Deanna Duke, our personal care consultant and author of her own fantastic blog on sustainable living, The Crunchy Chicken. Click here to check it out.
I’ve been busy these last few weeks with my first day of filming of Mission: Sustainable, recovering from the swine flu, preparing materials for the family’s makeover, and planning for the next shoot. Yes, the shoot that keeps getting rescheduled because of this piggy flu that seems to be affecting all of Seattle in giant waves of fever and hacking coughs. You can almost hear the oinking. In any event, my first day of filming went really well. We had clear weather, which was important, since we were filming outside for the first part of the day working on different sequences and other scenes that will be used in the intro to the show.
We also shot some scenes of us arriving at the house to do the makeover as well as those of us doing the makeover looking through the house for what I call “egregious acts of carbon consumption.” I wasn’t as nervous during the shoot as I thought I would be, probably because we were on the “set” for a few hours doing random filming before I was on the spot, digging through their soaps and sundries, explaining what I’d found. I won’t go into details (you’ll have to wait to watch the pilot for that), but suffice it to say that I have plenty of material to work with.
For my portion of the makeover, an additional sequence has been filmed, with a special treat for one of the members of the family. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend because of being sick. Either way, I’ve got a number of things I want to focus on to help this family reduce their carbon, plastic, petroleum, and paper consumption. And, more importantly, to reduce their exposure to dangerous chemicals.
We’ll be filming my makeover piece here soon and once that’s done, along with some other footage, we’ll finally be done filming the pilot. And, then, all that’s left to do will be, well, the lion’s share of the work—editing all those hours of footage into a pilot that is. I’ll be posting more about the next filming session as soon as we do it!
This is what 
concept, but one that I’ve really fallen in love with. Established habits are easiest to travel because, in effect, they’re so well-used that they might as well be paved. Meanwhile, new or infrequent actions and thought patterns can feel a bit like bushwhacking through blackberries. Although more and more it certainly seems that today’s well-traveled roads are something short of a picnic.
and how to use light reflectors and walk backwards at the same time – no easy feat! And when it came time to move gear from one place to another, I never had to ask; the crew anticipated and just did it. Working with such a willing bunch made it easier for me to focus on what was happening in front of the camera rather than behind it.