all of them every single day.

I am really grateful for this whole experience, beginning to end. It was worth every setback, let-down and struggle to finally reach December 10th - the day we finally filmed "The Six Fifty-Seven".

Now, onto the editing...