Filming
March 13th 2003 -
Getting there
So I got up extra-early yesterday, staggered out of bed, got all the film equipment into the car, and drove off to work. Unfortunately, due to the increased traffic caused by the rain, the roads were very, very congested and it took me over an hour to get to work, even leaving just after 7:00am. Grr! I wanted to get to work extra-early so that I could get a decent amount of work in before I had to head off to the filming, which started at 1:00pm.
Anyway, I finished up at 12:00, got in the car, and drove over to Oxford St. I’d been to Metro Screen before – it’s just underneath the Chauvel cinema – so I was pretty optomistic I knew where I was going.
Foolish me.
My first mistake was forgetting that Anna had removed the UBD from the car. Grr! I can barely *drive* without the UBD, unless I’m going over vastly familiar territory. And as I was coming up to the harbour bridge, I realised that I wasn’t sure whether the Cahill expressway (across the bridge) or the tunnel was the better option for getting to Oxford St. Oh well, tunnel it was. I could vaguely remember that you could just turn left off the freeway and onto Oxford St, no worries.
Unfortunately, that was off the Cahill expressway. Attempting the same trick in the tunnel has you coming out at roughly the Sydney Cricket ground, which is all very well, but my mental map of Sydney just doesn’t join up the SCG and Oxford St., no matter how simple it may appear to you more experienced Sydneysiders. Aargh! I followed roads largely at random, trying to head back to the city so that I could find something familiar to get me onto Oxford St. Eventually, through much lunchtime traffic and stress, I found Central station, and kinda worked it out from there, with some further terrible navigation and one ill-advised short-cut (you’d think I’d know better, wouldn’t you?)
I was still early. I *plan* around getting lost.
Filming
So I spent yesterday afternoon working with Lachlan (the Hugh Jackman dude from the “China Doll” shoot) in Metro Screen Studio 1, which had a bunch of 2k lights on a lighting grid and a blue-screen background that extended around three walls.
It was pretty cool. We were doing a corporate video for a guy who evaluates medical trials, and it was mainly just pointing the camera at him while he talked, but it was pretty engrossing stuff in any case. We spent a fair while setting up the shot, and then ran through two takes of all the segments he was talking through, and that was it – finished a half-hour ahead of time. Unfortunately I hadn’t prepared anything to do in the remaining half-hour, so we just packed up and left. Next time (if there is a next time – I thought it all went pretty well, so I’m optomistic) I’ll write something up, and if there’s time, do a quick bit of filming at the end of the session.
The one pain? Setting up and packing up. I’ve got a lot of gear, and it takes a long time to transfer it to the car and back, the annoyance enhanced by the rain. I’ve got to get some extra-long bags, or something, anything that’ll hold all the stands and tripods the boom-pole. Such a pain. Oh, and I blew the bulb on the 800W redhead, moving it while it was on, but I wasn’t particularly worried as that light had gone through a *lot* of use. I have, or rather had, a spare bulb. Time to buy some more spares, methinks.
I’m really thinking about doing some studio shooting now. It’s far cheaper than I was expecting.
Home again
So, packed it all up, got rained on, drove home with only two wrong turnings. Unpacked, got rained on. Collapsed in bed with Anna, and read more of “Blue Box”. That’s my excuse for not doing any writing yeterday.