The long weekend
I got to do some film work this weekend. I talked the guys filming a pilot for a Cable TV comedy spoof of the cult classic Dark Shadow into letting me help. The show is call Missy Dawn and combines Dark Shadows and the TV Drama Dallas.
With the filming and Scarborough Faire Work This was a full on weekend. The schedule went something like this… Friday work until 5:30ish run to the studio where we were shooting that night until about 4am. Saturday morning I was up at 6:30 to head to Scarborough workshops. Teach until noon then head over to the location and shoot until 3:30 am. Next morning up at 7 am to teach in workshops again. Sunday afternoon I got a break from about 11:00 till noon to eat lunch and socialize. Then off to the location of the next shoot. Sunday night and Monday morning we shoot until 5:20 am. I was home by 6:30 and in bed by 7am. That was my schedule this weekend.
Somewhere I lost track of how many hours I was up. As a result I slept most of Monday. When I did return to the land of the living about 3 pm, K came over and we went out and got me food. This turn out to be a real wonderful evening. We went and saw The Lady Killers. Great movie, the characters are all archetype and the language in the movie was hilarious. Then home. I miss home.
So the things I learned this weekend:
1. It is good to give people headroom when framing a shot
2. It takes armies of people to make a movie
3. You can light daytime as if it were night and nighttime as if it were day
4. Assistant Directors and cameramen do not get breaks while making movies
5. I can still work 24 hours straight
6. After about 12 hour of looking though an eyepiece I cannot focus
7. Film actors are better at the technical art of acting then I knew
8. Being sweet and dumb is ok; being arrogant and dumb is not
9. Everyone gets grumpy about 4 am in the morning
10. Filmmaking is fun, but sometimes the people who do it forget that
11. K has a laugh that I had never herd he make before
12. A hug can really make you weekend
Comments
"K has a laugh that I had never herd he make before"
Hmmm, you did not quite recover from your number 5.
Back to bed with you.
8-)
Posted by: Dean | March 30, 2004 08:45 PM
I had to see The Ladykillers. The original 1955 Ealing Studios film is one of my favorites, primarilly because of Alec Guiness's wonderfully bizzare performance as Professor Marcus (With his prosethetic teeth he looked like what Elanor Roosevelt might have looked like in male drag). I was prepared to be unhappy, considereing the number of rotten, dissapointing "remakes" of various old films and tv shows that have recently afflected themselves upon the public. I was instead delighted (and so was Natalie). I think this is the best adaptation of a prexisting movie I've ever seen. And in many ways an improvement over the original.
It's obvious that the Coen brothers and Tom Hanks have a respect and love for the 1955 film. Lots of the lines are right out of the first one. As soon as I saw the poetic footage of the garbage scow at the beginning, I knew where that was going (In the original, it was a coal train).
One glitch - if the General is suppposed to be from "French Indochina", why do he and his wife speak Mandarin when the donut shop is robbed?
Posted by: Josef | April 13, 2004 10:37 PM