Saturday, June 19, 2010

Finished Filming & Catching up...

The last few weeks have been pretty exciting and busy. As you have probably already noticed I haven’t blog and that isn’t because of a lack of content it has been the result of time. First, working on the movie Rehab was completely amazing and an experience I won’t soon forget. We worked long days and it was non-stop go. It was a totally amazing experience to be apart of and honestly the best part was meeting all the people. I truly hope that I can remain in contact with some of those folks and it would be wonderful if I could have an opportunity to work with them in the future!

One of the most interesting parts of the experience was just to see how everything came together and how everyone worked to make all the different scenes come alive. It is really hard to explain all the work that goes on behind the scenes over long hours to make a few minute part of a movie. It was also amazing to see how they created and lit the sets. The mixing of ambient light and artificial light was really impressive. These guys almost made it look easy and if I didn’t know any better I don’t think I would have really had an appreciation for the level of effort and work that was put into it to make everything work.

On the second to last day the guys over at Cinema 5D came over to interview Kenny Glassing the Director of Photography about his experience utilizing the Canon 7D to shoot the entire movie. It is a really neat interview and you get a behind the scenes look at what was going on. They even received a little clip from the “A” camera and were able to put that in their interview. It is definitely worth a see.

Bottom line though, this was an amazing experience and one that I am really grateful to Kenny Glassing, Alan Cohen, Tim Sheridan and Mike Cassidy for making it happen. I know that it was highly unusual for someone to get the chance to walk in and do this and I truly appreciate the opportunity. I hope I didn’t disappoint!

Sunday, June 06, 2010

Completely unexpected...

Ok, this is going to be a bit of a strange post.  I know you've all read about my buddy Mike Cassidy moving on from working at Edwards and going back into the film business.  Well, Mike's plan was to get me down on the set for a day to see what everything was all about.  The "plan" was to try and do something for a day this coming week.  As we started to finalize the plan Mike asked, "So what do you want to do?  Just hang out and watch?"  I'm like, "Ah, ya, like was there another option?" He was like, "Well, do you want to work it as part of the film department?"  I was like, "Seriously????"

So here's the deal, with some totally amazing support from my boss at work I was able with basically no notice get nearly another week off (minus Tuesday) to work on this new film.  So I went down on Saturday and had my introduction to the film business.  I was fully prepared for Saturday to be it and had it worked out that day it would have been a totally amazing experience.  I honestly didn't know if I was going to be able to come back on Monday until about 2230 Saturday night.

So what are my impressions???  First, Mike is freaking amazing and one of the highlights of the day was when they had a really complicated shot that Mike just nailed and the executive producer came out from "video village" to personally tell him how awesome he did and that he should be working on their crew on CSI Miami (most of the film crew were from that show).  The second was seeing how in tune everyone was and how things just happened without having to be asked.  It was like everyone was on the same page and knew what everyone else was going to do.

This is really an opportunity of a life time and I am still just completely amazed and blown away that I am actually doing.  It is pretty darn obvious that you don't normally get to just walk in and start working in the camera department.  I know that it being a freebie helps but even still this is really amazing and I am VERY appreciative for the chance to do this.

If everything stays on schedule I will finish with the crew when production wraps on Tuesday the 15th!

I'm not sure how much more I will be able to blog but once I am done I will write about the entire experience!