All That Surrounds Me: Aiming Line Shoot: The Collaboration

My alarm goes of at 3:30 am... I'm awake. I barely slept. I was in bed at 1:30 am. I dazedly stumble into the shower to wake up, then pack the remaining gear. I call for a cab at 10 til 4. At 4:30, Hannah and I go down with the cameras, laptop, and food for the day. Call time is 5 am. 4:45 am... still no cab. So we call a different one and finally get picked up at 5:05. I hate being late, especially since a few people already arrived on set.

When we get there, my D.P. and camera crew are there setting up. The first shot is a shot over the pool table to capture the game-play of the scene and determine the blocking that we will use the rest of the shoot. To get it, we mount the camera to a fig-rig and clamp it between to c-stands on either side of the table, so the camera is pointing straight down. It's probably to coolest shot I've pulled off recently. But it took forever, and we are way behind because half of us were late and it was a big first set up.

Luke, one of the actors has to leave at 12:30, and it's already almost 10:00. So we set up our wide master shot, and get going. Just as we think we have momentum, it is already time for Luke to leave... it feels like we got nothing done, although we did get half of the script shot on wide and medium shots. But I'm still bummed. We missed about half of the shots I had planned for that portion of the day.

We set up and shoot some of the inserts and cut-away's so that time is not wasted. They are trying to open the bar we are shooting in, so we have a little bit of noise to deal with. Then as we are wrapping Day 1, Hannah is informed that for Day 2, the bar has people coming in at 10 am for a football game. We were promised the space (at least where the pool table is) for 5 am to 3 pm both days, which means we have to step it up the next day. I'm officially panicked.

Day 2, we make sure everybody is on time or close to it. 5 am, we are setting up the first shot. I spoke to Ryan at the end of Day 1 about how we'd pull this off... we go to 2 cameras, for 2 set-ups and 6 big shots of coverage. We are shooting by 6:30 am and we have beautiful lighting. This sets the tone for the rest of the day.

The crew was amazing, they all seemed pretty in-sync, which is amazing considering I must have been a total basket case that day. But we still only get 4 of the 6 shots by 10 am, at which point people start pouring in to wet their whistles and watch men in spandex hug each other at full speed. So... the last two shots I need with dialogue, we get with awful audio, but it serves as a reference for post, and I'm okay with that. Not to mention, we get some of the more beautiful shots on this set-up.

Feeling accomplished, we get the final inserts and cut-away's, and I think we all surprised ourselves at how much time and footage we made up for by being ready to go. Not to mention being saved by the additional camera I rented as a "back-up." We stay for dinner at the bar, and I drink 2 too many manhattans while listening to my D.P. get inappropriate. But we all have smiles and laughter to share and we are all feeling the release of the past 2 days stress and hard work.

I had to cut a teaser for my class in two days, so I kept it really simple. Images, and music, cut to give a sense of the story without giving anything away. Despite the fear of failing after Day 1, we came away with some amazing footage and great experience... a guarantee on almost any film shoot. Check out the teaser in HD on Vimeo.com: http://vimeo.com/2491652 or below