Arrrrrghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps anyone who has tried to secure a location release for a film will appreciate how I’m feeling right now. When I was scouting possible locations for the 24-hour film contest, I needed to not only come up with a variety of possible locales, but I needed to get permission to film in those places in writing. I found out that people will often allow you to film, but they won’t sign anything.
Oh, my lord.
I am currently sitting at home, waiting for the footage from my Film Racing entry to upload onto the computer so I can edit it. It is extremely jittery. It turns out that the camera I got from the cable access channel has something wrong with it. I hoped that it was just showing up that way on the LCD screen of the camcorder, but no… it really looks like this, and there was nothing I could do about it. And when you have 24 hours to shoot your film, you are stuck with what you have. ..damn!
Besides that, though, this was an amazing experience. I was so stressed out in the days beforehand, trying to recruit people, locations and equipment. I managed to get permission to use someone’s apartment complex clubhouse, and also the use of a public park. I got a camera, tripod, and light kit from the cable access channel, and I rented a boom pole from a film equipment rental place. I wrangled about 15 or so people into promising to participate, knowing at least 1/3 would drop out before the day, and that at least another 1/3 would not stay for the whole thing (I was right).
When we finally got together at the meeting place, there was an immediate positive energy. We spent two hours brainstorming and about another hour writing, and it was awesome. I had no professional actors, but the actors I did have were great.
But about halfway through the shoot… it became clear that the footage was going to be bad, and that there was nothing that could be done about it.
So. I’ll see what I can do with it, and submit it anyway. And that’s alright. You can’t win ‘em all.
My microphone stopped working. Piece of crap.
While interviewing some folks for my latest project yesterday, I realized that I would get much better content if I just set up the camera and had a conversation with them, rather than pointing a mic at them and asking them questions. While setting up, the subjects would talk and talk, and I’d be like, “hold on!! I wanna get this!!” But it’s hard when they feel put on the spot, or like they are performing. Unfortunately, my microphone only works at short range, and is attached to the camera, so all that stuff has to be in the person’s face while I’m interviewing them. So setting up the camera and letting people talk is not a viable option at the moment, but I’ll keep that in mind for the future. If I could set up a sound system that would allow me to have the camera sitting far away from my subject, that would be much better.
