getting the timing of a paper airplane and fake car headlights and someone walking by to work out
Day two wrap. We got the last shot of the day off at just shy of 11:30pm. We left the hotel lobby at 9am. Day one was a little breather, a milk run. Shooting performance is pretty second nature to me now. I learned a lot from that - how to assess and frame a shot immediately while it's happening before you as the reactions and motions are never the same no matter how well you know the song or a band's repertoire of moves they can bust out.
Day two was the hardest shoot I've ever executed. For a few reasons. First of all, the fact that the entire piece hinges on a little in camera visual trick I came up with that was supposed to supplant the very low budget I had to work with. I thought I could do something conceptually and visually interesting (the picture i posted below is a big hint) without cg or the need to build an elaborate set, like Stable Song entailed.
Unfortunately, in practice it was a logistical and mnemonic nightmare. I've never had to stop and think so much while setting up a shot - only because I had to fill in my head the second half of each shot. And tomorrow will be especially strange as we're going to shoot everything over again.
I have the hiccups right now as I'm eating my room service dinner. Whenever I get the hiccups I get afraid I'm going to be the next person to end up in the Guinness book of World Records to have had hiccups for 70 years running or so. Sadly, this is not scary enough to get rid of my hiccups.
I also slept two hours the night before, ultimately after posting. I even went and walked around downtown San Diego; an eerie place. Very JG Ballardian - shiny new condos butting up with bougie hotels and resturants and pawn shops and bail bonds release services. Absolutely dead after 2am. I felt like the only person in the world, wandering, head filled with a bunch of silly obsessive routines of how this shot will match this shot. So after two hours of sleep and some awful, awful nightmares (not film related at all, and at least not the ones that wake me up, but i did wake up in a cold sweat) I ended up shooting from 9am to 11pm with one meal break and strangest of all, I only pissed twice today. This isn't because I'm obsessed but because for me that's just not normal.
Needless to say I'm exhausted... But at the end of the day there was some fun involved. As the sun set we raced around La Jolla and Highway One in a four car convoy, literally chasing the sun to the edge of a cliff. I climbed a fence like a ten year old to bust into a backyard to get a stick which we badly needed. I had Elle jump rope, and did at one point obsess over the timing of fake car headlights and a paper airplane and someone's walk. And best of all, what with my hyperattenuated focus on directing as the sun vanished, I didn't notice what was going on when Jimmy yelled "Aaron, watch this" and jumped off the cliff. My heart imploded. And then he popped up again from the ledge right beneath it. Not funny, but hilarious and actually at the time sort of needed. The resulting shot looks like Jimmy committed suicide at the end of our shoot. I can't wait to send it to the team at Subpop with a note saying "i'm so sorry but today on our shoot something terrible happened".
I talked to someone who went night swimming in a lake and wanted me to come visit them and I haven't seen them for awhile. It's so hard to be tempted when you're in the middle of this, to remind yourself there's life past this and it is good.
Sleepy time. And when I got home... You know, I'm not going to edit that. I actually wrote home instead of hotel... There was a package waiting for me on the bed, a gift from someone sent to me in the hotel. It's ridiculous. They just sent me something that I cannot even find words to express it's value to me, and now I have to get it home while travelling on an airplane. Since it is not fair to leave it like that; they sent me something they made - something that they didn't necessarily make for me, but my response to it is centered on the uncanny randomness that governs that sometimes separate people can share an idea or feeling that they find hard to explain to anyone. I cannot remember the last time someone sent me something they made, and made sure to get it to me when I'm far away. So when you see me in the airport a week from now, arms cradling two packages - film cans in one arm, a bundled up package in the other, wearing a suit made entirely of Nerf, eyes blood red from exhuastion... This explains why.
For everyone though, try not to have nightmares tonight. Let us sleep the sleep of sleep deprived filmmakers. My crew and I will sleep like we're lying on the ocean floor tonight.
Day two was the hardest shoot I've ever executed. For a few reasons. First of all, the fact that the entire piece hinges on a little in camera visual trick I came up with that was supposed to supplant the very low budget I had to work with. I thought I could do something conceptually and visually interesting (the picture i posted below is a big hint) without cg or the need to build an elaborate set, like Stable Song entailed.
Unfortunately, in practice it was a logistical and mnemonic nightmare. I've never had to stop and think so much while setting up a shot - only because I had to fill in my head the second half of each shot. And tomorrow will be especially strange as we're going to shoot everything over again.
I have the hiccups right now as I'm eating my room service dinner. Whenever I get the hiccups I get afraid I'm going to be the next person to end up in the Guinness book of World Records to have had hiccups for 70 years running or so. Sadly, this is not scary enough to get rid of my hiccups.
I also slept two hours the night before, ultimately after posting. I even went and walked around downtown San Diego; an eerie place. Very JG Ballardian - shiny new condos butting up with bougie hotels and resturants and pawn shops and bail bonds release services. Absolutely dead after 2am. I felt like the only person in the world, wandering, head filled with a bunch of silly obsessive routines of how this shot will match this shot. So after two hours of sleep and some awful, awful nightmares (not film related at all, and at least not the ones that wake me up, but i did wake up in a cold sweat) I ended up shooting from 9am to 11pm with one meal break and strangest of all, I only pissed twice today. This isn't because I'm obsessed but because for me that's just not normal.
Needless to say I'm exhausted... But at the end of the day there was some fun involved. As the sun set we raced around La Jolla and Highway One in a four car convoy, literally chasing the sun to the edge of a cliff. I climbed a fence like a ten year old to bust into a backyard to get a stick which we badly needed. I had Elle jump rope, and did at one point obsess over the timing of fake car headlights and a paper airplane and someone's walk. And best of all, what with my hyperattenuated focus on directing as the sun vanished, I didn't notice what was going on when Jimmy yelled "Aaron, watch this" and jumped off the cliff. My heart imploded. And then he popped up again from the ledge right beneath it. Not funny, but hilarious and actually at the time sort of needed. The resulting shot looks like Jimmy committed suicide at the end of our shoot. I can't wait to send it to the team at Subpop with a note saying "i'm so sorry but today on our shoot something terrible happened".
I talked to someone who went night swimming in a lake and wanted me to come visit them and I haven't seen them for awhile. It's so hard to be tempted when you're in the middle of this, to remind yourself there's life past this and it is good.
Sleepy time. And when I got home... You know, I'm not going to edit that. I actually wrote home instead of hotel... There was a package waiting for me on the bed, a gift from someone sent to me in the hotel. It's ridiculous. They just sent me something that I cannot even find words to express it's value to me, and now I have to get it home while travelling on an airplane. Since it is not fair to leave it like that; they sent me something they made - something that they didn't necessarily make for me, but my response to it is centered on the uncanny randomness that governs that sometimes separate people can share an idea or feeling that they find hard to explain to anyone. I cannot remember the last time someone sent me something they made, and made sure to get it to me when I'm far away. So when you see me in the airport a week from now, arms cradling two packages - film cans in one arm, a bundled up package in the other, wearing a suit made entirely of Nerf, eyes blood red from exhuastion... This explains why.
For everyone though, try not to have nightmares tonight. Let us sleep the sleep of sleep deprived filmmakers. My crew and I will sleep like we're lying on the ocean floor tonight.
1 Comments:
Your comment about gaining entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for having the hiccups reminds me of a little news clip on an episode of the Simpsons where a guy who had had the hiccups for a long time was to be interviewed. In the clip, you hear the guy saying, "{Hic) Someone (hic) please (hic) kill (hic) me (hic)."
I hope yours are gone now.
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