Donald Whittier from has volunteered his Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic and wireless lavs, so we're set for sound. We'll need a mixer to use all three at once, but we have one on offer there as well.
Drew from Pointandshoot has a shiny new M2 35mm adapter with a Nikon mount on which he's giving me a good rental deal. A friend is willing to lend me a set of Nikon mount primes, so if everything works out we'll be shooting HD-micro35.
Apologize if the above is gibberish to you. Summarizes like this: very good news.
Josh Gibson has a Glidecam, so I'll be going over there this weekend to get checked out on it. Also get a chance to look at the VFX shots we did together a few weeks back.
The Glidecam lets me back off on home-made grip equipment, a skateboard dolly should round out the package. That leaves lighting. I've been playing with compact fluorescents in China balls and covered wagons, and the results are quite good, though like all soft lights hard to control. I feel a bit of pressure to get something with enough punch to selectively light the masters. Even more important are stands and light grip equipment, so that will be my focus for the next week.
Apologize if the above is gibberish. Summary: work to do.
I had a very eventful visit to Providence last week. Highlights:
I humbly suggest that anyone not confined to an oxygen tent get down to Trinity Rep to see Jessie Austrian and friends in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was the best way I could have spent the last few hours of a day which began with a 4:00am trip to the airport.
Ed Cattucci of CRI communications has generously (an outrageous understatement) loaned us a brand new JVC HD100 camera and a Glidecam V16, a device which attaches the camera via an articulated arm to a vest worn by the operator. So I will be frightening small children everywhere we go, and our hand-held shots will be smooth as silk.
We are doing quite well both on props and locations, thanks to Sixten and Kas respectively. You can see some new scouting shots here. Thanks to Lolo Jawerth and Sixten Abbot for standing in for me, and Jerry Pulleo for showing us around both the warehouse location and his own incredible house.
Cast, and therefore schedule, are still works in progress, which is about where we should be with three weeks to go.
We're deciding whether to buy or rent guns, but we have decided on full load blank fire guns in either case. These are incapable of firing, but have working action, muzzle blast (to a certain extent, we'll see), and shell ejection. You'll hear me say it many times more, but safe as they are, these guns are still dangerous if abused, and have caused at least one famous fatality. We'll have the rules laid out well in advance but I will expect everyone to treat them with the respect they deserve.
That's it for now, much, much more going on, but my time is better spent working on the production than posting about it at the moment.