Friday, Saturday 'Want Some' shoots

Friday's shoot was absolute chaos. Out of the six people who said they would show, only three actually did- our camera man, Chuck, second camera guy Dustin, and my wonderful audio wizard, Tee. Unfortunately, I myself was only there for the beginnings of set up when I got some bad news about a friend, and spent the rest of the morning and afternoon at the hospital.

I got back to set around 5pm, as they were breaking set- not by choice, since they hadn't gotten all the shots were supposed to get, but the club owner (the location) was calling time. Then he changed his mind, and said we could stay til 9. So we unpacked, re-setup, then at 7 he changed his mind again- we had to leave. So we broke set a second time. Because of the two false alarms, by the time 9pm rolled around, we still hadn't gotten our shots. At this point, the club cliental I guess were all pretty into being background extras (thank God we'd gotten all the audio we needed already- after four harddrive dumps of the DAR, we certainly have plenty to work with!), and we were able to stay til midnight to get what we needed. A good thing we got it all on Friday, too... The next night, Saturday, the whole place was closed down and taped off by lots of nice yellow police tape. Don't know what happened, don't really want to.

Saturday went a lot better. The high-rise condominium apartment/condo was perfect, beautiful place with hardwood floors and a killer view. We got going around 4pm, wrapped up around 7pm. Only real glitch was our caterer being awol, so yours truly made a pizza run- which brings me to one of my side stories.

This may sound unimportant, but there was a moment in the day, when we were all crowded into the bathroom (a big bathroom, thankfully- the size of some bedrooms I've seen), munching on pizza and gulping diet coke, and we could hear Bill (William Johnson, directer/writer) talking with the talent, and we're chitchatting in the bathroom, me mostly catching up on what I'd missed during my two hour pizza run (Vegas Strip traffic at 5pm on a saturday....). Then we heard Bill shout for quiet, heard the clacker, and all at once every single person in the bathroom paused mid sentence, mid chew, and we all went completely silent without even thinking about it. It was one of those moments were you go, 'wow...I'm not a student anymore...these guys get it...and I'm one of them.' It was a revelation, of sorts, that I wasn't playing pretend in Eddie's bluescreen classroom, classmates watching from the control room and joking around and snickering. This was real- certainly not on the same level as some big productions, but real enough. And I absolutely loved it. I knew 100% that I was where I wanted to be, where I was supposed to be. When you dump six figures into school, it's nice to know you didn't make a mistake in your career selection.

Anyways, last shoot today, final scenes. Hope it goes as good as yesterday, if not better!


-Catherine

Today was the first production meeting (and only, since shooting begins tomorrow) for the short film 'Want Some' by William L Johnson.

It started out with me just offering to help out during the pre-production, just so that I wasn't sitting on my thumbs until post started- I hate sitting around, feeling useless.

From there, I was magically the (this calls for capital letters) Production Manager. I put together an entire production team in one day- go me! Granted, none but three of them decided to show for the meeting today...*sigh* Three others I know will actually show for the actual shoot. I hope. I really hope people are more reliable when I get to paid jobs...

Anyways, the meeting went well, the director (William Johnson himself) and his AD and his Assist. Producer were all on the ball, think it'll be great to work with them. I think this actually might go somewhat smoothly... Bah, now I need to go find wood to knock on.

Will update tomorrow on how the first day of shooting went!


-Catherine

'Presenting' WIP

Intro piece for my graduation reel, only about 20% done, still have to finish the letters and add shadows, color correct, etc. Working on getting rid of the pixelation on the letters... I might end up having to make em in Illustrator and just import em. Done with rotoscoping, and extruded shatter effect on a text layer.

Anyways, just wanted to share it because it kinda hit me that four years ago, I would have never thought I would be able to make even this little beginning of a piece. And not only can I do it, but it's not incredibly difficult and it's not taking me very long. It's kinda cool to realize that the only thing holding me back from doing kick ass shit like you see in movies is...well, time.

World of Warcraft movie, here I come!

'Presenting' WIP from Catherine Petty on Vimeo.