Thursday, February 08, 2007

Catch-up

I'll keep this one short:

Basically the last project turned out really well. I'll put a link to it up and some thoughts on its critique soon.

The follow-up project was a collaboration with two other people, which made decisions difficult to come to--which also explains why I haven't been writing in here about it, since all of the thinking through things happened in conversations.

Anyhow, we shot it last night...and man, oh man, was it the most miserable shoot I've ever been on or done. It was awful. Truly a test of stamina.

We filmed on a soccer field near the Aboretum, south of the Montlake area. Filming was supposed to last about four hours, but of course, we had a generator for lights that we had to keep moving around depending upon the lighting set-up. And it started raining. The shoot time blossomed from four hours...to well over eight.

Andrew was acting in it and Daphne was pretty much the AD, which left me in charge of camera and lights. And GlideCam.

And man. It's 10pm, it's wet, it's muddy. We're all cold, the lens is getting wet and fogging up. And I've got a fucking steadicam strapped to me. And we have to flip the housing upside down to get the camera low to the ground. Shit.

My back is still sore, even now. That was miserable. Misery incarnate.

And of course, we had to haul over 100lbs--probably closer to 250--more than 200 meters to the car in the darkness. Through the mud and the rain. It was shitty. It made me wonder how anyone ever lived up here in the NW before there was electricity and warmth. God it sucked.

More than a few times was I reminded of experiences at basic training. Just the sheer will involved...

I haven't looked at any of the footage yet and, frankly, I'm not even sure I want to. I have a pretty good feeling that it's going to look like shit.

I guess the biggest lessons learned here was the absolute necessity to plan everything out logistically and creatively, down to the last detail. We could have used more people, at least two. We should have had lens wipes, an electrical heater. A canopy. At least one more tarp. We should have gotten permission to drive out onto the field. We should have all had better clothing. And we should have had a fucking shot-by-shot STORYBOARD with shots numbered in the order we needed to shoot them.

In all honesty, Andrew is very talented, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt in terms of his experience with logistics and I really shouldn't have. I went against my gut instinct to plan every detail out because he didn't like the thought of that and if we had, it would have saved probably at least two hours of bullshit.

Now it's not really his fault. It's more my own fault. I have more experience, and deferred to the rest of the group "for the good of the group" when really the best thing for the group would have been to plan everything out to the fullest.

Fuck. Oh well. We'll see how it turned out later.

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