Anthology Of Your Craft

The strange benefits (or curse) of working in movies, is that you REALLY get to see where you were and where you are…now. Not everyone in this life will get a living breathing anthology of their work. I came across a 13 year old short film I shot for a friend back in film school. Well, I recall I had a major crush on this girl/director. I’m really not entirely sure why, now that I look back. But maybe something about her nonchalance to life that makes you really want to be around her. Oddly enough, we’re still in contact.

I think if you boil it down, it is more of a evolutionary chart (or in some cases, de-evolution). I can recall with vivid detail sitting in a cage on a soundstage calling my girlfriend on a shitty Ericcson phone on her birthday. I was chain-smoking at the time, so I’d step out after every take really missing her. She was that sort of dependent that made YOU dependent. Hence, why she dumped me. Anyhow, that short film took a ton of years out of all of us. I recall sleeping on the soundstage after two 18 hour days. And the director/girl having to be dragged onto set, half awake. We were all miserable for some reason. Something just didn’t work…everywhere. I was lonely, angry and…lonely. The assistant director took over the production, and quite honestly, between he and I, we dragged it to a conclusion. I recall two producers on the movie that was driving the director nuts. Though I was too tired to care or know. All I knew is they were really excited of us to have quail for dinner. Yes, one of our meals was catered with quail. I could barely taste it between the cigarette I had in my mouth in between bites. The funniest part…my gaffer, whom we went on to do a few more projects, didn’t smoke and would get FURIOUS that we’d all sneak out into the parking lot for a smoke. This took WAY too much time. Considering…well, we were outlandishly behind schedule. We worked really really hard on the movie though. It was my first Panavision shoot. Shooting with their…less than stellar lenses. If I knew now what I knew then…things would’ve been different. Anyway, still looks pretty good despite the awful way it got to the screen. I’ll be completely frank with you readers. I didn’t know dick about what I was doing. At the time, we were shooting with a 200ASA film stock. Which, for a soundstage movie is pretty low. But controllable. This meant we’d light brighter than we had to and turn it down. Well…my mind was already muddled with lack of sleep, so I had to constantly remind myself that we were going to turn down all the lights in post. It still ended up pretty bright. I fucked up the ratio. BUT…it still looks like a movie, since it was shot on film. One of the first big projects at Loyola Marymount to shoot on 35mm film. Which meant, tours came by and watched us. Oh, because walking outside to smoke got cumbersome, we just decided to light up right on the live set. Yes, our dumbasses just started to smoke inside the soundstage. As if we owned it. Guess when the tour came around?