absence

flickr photo by: ivan makarov

obviously i haven't posted much to this blog lately. my use of twitter and facebook seems to have made this space obsolete. which is interesting since this is obviously a long form type of medium. are my thoughts getting more fractured? less deeply structured? or am i spending so much time conversing and interacting with others on other levels via those two social applications that i don't feel the need to shout into the darkness here?

i became unemployed june 5th and it feels like that also has something to do with it. without the daily structure a job forces on you, i haven't found the time/space for this type of communication.

it's not that i haven't been doing creative work - i have, though unfortunately i can't share publicly what i've been working on. at least not the actual footage. i shot and edited 10 pages of a script for a director's test. which is funny because in writing that last sentence i realized one of my first jobs in the industry was as a p.a. on a one-day director's test for hart bochner (he was the snarky corporate guy in 'die hard' who tries to give up john mccain). we shot a couple of scenes in a quickly built dorm hallway and room. he got the job. directing PCU. win.

my director test involved not one, but two directors. they're the writers for the feature project being considered and have never directed anything before. this was a test to determine how they'd do; how'd they'd work with a dp (myself), with actors, with a time constraint and a lot of pages to cover. the scenes involved four locations in and around a large house (exterior front, living room, kitchen and bedroom). we shot with two small photography lights and a dvx-100 completely hand-held. the inside length of my right thumb was numb for a couple of days from all the shooting.

i was surprised at the quality of the color representation of the dvx-100. and shooting in the squeezed anamorphic mode you get a nice oblong image (although still at standard def). the attached shotgun mic also did a fine job of picking up dialog, as long as the actors were facing the camera at the time.

the footage cut together well and i was pleasantly surprised at how good it all looks, from a lighting and coverage standpoint, considering we shot 10 pages with three actors in about 6.5 hours! the two directors (friends of mine), were excellent to work with, collaborative, invested and willing to learn at every turn. im sure they'll do well with this project if it goes through. i hope it does. im apparently going to be editing it, which would make it would be my first feature editing job since 'the firing squad'.