AIR - Location Scouting

My next film shoot of 2009 is a 16 page thriller short I wrote called "AIR."  The premise... Six soldiers are trapped in a cave. The water level is rising and oxygen is running out. In order to survive long enough to be rescued, the soldiers begin killing each other off, one by one.

The shoot is technically challenging but I think we've raised enough money to see us through production. To see if this shoot is possible, Cinematographer Chuck and Producer Peter and I location scouted an equipment yard up in the Verdugo Mountains.

Chuck, in a contemplative pose...

The trick is we need to build a cave that can gradually fill with water. This proves to be much more complicated than I imagined when writing the script. For one thing, this equipment yard has no running water. So we need to figure out how to move 3,000 gallons of water to this location, and then find a place to put it.

Chuck and Peter in deep thought.

We have a few ideas. My main goal is to get this set built well before production, to give us as much time as possible to test camera and lighting.  We need to make sure this is feasible before we drag a crew up here and put them in the water!

Can we fit a cave in a flat bed?