Monday, August 24, 2009

“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around!”

So we've passed the halfway point and we're all still alive and kicking. What a trip! Here are a few lessons we've learned on the set of "Conversion" thus far:

WEEK ONE

  • When you have only one chance to get a good take, you WILL get a good take.
  • Throwing toilet paper at a statue in the middle of a park draws a crowd.
  • Kids will offer to graffiti anything.
  • Directing in a suit and tie really sucks. Running down a wet hill in 4" heels also sucks.


WEEK TWO

  • Wearing big boots is a good idea when shooting in an alley full of rusty nails, broken glass and used syringes. Wearing open-toed shoes is not.
  • Always feed your extras well. Of course, you may want to make sure that they stick around for the "extra" part and don't just grab food and leave.
  • Getting people to dance to no music is a dodgy, albeit interesting, affair
  • If you think of something cool/ interesting/ funny to do in front of the camera, think of how it will feel doing it about twenty times before committing.


WEEK THREE

  • On an independent film shoot, end times are highly flexible.
  • Bringing lighting equipment up three floors of spiral metal fire escape is even less fun than it sounds.
  • Lights attract bugs. Big lights attract bigger bugs. And in bigger swarms.
  • An adult human can sweat their own body weight under the proper circumstances.


WEEK FOUR

  • Some people have an amazing sense of dedication. Others do not. It's important to concentrate on the former.
  • You never notice how much traffic there is on a street until you try to film something there.
  • Some actors give you not only a performance, but a wealth of DVD extras.
  • Days that end with drinking beer and jumping in a pool are superior to those that end at dawn in an alley.

1 comment:

  1. Great Stuff. Being holed up with 20(?) other people in 500 degrees of heat, with 8000 watts of lights, over eight hours in a nearly hermitcally sealed 2nd story loft, having to dance to imaginary music, turned out to be alot more fun than I would imagine. I've followed where else you've been filming and its looks great so far. Keep going :)

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