Once again I’m sorry this is late.  This was the big one.  I was a PA for this shoot.  On Monday I was unable to make it to the shoot because of conflicts with my other classes but my understanding was that it went pretty well.

I made it to the shoot on Wednesday at Sarah’s apartment.  This was the sex scene between the two main characters and it went very well.  It was a new experience for me (and probably all of us) shooting this sort of a scene, but it went really well.  Everyone was extremely professional and Jake did a fantastic job directing his actresses.  The production was fairly organized with Carrie slating each shot and keeping a detailed footage log and Shannon was doing the same for the audio.  The dolly worked out well and i saw some of the footage after we shot and it looked nice.  I don’t have much more to say about this shoot, as a PA I really just did what I was asked.  I made a Subway run at one point, took over the audio log for the last hour or so because Shannon had to leave, and then helped tear down and load up gear.

As for Friday, I had a class at 12:20 p.m. that I needed to be at to turn in a writing assignment, followed by another class at 3:00 p.m.  By the time I got done with class I checked in with Carrie.  She told me that they were almost done shooting and that by the time I got there they’d be done.  I would have gone in the morning before my 12:20 class but I don’t have a car, so I would have had to catch a ride out there with someone and then would not have had a way back for my class.  Carrie told me the shoot went well.

I know this is a bit late but I figured I should still give my input about our shoots.  Overall they went very well.  Shannon got us access to the Bloomington Bus Depot (she works there) which ended up being a perfect location for the BMV.  Our talent was also great.  Jeff was hilarious and David was just as funny if not funnier.  On the technical side everything went smoothly.  We truly had very few problems shooting this project…

Except for people showing up.  For our first shoot both Ed and Jake did not show up.  Jake told me he had to work but Ed didn’t really tell me a reason.  This left us with a four man crew that dwindled to three when Kaleb had to leave for class.  On our Wednesday shoot we had similar problems.  Alex called us that morning to say he was sick and wasn’t going to make it.  When we were leaving the lab Ed and Jake were there working on something in Booth 2.  We asked if they’d be coming and once again told us that they could not make it because of pre-production for Two Juliets.  This left us with a three man crew from the start.  

I understand that Two Juliets is a much larger production than anything we have done in class before, but that week was supposed to be for production of BMV.  Not to mention that we only had two shoots that week for BMV and one of them was during our lab time.  Shooting on Wednesday during our scheduled lab time really should result in everyone being available since nobody has other classes scheduled for that time. On the same topic there have been more than a few shoots that Jake has skipped almost entirely.  He didn’t show up to Nature Hike because he was shooting that Doritos commercial and he was at one Daisies shoot for a half an hour before leaving.

Now I know that everyone has conflicts and several others things going on and in the end we were able to shoot everything and it turned out fine, but the rest of us make time in our busy schedules for these out of class shoots.  

After shooting all of the scheduled scenes for “The Pen” spontaneous dancing took over much of the crew.  This is only a small portion of the copious amounts of dancing that went on…

*Apologies for the horrendous video quality from my phone.

A lot of fun went on at the shoots for “The Pen” last week.  Here are a few on set pics.  Videos are forthcoming.

-Tyler O.

Back again.  Geek Love was on Wednesday this past week and went very well.  I directed and Carrie DPed for this project that Shannon wrote and produced.  Carrie and I met with Shannon last Saturday at her apartment to see the location and discuss the best way to shoot it. I then wrote a shot list and Carrie and I met to talk about that on Tuesday before the shoot.

Everyone was supposed to meet at Shannon’s on Wednesday to shoot at 12 pm but we had quite a few people that were late.  Jacob, Shannon, and I were the only ones there for about a half hour before other people showed up.  Once we got going around 1 pm everything seemed to go pretty well.  Also Gesi wasn’t on set until about 2 pm so until then Morgan (PA) ran audio.  One of our actors had to leave at around 3:30 so we got everything we needed him for done.  Around 3:30 after our actor left we took a break for lunch.  Shannon provided pizza and drinks for the cast and crew.  After that we shot the rest of our footage with very few problems and got finished around 5:30 or 6 pm.  

Carrie was a good DP. She followed my direction well and gave solid input when necessary.  I think we made a good team.  Also Jacob’s gaffing was great.  He had a good idea about what lighting we needed and tweaked it until I was happy with it.  He did a very good job.  Morgan was a helpful PA, especially when she stepped in for Gesi until he was able to be there.  Gesi was audio and he did an ok job when he was there but it was obvious that he didn’t really want to be there.  He was friends with our lead actress and spent a lot of time talking to her, about things unrelated to the project.  Sometimes to the point of being a distraction from the production.  He was also text messaging almost the entire time we were shooting. Just about every time we stopped a take he was back on his phone.  If nothing else it was distracting. Shannon was a solid producer.  The talent was here on time and they were good.  Our lead actor was hilarious to the point that we sometimes had a hard time getting through a scene without someone laughing.  It was also nice that she provided lunch for the cast and crew. Overall she did a good job coordinating actors and location.

For the most part this project seemed to go well. Production starts for the Pen tonight, so hopefully that goes well.

Until next time,

Tyler Otten

This is about a week after the fact but things went well on Nature Hike.  There was something kind of relaxing about shooting out in the woods all day.  Most of our talent showed up on time, Keetin was a bit late but everything worked out.  Kaleb did a good job directing and Ben did an equally good job DPing.  I was audio this week and it was pretty simple.  We had a few issues with rustling leaves dominating our sound but we fixed that problem by clearing the leaves from the talents’ feet when they were stationary.  We were less concerned with it while they were walking because leave would obviously rustle when you’re walking through them.

The shoot went long (from 10 am to about 7 pm) but we got the entire piece shot.  It was a nice change of pace to have a one day shoot and be done.  Overall the production went well.  I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Until next time,

Tyler Otten

So we pretty much wrapped up the Rose last week.  Overall everything went well for this PA.  The shoot at Grazie! seemed like it went very well despite some talent issues and as we all found out this week, audio problems.  On the bright side I saw some of the footage that Ed was capturing yesterday and it looks great.  It definitely nails the film noir look of the P.I. film.  The shoot in the studio also went well although perhaps a little longer than we all thought.  Unfortunately I was unable to make it to the shoot later that night at Sarah’s and to the morning shoot on Friday because of conflicts with other classes.

I know Ed is trying to shoot again for the dialogue at Grazie! as well as a couple shots there that have a boom pole in them.  He also mentioned to me when I saw some of the footage that there is one line that we will have to just replace the dialogue for in post because his actor has cut his hair since the shoot. Oops.

Besides these problems the shoots went alright, and pending reshoots and dialogue recordings, it should be a very nice piece.

We’re possibly starting shooting for Nature Hike tomorrow.  Hopefully that goes well.

Until next time,

Tyler

Dear Jim,

The first week of shooting just came to an end for Happy Dance.  Our initial shoot on Monday night went smoothly.  We met at the production lab and shot the sequences when our dancer is supposed to be at work.  Shooting there went pretty well and we had some good talent as the dancer’s boss.  I’m gaffer on this particular production and the lighting set-ups were pretty simple. for most of the scenes we really only needed a couple lights and the biggest thing was really just diffusing them.  We made liberal use of the scrims in the mostly white office hallways.

After wrapping at the Telecom building we moved on to Sarah’s apartment to shoot the sequences of Jess waking up and going about her morning routine on both her good and bad days.  Again things went smoothly, lighting was pretty simple, and everyone was working well together.  We finished all we needed at the apartment and wrapped for the day at about 11 PM.  We were supposed to shoot the next day at 9:30 AM.

Unfortunately, our Tuesday morning shoot was for the outside scenes and we were rained out.  It had to be re-scheduled for the next week.  The next scheduled day to shoot was Thursday night, but there ended up being some sort of scheduling issue and we once again had to re-schedule.  We are now scheduled to make up both those shoots this coming week in such a way that they do not interfere with the current productions.

Until next week,

Tyler Otten