We’re at the halfway point in shooting this fine film, and after a week is about when it seems a crew will…I guess I was going for ‘gel,’ so to speak. They’ll congeal (or coagulate!) or else they’ll separate (or suspend!), in the sense of mixtures. That is, after a few days ‘in the trenches,’ the G&E crew (for instance) will begin to know the looks and styles the DP is likely to prefer. “Oh, okay, indoor evening scenes will always have the following tungsten lamps, and they’ll be on dimmers,” or “Okay, this scene is in the gym where the prom is, so a blue wash will come from this side, more color from the stage.” Perhaps shorthand is developed. Perhaps ne’erdowells have been sacked. And as a whole, shooting should be getting faster, as the team grows familiar.

BUT

Once your crew starts buddying up, and stops fretting about making a good impression and getting to know everyone else; there’s a certain danger to treating co-workers like old friends, instead of as a professional. The desparation of low budgets can keep on with crew that would have been thrown off bigger sets.

[That's where I stopped writing this one and probably went to sleep. I'm sure I was laying the groundwork for some kind of point I wanted to make, but by now, I've no idea what that point was. Ah well.]

Working on a set is a lot like going to camp. The real world kind of falls away, outside news intake drops off, you’re thrown in with the other campers going through the shared struggle / way of life of trying to convert the script to footage… It’s got its own rituals – the things that are acceptable to discuss at different points of the shoot (so what do you do? where are you from? how’d you get here? What are you doing next? Got a card?) – inside jokes (“Anyone want an apple? We haven’t got anymore water, but there’s gum.”) and games. It’s an application of the rule Spider Robinson puts forth every few pages in a given Callahan collection – shared pain is lessened, shared joy is multiplied.

In this instance, I didn’t much like the movie, but I quite enjoyed making it. The wordy, oft-mumbled or drowned-out-by-helicopters script seemed to meander, with a handful of leads that…come to think of it, I was there and I don’t know how any of the subplots turn out. Hm.

Regardless, if I had to be at Lake Routinely-shut-down-by-police, curiously scheduled, upper-management-seems-vaguely-disinterested, I’m glad it was with the team we had. A routinely impressive art department, a crew with a common sense of humor and determination to make as much of the days as possible, and an AD team struggling to hold it all together. Extra special thanks to Danny the grip, Angel the Camera PA, Marina the beachcomber, Monty on production stills, Bill, and that bloody roadblock in MU/H.

In G&E we squeezed a lot from a small lighting package (so far, the smallest kit I’ve worked with on a show that had ‘real’ gear). Typically, we had our daylight or tungsten ‘looks,’ but every so often we got to rig something interesting. Photos should be on flickr in a few days, for the good stuff. And we learned some valuable lessons, like how many kinos can run on my 150w inverter (1×4′ + 4×2′ tubes on three ballasts, cube tapped into the inverter). I found that in particular especially interesting, since I was working on my kino-flo merit badge. (Requirement 6a. Change 2 4×4′ banks and 1 4×2′ bank of kinos from daylight tubes to tungsten. b. and back again. c. And again. d. And again. e. Once more, just in case.)

And now that it’s over, I’ve got a couple of days to re-integrate with the real world via laundry, paying off a production-sponsored parking ticket, and buying some food (since I can’t just eat on-set), amongst other miscellany.

Most folks tend to do alright with their co-workers out of necessity as much as anything else (shared grief? common enemies?), so you pick the camp you go to and you do even better. People who show up with the earnest intent to make a film will probably get along well with others of the same mind. And a movie doesn’t typically go on forever, so that means going to camp again and again (if you’re lucky) and throwing in with further teams, so on and so on. And we’re all in this business to make friends, right?

I thought I had a post here about how suspicious craigslist has been.

I was describing events that took place last week. There was a neat ikea couch for sale. I underbid the asking price, like you do, and then saw that the retail price was 4x the asking, so I had my roommate offer more. I was told that there was a fierce ‘bidding war’ that was going to keep me out of it, and he was told he had a deal. He also found a neat recliner he thought he’d like (the roommate, not the couch salesman). Both were scheduled to show up one night, around 7pm. And although the couch was listed on CL again the next day, for more money, neither seller was ever heard from again.

Tobin arranged to buy a television. He drove far away to pick it up at a reasonable price, and after checking it out, the owner pretended to have recieved an offer on the same item $150 greater than the deal that was about to close. Unwilling to match the price of the imaginary buyer, Tobin drove a long distance home. The same TV was up for sale again the next day. Tobin would later purchase a different set, with a discolored screen and no degauss button.

A different pair of couches were found, at a reasonable price. We drove to meet them at their storage locker, waited a couple of hours, and went home with no couches at all. We met a woman about a microwave, at her own apartment, but she was not there. Mike bought an inexpensive chair that left him feeling at least as betrayed. Apparently, the thought is that a $10 office chair should permit a sitter to lean slightly to the left without being dumped on the floor.

I have accepted several jobs editing short films in exchange for roughly $10 per editing day in food. E-mail was exchanged, deals were struck, and then I noticed the same job posting again on CL within a day or two, and without another message ever sent my way.

It seems like we encountered further injustices that escape me now…I wonder why people post their ads if they don’t want their jobs to be done or the items to be sold?