I Am Worthless

February 7, 2010

Chris came up with a joke today, probably a reference to me — Q:  “Why do you not want to share a blanket with a director?” A:  “Because he always gets too much coverage.”

Re-shot the twelve pages we shot before, this time with Chris.  Already knew what I wanted (and what I had over shot before) so it went a little bit quicker this time.  Felt really weird shooting the same lines with a different actor, but it all played out nicely.  I’d love to film fake footage with different actors (sometimes way different) all playing Dylan to cut into a montage.  Would probably only amuse me, but that’s fine.

I’ve been finding and hitting the limitations of shooting with multiple cameras pretty hard the past couple times we’ve shot.  It really is amazing, and it does speed up the process tremendously…  but I have to sacrifice framing and lighting sometimes to hide cameras in smaller areas.  And I can only watch the footage from one camera while we shoot, trusting whoever is manning the other camera(s).  A couple times I’ve decided to scrap two cameras for one so that I can tweak lighting or focus on smaller elements; I think I’ll probably plan my next feature to shoot at least half single camera.  And a new goal is to make a smoother dolly by the end of the summer.

Saturday we shot the interior shots of the funeral parlor for the wake, with about fifteen extras dressed up around a coffin.  I need to get better at working with extras—I get anxious and rush a bit when there winds up being more people.  It just gets so loud between takes that I realize now I should probably pretend we’re still shooting when we make small tweaks between shots.  I’m sure it will help.

We shot a couple scenes Saturday night that I’m really hoping other people will find as funny as I do.  Can’t wait to start editing.

We’ve been singing R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet this whole weekend (you don’t need to know the words to be able to sing it), as we’ve been throwing cameramen and boom operators into small, cramped, full closets for extended periods of time.  I haven’t had to climb in one myself, but I’ve (pretty much) spent my fair share of hours shooting from the least comfortable places.  Trunks, closets, sitting in people’s laps, hotel rooftops, crevices that are smaller than I am, etc.  Well worth it though.