East Chicago, Indiana

We’re going to be in the same location for three days. It’s a drawbridge in the middle of a bunch of steel mills. Many of them are abandoned, and the rest are on their way out.

The scene, a dream sequence, is an interesting one. One day we will shoot Emma Thompson sitting on the side of the river, looking up at the bridge, trying to imagine a car crash. During the following days we will shoot the crash.

“So we’re not really in Chicago?” I ask repeatedly.

“Right. Closer to Gary, Indiana.”

The only thing I know of Gary is the song Harold Hill sings in “The Music Man.” And thinking about that leads me to realize that I know nothing about the Midwest. Standing on the set I am struck by how flat everything is.

The location is very run down; that’s why we’re here. The director liked the look of the abandoned factories. Standing on the bridge, the view is a crisscross of pipes and ladders stretching off into the distance. Huge chimneys pump out smoke, which, along with the white clouds, contrast the brilliantly blue sky.

But we aren’t after a nice day. This scene takes place in the rain. Four tall towers are brought in to achieve this effect. A water truck wets down the bridge every 15 minutes. A visual effects crew runs around taking pictures of the sky. The blue clouds will be replaced with dark rain clouds. I’m told that I won’t recognize the final shot.

The movie, directed by Marc Forester, is called “Stranger than Fiction.” It tells the story about an ordinary man, played by Will Ferrell, who wakes up one day and can hear a voice narrating his life. He is, to the best of his knowledge, a character in a book.

The next day the narrator explains that he will soon die. He freaks out and runs to a literary professor, Dustin Hoffman, and together they try to figure out what is wrong with him.

It’s by far the biggest production I’ve worked on. We don’t move slowly, but, as I said, we will be shooting this scene for three days. It will probably be five minutes of the movie, so we don’t exactly move quickly.

Driving to set for the start of the second day, we pass large billboards advertising a Donald Trump casino nearby. He promises us fame and fortune. Making the turn onto what used to be the Main Street of the small town we are shooting in, I’m struck by what used to be a bustling street but is now a broken, run-down eye-soar.

A post office is the only thing not boarded up, and even that has a cracked window. The factories that used to allow this town to thrive have themselves been closed. The billboard sports the catchphrase, “You’re Fired,” and Trump’s stern face seems like a cruel joke.

We’re going to crash the car off the bridge today. We have eight cameras pointed at the bridge from just about every angle you could imagine. Three of the cameras are on the car itself. The car is hooked into a remote control and will be driven through a breakaway guardrail that our crew has installed. It will sail out and over the camera where I’m stationed and crash into the water below.

There are divers waiting to retrieve the car. We are going to do this twice. We have three of the same car, in case something goes wrong. It’s all we’re going to shoot today.

The prep that goes into a shot like this is incredible. We wait for five hours setting up, and there isn’t really any chance at a rehearsal. It will take the divers two hours to get the car back onto the bridge.

Somewhere along the way my mind wanders back to the billboards and the young children I saw earlier in the day playing basketball in front of the boarded-up restaurant they live above.

Something about this hits me very hard. I’ve never seen anything like this before. A town has been ruined. Certainly I know it happens. I’ve seen Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me.” I think about what it must be like to be one of those kids—to drive home every day past the billboard of Trump.

The assistant director asks if my camera is ready. “Yes,” I yell above the rain machine. It happens in slow motion for me.

I have the best seat in the house. The car smashes through the guardrail and goes sailing out into the blue sky. It hangs in the air for a lot longer than I expect. It seems like forever before it smashes into the water. It floats there for a second and then gurgles to the bottom of the river.

Unlike the town, there are divers there to retrieve it.