The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning.

Three and a half weeks until graduation.  Two and a half weeks left in the semester.  6 more days of shooting.

The end is near.

We're going to finish.  Can you believe it?  I can't.

Pick ups will be grueling, but we are actually going to finish shooting BEFORE FINALS! How incredible is that?

Springing Ahead

We ended the last day of shooting before Spring Break with the lovely tradition of Daylight Savings.  Several of us were baffled all day, but we got through it nevertheless.  Never was there a sweeter moment then arriving home after that full, productive weekend.

Then, a whole fabulous week to relax and think of nothing at all, especially TMC.  Sadly, it is now over but I must say that it was certainly much needed and much enjoyed.

The weekly Progress Report has skipped a week, and will appear in the blog tomorrow!  How Lovely!

-B.

Awesome Night

Tonight was an amazing night.  Though it was long and tiring, everything clicked just right and the results were phenomenal.  Not only that, but we really bonded as a crew.

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, I'm still awake at 3:30am, with a crew call tomorrow morning at 10:30am, and I'm completely okay with it.

There's just too much to write about, that I can't even write anything else.

Reports and Gold Stars

So I recently realized that all along, as we are strolling (okay, maybe that isn't an accurate description) through production, I have been failing to produce Daily Production Reports.  If I weren't so valuable, I'd fire myself (Not really, cause I need these credits to graduate).

Anyway, I spent about 2 hours yesterday struggling to create some decent-looking tables on my brand spanking new homemade Production Report.  I based it off of some samples that I got from Liam (MEP professor, he used to be an AD).   I tailored it specifically to TMC, because we are working with all digital footage so the terminology can be slightly different.

My report includes all the basic production info (title, start date, day of shooting, director, estimated finish date), as well as a script record (how far much we've done, what we did on this particular day, and what's left to complete), a list of all the scenes and locations for that particular day, times throughout the day for crew call, first shot, meal, and wrap (that's for you, Zach), a running count of how many setups we shoot, and finally, a tally of the footage captured (in minutes & bytes).  I also have a space for notes, such as "we dropped scene 14 today and will pick it up our next day at this location."

I wish I had been doing this from the beginning, but you live and you learn.

On another note, this weekend I finally made up my list of "gold stars."  Often on set, if a crew member performs exceptionally or comes up an excellent time-saving solution, I will award them a gold star.  Unfortunately, when I finally went shopping for actual stars, I couldn't find those awesome foil stars (you know what I'm talking about) anywhere and I had to settle for some cheap multi-colored stars that keep falling off the paper. Well, I made up my list and it caused quite a stir on Saturday when everyone realized that Kelly is outperforming everyone else.  I tried to explain that it's not a competition, that you're only competing against yourself.  To no avail.  So, from then on it became the race of the stars to a free breakfast courtesy of Brianne.  20 stars gets you a free breakfast!  I'm still waiting for the day that I don't have to tell Aaron (sound) to get connected once and can award him with the promised three stars.

In all seriousness, though, I am so proud of everyone to have contributed to making our way through HALF of production so far!  Enjoy your weekend off next week!

-B.

Progress Report

We have completed:

-38 5/8 (out of 103)

-16 shootings days (out of 35)

-86 scenes (out of 158)

A Somewhat Sad Post

Every weekend, while 95% of the Quinnipiac student body is sitting on their futons eating take-out and watching a movie on a Sunday afternoon, we are out making one.

Every day that I am working on this movie (and that is really every day), I think about how proud I am of what we are all doing, and what we have done so far.   But it is not without costs and sacrifices.  

I've lost sleep, resulting in a faulty immune system.  I barely have the time or energy to wash my face at night.

My health isn't the only thing that is deteriorating for this movie.  I am starting to feel strain on my relationships (I know I'm not the only one).  It seems like I'm always disappointing my friends, who have to make plans at least a week in advance.  

My schoolwork is suffering slightly.  I won't even get into my mental health.

Sometimes I get scared that if I choose to go down this road, my life will always be like this.  Then I remember that unlike the professionals, we are shooting 10, 12, 15 hour days, while juggling classes, midterms, papers and projects.  And then, once again, I am proud of how far we have come.  Despite all of the difficulties and "opportunities" that we deal with every weekend, I would still rather be making a movie then just sitting around watching one.

Driving TMC

I'm sitting in my car on set right now as we are shooting the car/ driving scenes. There's not much for me to do since there is limited room in the car. These are pretty exciting scenes because we are using another one of our (very) expensive toys - a car mount. It straps onto the hood of the car, sprawled out like a spider. To be honest, I'm happier not watching; having our only camera sitting in top of a moving vehicle makes me nervous!

Here's what the mount looks like:
Wish us luck,
B.

Progress Report

We have completed:

-14 days (out of 33) of shooting

-32 3/8 pages (out of 103) of the script

-76 scenes (out of 158)

We are 1/3 (33%) complete!

Efficient Weekend

Last week, Zach (cinematographer), Cody (director) and I finally had our first weekly meeting.  We planned out how long each scenes was going to take so that I was able to do a better job at keeping the production on schedule this weekend.  I think it really helped having this planned, because days 12-14 were our most efficient weekends so far.  Friday and Saturday we finished close to the schedule.  Sunday was a completely different story because we ended with the intimate scenes between the two main characters.  Those were tough - they had to be perfect because they are so important, so I tried to back off a little bit on rushing things.  It's important as a 1st AD to know when to push things along and when to let everyone take their time.

Overall, a good weekend.  We are really getting somewhere!

This week, I will be rearranging the schedule to make up for our disaster weekend. It will take a big chunk of time out of my week, but it's entirely necessary.

Also, this weekend we are shooting in a convenience store, which is kind of cool.

Title Change

I've decided to change the title of my blog from "Quiet on the Set Please" to "Background Action" because it is a better description of what I do on The Mercury Cycle.  Besides it being a call that I say sometimes on set, it describes how most of what I do is in the background.  You don't always see it, but it's there, lingering behind.

Cheers,

B.

Setbacks and Steps Forward

This past week was, to put it delicately, a huge mess. We were extremely underprepared for the weekend of shooting and we saw the results of that lack of preparation very quickly. We were scheduled to shoot the scenes at the cult meeting house. First, we had problems getting the location. Then, the costumes for the cult members weren't ready. Two patterns, one new sewing machine, and several agonizing hours later, we had one solitary robe that was just enough to get through a section of the scheduled scenes.

Luckily we were able to do exterior scenes, which is good because once the trees start to look springy we will begin to have continuity problems with outside scenes.

That said, we are now about 2 days behind schedule. We did use those two days to hold a very productive open forum style crew meeting and to pick up scenes dropped previously. The meeting was effective I think because it allowed us to regroup, figure out where we went wrong and work on fixing the problems. A lot of the things we haven't been doing individually or as a crew have built up until we finally crashed last week. But that's what this whole experience is about - learning what works and what doesn't.

Progress Update

So far, we have completed 11 days (out of 33) of shooting, bagged 22 7/8 pages (out of 103) of the script or 56 scenes (out of 158).  We're about 1/5 of the way there!