So it's been a while since my last entry for various reasons - mostly this thesis film I'm working on with the help of some talented colleges called "Belief". I'll try to wrap up the last month in short but significant fashion and get to the moment at hand.
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| The Jib and Dolly being setup |
The last day couple days in North Texas were an adventure to be had as AC. After a brief walk through of the shots, the DP Kate Steinhebel was put on the disabled list after an incident involving a tree limb cut her non-shooting eye. The hazards of the Texas brush revealed themselves once again as the limb she was clearing from the camera splintered resulting in a piece of bark inflicting a half inch cut across the white of her left eye. In a valiant effort, Kate finished shooting the scene before heading to the hospital during a company move across the ranch. Because the shots were storyboarded and we were adequitly prepared, we were able to set up and film a couple shots in her absence. Kate's diligance and drive to continue the shoot paid off when she was greeted back from the hospital with the 35mm Panivision GII mounted on a jib/dolly combo set up for the final shot of that location.
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| Trashbags, sleet, cold, jib, and wet filters |
The final day of the spec shoot was set to wrap out with the closing shot of the jeep commercial. Two young adventurers drop the top on a Jeep and drive out down a dusty road. The catch was that when we woke up, it was freezing outside, overcast, and sleeting. Visual compensations for the weather elements aside, my duties as AC were to be challenging. Without dexterous gloves, I worked with frigid hands to keep the camera dry, its body warm, and the matte box filter clean. The one accessory Panavision did not include was something to protect the electronics from the sleet so we used the old plastic trash bag gag to keep the camera dry. Easily enough, the GII has built in features not only to defog the diopter, but to warm the camera's body - something that needed to be done between nearly every take. Finally the last challenge was to clear the melted sleet and water droplets from the mattebox filter. The camera was pointed into the oncoming percipitation for the shot and was happy to collect water droplets. First thoughts were to use a lens cloth to dry the filter, but after evaluating the situation and the onslaught of sleet I opted to use a duster instead. Using a lens cloth would have left smudges across the filter, made more work for me trying to eliminate them, and possibly ruined the image. By using the hand duster and using the surface tension of the water droplets to my advantage, I was able to easily move the droplets out of the lens' field of view without smudging the filter.
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| "Magpie" - Mark! |
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| Dolly and TV Rig |
The next shoot came around after one day of down time. A UT Graduate student and friend, Russ Bush, was filming his thesis film ("Magpie") on the RED. Once again, I assumed the position of Assistant Camera - this time for Director of Photography, Allen Ho (also a UT graduate student and former teaching assistant to my Cinematography class instructed by Deb Lewis). This was my first time to AC on a RED shoot but the learning curve was easy. Navigating through the menus (as with all digital cameras) is the hardest part and the first thing I focused on - Find the basic settings/options you'll be working with most often and go from there.
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| John and Carlos with his Mirror Magic* |
From here I'm just going to hit a couple highlights of the 6 day shoot. One shot was a slow push in on the dad watching tv. Russ wanted him to be able to watch what was playing on the TV while we did the take to get better reactions from him. A hand full of gobo arms and the ingenuity of gaffer/badass (Carlos Boillat) later, a rig was fashioned to the dolly that held a laptop directly above the camera. In another instance, Carlos fashioned a mirror rig on a c-stand for an overhead shot of the dad laying in a bed (trying to keep this short so I won't go into detail on the design of the shot). Then, just for fun, why not put the RED on top of Russ' Suburban to get a magic hour wide shot of the house?
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| RED on Suburban/John, Allen, and Carlos |
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| Allen - Covert Camera Op |
Finally (skipping a lot of interesting things here) to the biggest adventure. After a 12+ hour day of shooting, the crew wrapped (minus Russ, Allen, the lead Actor Dan, and I) but there was one more sequence to shoot. The plan was after a short break for the next day's scheduling we would head to the bus stop, catch a bus and shoot a scene guerrilla style on the bus. At 11:25 we hopped in Russ' Suburban with the RED stripped down and packed into a suitcase and headed out to catch the 2nd to last bus of the night at 11:37. 5 blocks or so down the road (halfway to the bus stop) the Suburban stalls at a red light - we're out of gas. The night's drizzle turned into more of a steady rain (of course it would). Russ directs Allen and Dan to stay with the suburban after we pushed it across the intersection and that me and him are going to run back, get my car, grab a can of gas, and make the last bus at 12:05. Suddenly I'm sprinting behind a former college cross country runner, in the rain, at night, wearing the worst running shoes possible. Skipping ahead, we just make the bus. The character's on board aren't the roughest looking crowd but they're close to it and my job is to get the RED out of the suitcase and ready to roll without anyone noticing.
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| Yes, It fits in a Suitcase... |
12:45am: hour 15.5ish of the film-making day - we get off the bus with the shots we needed 20 miles up the road, yellow cab's line is busy and nobody is answering their phones. It's drizzling, we're alone at a bus stop in the middle of the night with a $30K set up in a suitcase - of course we review the footage while we wait on the cab to get there. 2am - Success! the footage is downloaded and I'm leaving set - What A Day!
Still to come - SXSW bumper series, Phantom Camera, and "Belief" (my thesis project)
+john
