We will have our cast and crew meeting on Saturday, October 15th, at 8:30pm. The location is Gerry Puleo's house at 109 Summer Street, Providence.
Here's the Google Map
And here's Mapquest's.
Looking forward to seeing everyone. Much to do between now and then, so I'll keep this post short.
Patrick Orban has (thanks to the negotiating skills of Sam Sam Yung) lent us several thousand dollars worth of Nikon 35mm prime lenses for the shoot. These lenses are considerably faster than the ones I had previously arranged, which means we should be able to shoot with less light. Which is good, because we still have no pro lights lined up.
My own travel arrangements are set: I will fly into LaGuardia on the Saturday 15th, pick up the lenses, meet Anna, take an afternoon train to Providence, and arrive around 7:00pm. Our all-hands meeting should be at Gerry's shortly after that, I propose 8:30pm.
Last night I assembled one of the four casters for a portable rollerblade-wheel/PVC track dolly, which came out quite nicely once I figured out how to drill out and cut the aluminum pieces. I still have a few days before I have to ship it off to Kas, so I'll see if some easy modifications will let me run it on 2x6s and ladder segments.
Vicki Boyer has promised me a custom camera beanbag by Friday, a documentary and news cameraman's trick, which should be useful for quick setups, car mounts, and the like. After I've had a look at the camera, I will probably assemble a static stabilizer for hand-held shooting in the usual way, out of bent aluminum or threaded pipe and small free weights.
Between these ghetto rigs and Ed Cattucci's beautiful pro gear, we are covered for grip equipment, with the notable exception of a good fluid head tripod.
I am tempted to shoot without one on principle...one of the worst pieces of advice offered to starting filmmakers is to always use a tripod to "get rid of that home-movie shaky look". The result is all too often--personal experience speaking here--a relentless series of dull static shots, or fifteen over-the-shoulder reverses in a single page of dialog.
I'm no fan of intentional documentary-style unsteadiness, in fact when I've shot documentary hand-held I've taken great pains (often physically) to be as smooth as possible. Perhaps the advice should be "always attach small cameras to something heavy but movable", be it a fifteen-pound stabilizer, a 40' jib, or a pickup truck. Or, in rare cases, a really good cameraman, but there's where you start to get into trouble.
But we still need to be able to pan on dolly moves, so the search continues for a fluid head tripod.
Much to his disappointment and ours, Sam Hargrave will not be able to join us in October. He will be in Shrevesport, Lousianna on the set of "Roadhouse 2", where he will double the lead and train the other fighters, after which he will most likely be doubling Crispin Glover in "Grendel". We've known for some time this was likely, and so are as well prepared as one can be for the loss of such a talent, not to mention how much I will just miss his goofy face on the set. Anna Henke, who has assisted Sam any number of times and as recently as last month, will be stepping up to choreograph and coordinate stunts and gun handling. Sam's character was written with him in mind, and will now accordingly be rewritten and recast--that's filmmaking, it wouldn't be the same without these little challenges.
In better news, Alfred Butler of Trinity Rep has put me in touch with his propmaster, Mike Getz, who apparently can set us up with some automatic blank fire pistols, which otherwise I would have had shipped from Georgia. I am still interested in a local source for airsoft and paintball guns. If anyone has a lead, please let me know.
Gerry Puleo has agreed to let us kill him on camera, and has also given us the run of his amazing home for use as a location. See the photos starting at http://www.ghostmap.com/intermission/morestills/target50.html.
Reading back over these posts, I see that I have never mentioned my co-writer Alex Wilson's great iFilm short, "All's Fair in Love and Police Actions", which created a lot of buzz when it hit the web a couple of weeks ago. If you haven't seen it already, see if you can free up four minutes in your schedule and go to http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2673948.
I spent the afternoon playing with Josh Gibson's Glidecam. A few first impressions.
It mandates slow pans and tilts by its very nature--you're supposed to manipulate it about its center of gravity with your fingertips. Once the camera is properly balanced, it's easy to get it to float smoothly no matter how you move, the hard part is getting it aimed at what you want, and keeping it from dutching. The camera "wants" to wander and float around. It's like substituting a drunken stupor for a niccotine fit. My initial feeling is that I'm likely to be almost as steady using a simple stabilizer, and whole lot more accurate with framing. But then, I recall that my very first hand-held shots were such a dismal failure that I almost gave up, and now I'm considered quite competent.
Later in the evening I went over to Justin Meckes' house to work on his cut of Balloon Animals, the short I shot for him this summer. I couldn't help but marvel at how good the dolly shots looked compared to the Glidecam work I'd just done. They were quick to set up, too, once we had the hang of it. I must ponder.