Shooting Stress

For the last 8 days, we've had shoots that have lasted 8-12 hours almost every other day. We start around 5:00pm and go on till about 3 or 5:00am. And this has been taking a serious toll on my ability to attend my other classes.

For the shoots -- I signed up to handle the camera equipment, direct photography and direct lights. But I have also ended up adjusting lights for majority of the shots, and staging/posing the actors, and then help with moving furniture around in the mansion before and after the shoots - especially since only a small portion of the crew shows up everyday. My active involvement is needed in every single shot -- both in the preparation and execution of the shot, and I get very limited breaks in between takes.

The shoot on Sunday (03/25) was extremely stressful for me. We shot the outdoor car scenes from 12:00pm - 3:00pm. Then we had the most elaborate light setups for the evening shoot -- 2 out door setups, and 2 indoor setups, all requiring the lights to be moved all around the mansion (backyard, foyer, and bedroom). The shoot lasted from 5:00pm - 5:30am. My job became more difficult because the gaffer didn't show up that day. The portion of the crew that showed up tried to fill in for the gaffer, but it was still difficult to manage things. And I was constantly pressured to stay on schedule, which choked my creativity. I had to cut corners and in retrospect I was disappointed that I didn't get a chance to do certain things that I was planning to do for that shoot. The resulting footage looks good nonetheless and I dealt with the situation professionally, and the schedule wasn't affected severely.

But I honestly feel like I have invested more time and effort in the whole shooting process than what was initially assigned to me.

Final Shoots

This week we'll be shooting the entire interstitials. I will be responsible for:

• Directing Photography - shot composition, and camera motion
• Cinematography - lighting decisions
• Camera Technique - Setting up and handling Glide cam (steady-cam rig) and dolly

We had the first shoot today that lasted from 7pm - 1am. We'll be shooting almost every night of this week and our shoot sessions will last 8-10 hours each.

Commercial Shoot

On Friday, Jared, Cassie, Jacob, Potter and I shot the commercial at the Astin Manision. I was responsible for directing photography (lighting and camera) work. We got some more help from the enthusiastic German intern/exchange student Lorenz Meyer.

We shot the footage on Canon 5D, and I got a chance to work with the Glidecam from the lab. Although I was not able to get the footage as steady as I had planned for, it was much better and smoother than hand-held or on mono-pod.

Next I'll be working with Tyler to do the post-production work on the footage. Including motion tracking and stabilization, color correction and grading and CG text compositing.