One of the main scenes planned today involves Moriah assembling the work crew she’s chosen for restoring the derelict lightkeeper’s house. The grounds are littered with ladders and tools. It looks very realistic.

Stefan tells me about a real passageway they found in the lightkeeper’s house that will be perfect to use in the scene where Moriah and Ben discover letters left from when her grandfather had secretly hidden French resistance fighters. Stefan is excited about this find and how well the discovery works into the story.

I’m impressed with his enthusiasm. With all his experience on movie sets, I would expect him to be jaded and bored with the process by now—but he is in his element.

There was a time when I thought all movie directors stomped around yelling instructions at people. Maybe some of them do, but that’s not what I saw out of Stefan. He is a gracious, warm, man who loves his work and knows how to get things done. Visually, it appears to me that he has created a seamless team with the actors and crew. Everyone has a job and does it well. These people are obviously professionals. It’s inspiring to watch them work.

However, it is necessary to stay out of their way—and we have trouble anticipating how to do that. There is much coming and going. Derek and I decide to get completely out of the way by taking a walk on one of the paths nearer the lighthouse. This gives us an unobstructed view of what’s going on outside the lightkeeper’s house, and we also get to admire the large drone that is hovering overhead taking sweeping pictures of the unique landscape.

At lunch, Stefan tells me he’s read Moriah’s Lighthouse. I’m surprised he isn’t just relying on the script to know the story. He surprises me further when he begins to discuss my writing and I discover that his opinion of my work is much higher than my own. He even gives me details of why it works and what he feels my strengths are.