Day 4: Taking It To The Streets

You'd think that with soaring gas prices gasoline stations might want to get a little positive press by letting a small indie film crew shoot a two minute sequence at their pumps. No show. Every single one of the gas stations I approached said no. A couple of them didn't even let me finish my sentence. There was one, which shall remain nameless, who said this to me:

Me: Hi, is your manager in?
Gas station person: (suspicious) Uh, yes, I'm the manager. Is there a problem?
Me: No, no. My name is Julian and I'm currently directing a 30 minute film. I was wondering if it might be possible to film...
Gas station manager: No, no! Thank you.

So, the scene changed radically. We went from gas station (which had the potential to be covered and provide some shade) to open parking lot (which was hot and caused some grief).

Thankfully, I had some help from two other IFMASA members, Ellen & Modrea. They lent their minds to respin the scene and then pitched in to help film it. I found a good lot that wasn't too busy for a Saturday. The magic hour loomed and then came and then went. We managed to capture some of it, but lighting issues played havoc with each take. Not to mention the fact that after I screened the dailies, we had the boom in two different shots. In one of them, it was a reflection. In the other, the boom pole and mic cord were on bottom right hand of the screen. Then we had a mini light peek it into another shot. We were so worried about the light that we just ran through a couple of scenes without checking the frame. A separate monitor would have helped us a bunch. I'll have to invest in one after this gets completed.

Then we had the grocery store parking lot shoot. We got there just as dusk was running out and night was fading in. Hank was worried that we'd have to shoot the scene with our smaller, single CCD chip cameras in order to grab as much ambient light as possible. He ended up shooting with the XL1 and the shots were great.

To make matters more complicated, the scenes we shot at both parking lots require alternate takes, which we failed to shoot. So now, we have to do more pickup shots at both locations. One we'll do tomorrow after the Luis & Naomi's big scenes and the grocery store one we'll have to grab next weekend.

Still, despite the small setbacks, it was a productive shoot and we got lots of usable footage.

-30-