New York Film Academy 15th day

Shoot Continuity Film

I love surprises!

Today I got up at 7:00 because as far as I knew we were shooting 3 shorts that each would take 4 hours. And since I hadn't heard anything from my crew I figured we had to get going early. But as i found out after texting and calling several times the first shoot would take place at 15:00. Because they shot a short yesterday after they left my shoot. I was pretty pissed. But the sweet girl I am I didn't get mad at them. I only cursed in my head. This did give me the opportunity to video chat with Richard and after talking to him his parents gave me a ring on iChat as well.

Chris told me they were picking me up at 14:00 but instead I got picked up at 13:00 without any notice besides them honking when they arrived. Another surprise of which many would follow. So we headed out. But it still wasn't clear what was going to happen. Chris was the first to shoot and he still needed to get props/costumes and scout out a place to shoot. Thomas was (from what I could tell) still clueless on pretty much everything.

Director Chris

After we got the stuff for Chis's short we drove around to find public phones. This was an important part of his film and we were going to shoot without any permits. Which made it kinda exciting but might be disastrous as well. Because we could get kicked out of the place where we were shooting. Chris didn't have a actress so he asked me to be in his short. But I had to change my clothes and put on make-up to make it look like I was beaten up. The temperature had dropped dramatically since last week. It was still 20 degrees Celsius but with the wind and the sun disappearing early I got pretty cold. The acting was a whole lot of fun though.

NO pre-production

Afterwards we had dinner and would start Thomas's shoot after dinner. But surprise surprise! He didn't yet have a location nor a script or clear idea. He just knew he wanted a park, he did have two actors and he took clown costumes from the props at school. Luckily the actor in Chris's shoot lived in a big complex where a couple of parks were. But he wasn't sure if we could film there. So the same problem as on Chris's shoot. We could get kicked out. We split up because the cousins wanted to get on some warmer clothes. So Alex (the actor) Thomas headed out to Alex's place. We checked the parks. One of them had some freaky imitation dinosaur skeletons which would be cool for the short.

Thomas and I stayed there and while waiting on Chris, Ike and the actress worked out the idea for the short. I love teamwork but I was annoyed he was still pretty clueless on what he was going to do. I feel I had a pretty big part in creating something cool. Which I kinda hated but liked at the same time. I just wish he atlas had given me the idea he knew what he was going to do. I was going to DP on his film. But he didn't really listen to what I had to say. And at that point I wasn't in the mood to explain/argue my input and let him do what he wanted. The rest of the crew and the actress arrived pretty late. When we we're finally shooting a security guard showed up. The first in many security guards that would show up that evening and night. Thank he gave us an half an hour to wrap it up. the half hour ended up in 2 hours and when we were shooting our last scene we got kicked out. Actually we had still one shot to shoot. But I was actually pretty happy with getting kicked out because it was already 2:00 in the morning. And we had to start at 9:00 and also we had to get all the equipment in the car and drive home. So I finally got to bed at 3 and my alarm was set on 7:30 YAY!!!

Looking back

The day was kinda cool although I was pretty irritated with the lack of organization and it getting so freaking late. Although Thomas did absolutely nothing in pre-production and was still figuring his thing out (whit a lot of help from me) on the spot his will probably turn out pretty amazing. Which kinda sucks for me because I prepared so much and have the feeling it will be terrible. Which makes me think. I used to be like Thomas and the rest of my crew when I was in college. Through work etc. I got much more organized. I thought that would make me less stressed etc. But the shoots are still nervewreaking for me. So maybe I should do what they do and what I used to do,… Should I?!? The best answer to this question will win a dinner with me my treat ;)