The Battle of Day 13

Day 13.  One that will live in infamy as the day the gods of sound tried to defeat us, and failed. We were shooting outdoors, and as this isn’t our first rodeo, we were prepared for some random sounds coming from the neighbourhood to disrupt the odd shot or two.  We knew there’d be the occasional plane passing overhead that would make us go again, or the possibility that a sudden gust of wind would be met with stern disapproval from our sound recordist, Pietro.
 
But we forgot it was Day 13. And in the spot we occupy in the time-space continuum, at the junction of the 13th day and the ghosts of Upton, the gods of sound were priming to beat us over the head with something more than the occasional drone of a faraway plane.  Here, in no particular order, are all the things that kept interrupting the shot, over and over, until all one could do is laugh.

• Airplane
• Lawnmower
• Impossibly noisy carpet cleaning truck that spent a half hour scrubbing a coffee spill in a neighbour’s livingroom
• Another airplane
• Yet another airplane, slower and louder than the first two
• A flushing toilet
• A crew member who shall remain nameless walking into shot to warn us about the lawnmower that he’d tried to head off at the pass
• A barking dog
• Children playing. Loudly. What the hell’s wrong with a nice game of chess on the playground?
• And, just when thought it couldn’t get worse, a man on a nearby rooftop started yelling loudly that he was on the telly.

 
That was the bad.
 
Here’s the good: We got the shot, got the scene, hit our 300th slate, and made our day.  
 
Boom.
 
Take that, gods of sound.