Is Austin Burning?

Short Answer: Yup...

Longer Answer: The way they get film sets to burn is not done with CGI. It's real fire, although they do attempt to regulate it. Mainly it's done with propane jets, and it is visual, not really destructive.

But that doesn't always work. So we came within about 10 seconds of setting fire to the whole fookin set today, cuz the visual was so great that the director didn't wanna 'cut' it.

There were volunteer firefolk all over the set, and fire hoses, and pumpers, and still they almost lost the whole building...(and I don't have any freking fotos cuz I couldn't tote my backpack, in which was stached my camera which was 100 yards on the other side of the stampede.)

(The photo above is of an Assinoboine rider from Montana (on the left) and a friend of mine, Romy Sanchez, a former rodeo cowboy and quarter-horse jockey and one of the best horsemen I've ever seen in the saddle.)

The shots I was in today were reaction shots, following the Buffalo Hump raid on Austin. "Dead" bodies in the street, buildings flaming, citizens running around in shock, and a couple of hundred head of horses dashing headlong down Commerce toward the open plains; the stunned citizens who survived pouring into the street to comprehend and then to remedate the terrible violence...

Around 6 pm, a hail-storm, bearing hailstone over an inch in diameter, rolled over the set, followed by a rainstorm which left the first two inches of dust the relative consistancy of a chocolate shake. We wrapped in the rain.

There hasn't been measurable rainfall in Albuquerque since last September...


This is why I do this stuff.