Ok, I promised you more details on the movie and today you get them. One of my friends on cast her husband is an honest to goodness film maker. He has done a number of short films over the years and is doing his first full length feature film. He has been shooting and editing for about six months and is pretty close to being done. He needed some assistance doing sound and lighting and from the recommendation of his wife, asked me to help out. I agreed and spent yesterday on set. There will be at least 5 more weekends of shooting I will help out with over the next month and a half. In the end, I will be listed in the actual credits and on IMDB as production crew. It's kind of cool. I will be able to honestly say I have worked in film and theater and have the credits to prove it! The first thing they did yesterday was have me sign a contract and then wrote me a $1.00 check to show I had been 'paid' to work on the movie.
I arrived on set yesterday at 8am. Once all the crew got there we went over what I would be doing that day. We were shooting two indoor scenes from multiple angles. I was assigned the boom mic for the day. My job was to hold the mic in the correct spot based on the scene direction as it was being filmed. You'd think the mic would be on the person speaking, but not necessarily. It depends on the focus of the camera for the scene. For example, we filmed the scene from wide, from over the shoulder of the main character, from the side of actor 1, from the side of actor 2, etc. Each time the sound direction was different to establish focus of where it was coming from in the scene. I had the headphones on, the sound pack strapped to me, was checking levels, etc. The best part was when I got to stop filming because of background noise. We were filming near an airport and because of weather we believe they were re-routing some take off and landing patterns. That meant that every so often a small plane would be in the background and I would flag the director and we would stop filming. With the sound gear on, I was listening to things at about 7 or 8 times a louder scale than everyone else in the room. A couple of times I was the only one hearing things because of the sensitivity of the microphone. I even had to ask for quiet from the actors while I determined if a background train sound was completely gone.
We shot for about 8 hours with only two small breaks and lunch. We had a lunch spread set out for us and there had been breakfast ready when we arrived. At first when I was asked to do this, I honestly didn't know what to expect because so many people call themselves 'film makers' and yeah, right. But this was the real thing. From makeup artists on set, to the catering, to the filming, to even at the end of the day we had to stage a couple of pictures for the press junket. If they get used, I might even end up in the press packets.
His goal is to finish filming in the next two months, then finish editing by middle to end of summer. He will premiere later this year locally, then work on getting it accepted to 2012 film festivals. If it gets picked up, you would see it in theaters late 2012 probably.
They say that people have 2-3 careers in their lifetime. Given all the photography stuff I have done in the past, the theater work for the last six months, and now film? Maybe this is the direction my life is going. Perhaps this is what lies down the path for me...
In other news, on the way home I grabbed the kid for a few hours. She and I went to dinner where she regaled me with her adventures for the day. X1 dragged her and the other two kids to the city for the day which turned into a grand old adventure. The poor kid was frustrated and annoyed. She was very thankful that I picked her up even if it was only for a few hours.
Today I am working from home again. Only have a little to do, but it will be nice to actually not leave the house instead of frustrating.
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