Indie Engineering

Im Back

2009-03-13T12:06:00.001-07:00

well its been a while since i last posted, i am still new on the whole blog thing and remembering to update it has fallen to the back of my mind. Anyway a lot has happened since my last post but from an engineering standpoint it has been slow. I have been doing a lot with my other job on set which is the head camera operator. One big and amusing event was when we were shooting on a road inside of a condo development. We had run stingers across the road in order to give power to our lights. the stingers were plugged into a power strip which was to the far right of the road. all night cars passed over out cords with no problem until one car came down the road. They did not have on their headlights and were creeping along at around 5 miles per hour. with most of the road open to cruise through this brilliant driver managed to move enough to the right to completely destroy our power strip. She stopped when we all screamed in horror at her stupidity but did not get out of her car to see what she had hit, heck for all she known she could have just run down an innocent PA, but did she care? Nope she just stopped and after around a min drove off. That was one small incident but not the end of the world.

This Past Weekend was an interesting one. It was vacation time and a lot of the regular crew was unable to be on set. When i say a lot i mean by the last day of shooting before we had a nice week off, out crew had dwindled down to five people counting myself. Our audio guy Aaron fell ill and i had to take over running the mixer and boom so our DP Zach filled in for me on the Camera. We finished up completly exausted but it was a rewarding day and we did manage to get the shots we needed expcet for one that we had to put on the back burner as a pick up shot. Out AD was not happy about having to extend the pick up list but honetly if we haddnt the scene most likely would have had to be re-shot anyway. We were all to tired and restless to function. I did come out of this weekend with one thing. I have a bad right shoulder and all the time i spent holding the boom above my head loosend its a little. When i got home the first thing i managed to do was sit down on my bed and bam dislocate my shoulder. The pain was not pleasing but i managed to reloacte it quickly and after a couple of days of having to take advil i feel back to myself. Moral of this story, leave audio to the people with good shoulders.

Febuary 6-8

2009-02-11T11:08:00.001-08:00

So It was back to New York. I packed up my car on Friday and headed down from CT. Before i get into it i will say right now that this was the longest and hardest shooting weekend that we have had so far. We had to wake up early and did not stop shooting till late in the night. Mix that in with being kept up by people talking all night, and you have an exhausted engineer. Friday afternoon, we shot a few interior shots, nothing to testing, but we did get some pretty nice rack focuses. On Friday night a few of us headed to a graveyard in order to do some scouting and test shots. when we got there we decided to set up the dolly and jib but realized that we had left some key connective pieces for both the dolly track and jib arm back at the house. This at first seemed to be a problem because we would not be able to run the amount of track we wanted to use and would not be able to lock the 2 pieces of the jib arm together. For the dolly track i found an old pair of work gloves that i rolled up into a cigar shape and stuck it into the track piping. Surprisingly this held very nicely and we were able to run 20 ft of track instead of just 10. For the jib i found a bic pen in my jacket and stuck it in the hole where the connecting pin would usually be. i then tied this off tight with some string i found in my other pocket and it held. for the other connecting pin i used a headband to get some grip on the jib arm and tied it tight with another piece of string. Once these little oportunities were set aside we shot out test footage and headed home. The next day we returned to the graveyard, early in the morning in order to get sunrise shots. This was a long day in the cold, but it was worth it. The shots looked awsome and we did accomplish alot. That nigtht we shot outside in a tent, which was an interesting experiance. I was running camera in the tent, and even though it was a big tent it was still close quaters. The director and DP watched the shots from outside while the audio director and myself stayed inside with the actors. The shots were awsome thanks to a great lighting job from our gaffer. At one point i had to balance the 40 pound camera rig on my head in order to shoot a straight down close up. I cam back into the house, cold, and very tired. After a night of no sleep (remeber the people keeping me up all night) we returned to the grave yard in order to get some last shots that we did not get on saturday. Once we finished these shots it was back to CT for some much earned and needed rest.

January 30-31

2009-02-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

So I have not posted a lot recently so i have to play catch up. On January 30th we shot from 11am till around 1am. In other words this was a long ass day. We shot in an apartment which alowed for a lot of creativitye for the gaffer and set designer. For me it was the same old same old when it comes to getting the equipment ready and to make sure their are no technical snags. Part of my job is to also act as the films lead camera oporator but for most of these indoor scenese the director of photography did the shooting while i helpled with grip work and pulled focus. The night was long but rewarding as we came away with some great footage. The next day we began shooting with Jess (Lana). All of these shots were done on the Quinnipiac University Campus, and were outdoors. This did not post to many problems because we did have power nearby for monitors and battery charging and we also had snow on the ground that acted as a nice refelctor. In all thier is not much i have to say about this day, we got some really good shots and have really gotten into the swing of things with the production when it comes to knowing what we need when we need it. being prepared on set is crucial because time is not always on our side.

Getting Started

2009-01-29T11:45:00.001-08:00

I want to take a step back because i have not truly touched on the first full day of filming. It did not start off as well as we all had originally wished. For starters, when I arrived on the set i was presented with a package that was supposed to be a full follow focus system to be used on our HVX. Now inside the package was part of the follow focus, but a major piece of the units assembly was missing. The mounting plate that connects the camera to the follow focus rail system was not in the box. Now I arrived 2 days early to meet with the rest of the crew so we could iron out any problems or opportunities as we called them. So here we are 2 days from the begining of principal photography and we do not have a functioning follow focus. luckily the company that made it has very good email based customer service and they quickly corrected the mistake. The piece arrived the day shooting began. Now I was hopping that this would be the end of an issues involving the follow focus, but like this would not be the case. While mounting the camera and follow focus onto the shoulder rig the mounting brackets screw stripped preventing us from locking the plate into place. Once again we had to email the company and they quickly overnighted it to us, but we were unable to use it for the first day of shooting. With the replacment of the mount, came the end of opportunities involving our rig and follow focus for the rest of our time in NY. Even thoughs these were big problems they were dwarfed by casting issues that put the entire production on edge. Luckily we have an awsome crew espcecially those who handdel the addministrative parts of the film.

The Mercury Cycle

2009-01-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

this is my first entry to my blog about The Mercury Cycle. I am the engineer for the production and it has so far been an interesting experience. Not having a huge budget, it is the job of the engineer to troubleshoot problems and to improvise solutions. Principle photography has only been going on for a few days so we are still getting into the swing of things on set.