The Sunday Shooting Experience

So yesterday, (Sunday), I shot some more footage for the movie. The two scenes we were working on have Chief Coffeestache and Officer Hathaway in the car, discussing shit, and they lead into more stuff, I dont want to get into details and give away plot and all that, but anyways, I shot the dialogue in the car and it went pretty good I think.

We were supposed to start shooting around 12, but it didnt actually go down till about 2. This is an issue that I am sure we will all address as a group, because punctuality, when on a slim enough schedule, would really help move the process along.

Anyhow, all things considered, since we ran into a few problems, the footage looks pretty good, and cut with the other shit its going to be with, its gonna flow nicely in my opinion. While we were shooting, we had the misfortune of getting a sweet location visually, but had airplanes flying overhead, and then had to deal with terrible church bells chiming and interrupting us for a good ten minutes. On top of that, the last part we shot wound up being rushed, because the "fully recharged" batteries I got from school, were anything but. It was literally a race against the death of the batteries, so we had to sort of rush through it, and work with what we could get. After the fact though, I am pretty happy with what we got and it was a very productive day.

I will post some of the footage shortly, possibly cut together a little blooper clip, or even just a screen shot, because as I said, I dont want to give too much of the actual movie away. At the same time though, I cant wait for everybody to see this shit.

The location we wound up using for the second part, is supposed to be outside of RapMaster Reeses house. We found a pretty good house to use for it in my opinion. We just need some more establishing shots of the neighborhood, so people can see that Reese is a gangsta mack and lives in the hood. Good stuff.

One thing I have been debating with myself about, is whether or not I should start editing footage as soon as I have all the shit I need for each scene, or whether or not I should wait until we wrap the "principle photography" and then do it all at once. I see the benefits in doing it both ways, but I also see negatives. One reason I'd like to start early, is obviously to get a headstart on things. It will be an easy way to see if we need to reshoot something sooner rather than later. Not only that, it will be easier for me to keep tabs on the footage since I am not logging any of it at the moment and am just going with the flow on it. On the flipside, a few negatives I have with it, is the fact that I am swamped with other projects for school and I am finally working on the Last Rites DVD to pump that out and clean my drive out. I dont necessarily have time to start working on 12 things at once, as much as I'd really love to. But school, and my shitty job are standing in the way from me actually being productive on the editing front. My last, and biggest concern about editing early, is the fact that I will be sitting on the edited sequences and scenes for so long, I will start questioning my initial edits and be hyper critical about everything I've done, and wind up really frustrating myself in the process. I think I will sit on the footage for a while, and just wait on it. Besides, I plan on taking time off from work once we're finished shooting, for the sole purpose to sit there and have all the time I need to digitize the footage, and get down to business of editing the shit out of the movie. When that happens, good luck trying to meet up with me, because once I am in the groove for it, I will not want to stop until its finished. Its gonna be so good.

More coming later.
Barry