Can you tell me how to get to Charlie St?.....(original post April 18)

OK, so if you didn't already know I was shooting my last short film for Film school yesterday. And...well....things didn't exactly turn out as planned. So here we go. : )

The previous week my Director of Photography and I made arrangments with the equipment cage to pick up our equipment at 7:00am Monday morning. We had to pay someone to come in early because they don't normally come into work until 9:00am. (Just FYI, the cage had screwed up our order three times before Monday had even come around) I get to the cage at 7:00am to pick up the equipment. When I got there, the cage worker said that they only had half of my equipment. The camera, a tripod and an Assitant Camerman Kit (which has a slate for logging shots and other tools for the camera) She said that the other equipment (My dolly, reflectors, battery for the camera) won't be there until 9:00am. Well we were supposed to be shooting by 8:00am at the location so that didn't work. So basically I had to give up the shots where I used the dolly and had to go rent a new battery from Film and Video Equipment Rental (Additional money that had to be spent on equipment, as in OVER BUDGET)

After the fun times at the school equipment cage I left for the location. I ened up being 25 minutes late to location because of all the fun back at the cage. When I get there the Guy I had talked with for the reservation of the location (here is the location: http://www.littletongov.org/history/default.asp) hadn't shown up yet. So the secretary who was really nice had let me into the museum to wait for him. About ten minutes later Tim (museum director) had shown up. I meet him at the door and said hello and would love to start unloading equipment. He said, "Well you never confirmed the location with me so I booked the whole day to someone else. " He then proceeded to tell me that I had never sent him a second proposal and come in and show him exactly where he was shooting and exactly how many people we had coming...blah, blah, blah. This is the guy whio just a week before had said I was penciled in for the reservation of the 17th and had never mentioned a second proposal or all this other crap he mentioned. So I decided to just leave before I did somethinjg stupid and try to find a second location on the fly. I knew I could only shoot today. The only other time I would have available in the near future would not be until June or July to shot again. So I was desperate to get some in the can before then.

So I had everybody reconveen at the starbucks up the road. There we had internet acces and we tried to find another location. But then my main actor said he remembered a pumpkin patch he had gone to just down Littleton blvd and thought it might work. So I decided to have him show me where the pumpkin patch was and let the rest of the group hang out at the starbucks until then. So we drive down littelton blvd a ways and just before we get to the pumpkin patch we see this awesome palntation looking property right off the side of the road. There is a sign out front that has a building contractors name and number so we call it to see if we can get it. The contractor was awesome said absolutely. We thanked him and then asked if we could talk to the owner to get thier permission. He said the owner was actually in Cabo san lucas or whatever and he wouldn't be back soon. So after thinking about it for a while my actor and I decided to say screw it, let's shot and ask for forgivness later.

So we get all the crew over there and unload the equipment (staying respectful to this guys property I might add). I go down to the back of the plantation which has a barn that the contractor is working on because its foundation is going. This barn wa awesome. The whole back of it had fallen apart so it looked as if a bomb had hit it. So in regards to the script, it was exactly what I needed. I began to plan out some of the action with Mark my main lead actor. We hang out down there for a bit and get everything ready. We come back up to the staging area and evrybody is huddled around the camera. I come to see what's going on, and Jesus, my Director of Photography, is trying to get the camera working but it doesn't want to. So basically we had no camera to use and no time go get another. BUT! We did have a smaller camera he brought along with him to do all the minature shots with. So after all the minature shots were done I decided to use that camera to get as much footage as I possibly could.

The only problem with this camera was that it could only take 100ft loads of film at a time. We had two 100ft loads that Jesus had brought for the minatures and I had brough two 400ft loads. The two 400ft loads though could not be loaded into the camera because they have to made with only 100ft spools. Otherwise it gets messy and you could lose alot of film. So these two 100ft loads will give me about 3 minutes of shootinjg time. So I decided lets just get the best we can with the film we have and get the hell out of here. I knew that the only way to get this film done the way I wanted too, was to reschedule for a couple months down the road. So we got some good footage and then I wrapped the day and had everybody pack up.

When I get back to the cage to check my equipment back in, the NEW cage worker let m know that I had nothing checked out in my name and that the worker I had in the morning forgot to sign anything in my name. So basically i had all this equipment including a camera that didn't work checked out to no one. So I had to put my foot down with the guy and have him sign a sheet of paper saying that I had turned everything in that was taken and that the camera was not working when I left, and I had no way of checking it before I left because they forgot my battery. So basically I made sure I could never have any of them trying to come after me saying I owed them $10,000 for a camera that I didn't break.

So all in all, it was a very interesting shoot day. When you look back on it though you realize everybody needs an absolute hell production to appreciate the good ones and no what not to do on the next. So I will probably be shooting again come this summer sometime. I will have to do a lot of planning though because I am helping a lot of other productions as well. But I haven't lost my way to Charlie St. just yet. : )

Here is a great documentary: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0308514/ It desribes an even worse situation then I was in. : ) It really helps you to understand that if you aren't caerful, it can all come crashing down around you.