Operating cameras and pointing lights

Wow. A lot sure has happened since the last post I wrote. The Fall semester ended and it couldn't have come any sooner than it did. I failed a couple of classes, but I actually did better in the other two than I expected. I think at least one of those is because my professor was retiring and he just didn't care what grades he gave out. I don't mind, it got me an A. Gus Edwards, you will be missed, and all of that.

I mentioned in the last entry that I lost my job in November while helping out with an audition for a fellow student's short film. Well right as the new year began we began principal photography (the main part of the shoot) for Darkness of Light, directed by Randy Forte. At first the Director of Photography Kenny Yanga wasn't even sure if I'd have a position on his crew. There was a chance I wad going to end up a lowly PA (just kidding PAs). But after a few conversations, he invited me on as his 2nd AC (assistant camera). I basically was going to help the camera operator with the little details like changing lenses, keeping the camera clean, moving the tripod, etc. During the course of a few meetings I was promoted to 1st AC, then finally to camera operator.

For the entirety of the film, except for a few shots, I was the guy behind the camera. We had an excellent crew on the shoot and it was by far the most organized and professional setting I've worked in as a student filmmaker. So for the awesome experience that I was a part of, I want to wholeheartedly thank the following people: Jared S. Mercier, Charles R. Forte, Stephanie Flores, Kenneth Yanga, Christopher J. Meyers, and the entire cast and crew of Darkness of Light. We shot and exhausting 7 days with 2 days rest, with most of those days being ten or more hours. But I enjoyed every minute of it.

I got my Macbook Pro back last week. I had previously bought one, but tight financial situations forced me to sell it in November. But I bought another one from a guy in Tempe. This one is even newer than the one I had before, but it is not the new unibody models. It's still one of the old aluminum ones. I'm going to get a hell of a lot of use of this one since I'm going to be editing a lot this semester.

My good friend Dan Dredger is paying us a visit from Korea. He's in town for a couple of weeks so we decided to shoot a film on one of the weekends he was here. It was off a short script that another friend had already produced before. We thought we could improve on the original so we gave it a shot. It was a much smaller production than DoL, but not any less enjoyable. We shot this one over two days with a great group of people and we're currently editing it so we can enter it in a few local film festivals. Hopefully something good will come of it all. I was the Gaffer on this film, also known as the guy that points the lights at the actors. I'll put links to the movie once we have it online.

I'm also working on the website for Darkness of Light. I'll link to that when that's ready. We should have a teaser site by next week. Look out for that.

Well, I need to go to sleep now. Tomorrow I'll write a little bit about school and what I have to look forward to this semester.